"Your Blues Ain't Like Mine," A Reaction Paper

by Pa Rock
Reader

Last week I posted a copy of one of two "reaction papers" that I wrote for Dr. Marjorie Sable in the Social Work Graduate School at the University of Missouri.  That paper dealt with the novel, "Snow Falling on Cedars" by David Guterson.  Today I am posting the other paper in that set, my reaction to "Your Blues Ain't Like Mine" by BeBe Moore Campbell.  Both of these papers were written in the fall of 1997.

"Your Blues Ain't Like Mine" is a fictional novel, but the incident which triggers the story's action is based rather closely on the 1955 lynching of 15-year-old Emmett Till by a group of angry racists in rural Mississippi, a crime that played a pivotal role in the rise of the civil rights movement of the 1960's.

This is what I had to say about that novel twenty years ago:

Reaction to "Your Blues Ain't Like Mine"
by Rocky G. Macy

October 22, 1997

What a read!  In her book, "Your Blues Ain't Like Mine," BeBe Moore Campbell serves up thirty years of our national history as it was lived and endured by the residents of Hopewell, Mississippi.  The characters are fictional, but the author has imbued them with a sense of suffering and vitality that is as deliciously real as the smell of fried chicken and tamales wafting from Ida Long's kitchen window.

Even though this story begins almost a century after Lincoln "freed" the slaves in the South by signing the Emancipation Proclamation, it is still a tale of slavery and of people's struggles to be free.  Not all of the "slaves" in this novel were poor, and not all of them were African-Americans.  Indeed, the author uses this intricately detailed tapestry to show that slavery is what happens when a person quits fighting for freedom and acquiesces to the dominance of others.

It was the mid-1950's and the Supreme Court had ordered the states to integrate their schools.  Lily Cox, a young abused wife and former "Magnolia Queen," set the story in motion when her innocent encounter with a black teenager, Armstrong Todd, led to his murder by her husband, Floyd.  Lily grew up watching her father beat her mother.  Her expectation of men was that they ruled the family and made the decisions.  Lily, true to her mother's example, entered marriage as an emotional, if not physical, slave to Floyd, and she never tried to escape her bondage.  Floyd abused her when he was home, and when he was in jail for extended periods of time, Lily sat at home waiting patiently for his return.

Delotha Todd, Armstrong's mother, had escaped life in the Delta and fled to the "promised land" of Chicago.  Sadly, though, when her life became too complicated in Chicago, she sent Armstrong back to Hopewell to live with his grandmother.   After Armstrong's murder Delotha was consumed by guilt and she spent the remaining decades of this story as a slave to her dead son's memory.

Clayton Pinochet was white and rich, but, much to his father's consternation, not a stereotypical southern aristocrat.  Clayton's parents abdicated his nurturance at the moment of birth to a black nanny who managed to implant the seeds of a social conscience in Clayton.  It was Clayton who turned the Armstrong Todd murder into a national story when he surreptitiously phoned his former editor in New York and requested coverage.  It was also Clayton who alerted Delotha Todd as to the desire of the "Honorable Men of Hopewell" to bury Armstrong in Hopewell so that he would not become a martyr, thus setting the stage for her fleeing to Chicago with her son's body.

Clayton was enslaved to his father, bound by the money and prestige that allowed him to live well, travel, and collect beautiful things.  It was the power of his father's money and prestige that forced Clayton into abandoning Dolly Cox, the daughter of poor "white trash," after he persuaded her to abort their baby.  It was also his father's power that kept Clayton from marrying his true love, Marguerite, a black woman who was the centerpiece of his collection of beautiful things.

Stonewall Pinochet, Clayton's father, himself a slave to his social status and to a life dependent upon the obedience and servitude of Hopewell's poor, was a man who sought to ensure not only his own dominance, but the dominance of his descendants as well.  He constantly badgered his son to marry a white woman and produce some white grandchildren.  Ironically, Dolly Cox, had aborted his one white grandchild because her pedigree did not rise to the high standards of the Pinochet family.  Even more ironic was the fact that Stonewall Pinochet did have a grandson.  William "Sweetbabe" Long was the son of Stonewall's illegitimate, half-black daughter, Ida, whom he never acknowledged.  Sweetbabe grew up to become a school teacher and returned to Hopewell to help bring education and success to others.  He developed into a man who would have made almost any grandfather proud.

Ida Long was a slave to Hopewell, chained there by circumstances over which she had little control.  Ida's dream was to take Sweetbabe to Chicago so that they would have a better life.  When she almost had enough money saved to flee the South, her step-father suffered a permanent injury and she lost her chance to move.  Ida's situation, however, made her all the more determined to see her son, Sweetbabe, succeed.

Clayton Pinochet and Ida Long interacted with each other in a way that eventually broke many of the chains that bound the poor of Hopewell.  When Sweetbabe ran into difficulty at school because he couldn't read, Ida talked Clayton into tutoring him.  Ida knew that Clayton had taught Marguerite to read, and with that education Marguerite had freed herself from Hopewell.  Ida wanted Sweetbabe to have that same opportunity.  As the word spread throughout the black community that Clayton had taught Marguerite and Sweetbabe to read, others began bringing their children to him.  Eventually Clayton's newspaper office became a reading instruction center for the poor youth of Hopewell.

After Stonewall Pinochet died and Clayton felt the momentary exhilaration of being able to live life on his own terms, Ida came forward to claim her share of the inheritance, and, in so doing, once again impacted Clayton's future.  As the story concluded, the siblings, Clayton and Ida, had joined forces to right the family wrongs that had shackled the poor of Hopewell for generations.  The irony was rich:  Stonewall Pinochet, the pillar of the "Honorable Men of Hopewell" and the personification of a class whose privilege was built of the suffering of others, had produced offspring who truly were honorable and who would use his money and power to undo the social wrongs that he nurtured and cherished.  A way of life had been buried and a new one was beginning.