STRINGING BEANS
Sorting life ’ s messy piles Story and photos by Sarah Plummer
The summer after my freshman year I worked creating a new photo archival system at Berea College Library ’ s Special Collections . I felt so important to be entrusted with historical documents . One afternoon I picked up a 1965 news article about a group of Berea students who joined Dr . Martin Luther King Jr . on his famous march from Selma to Montgomery . I scanned the attached photo of my mom ’ s face .
From the time I was a child , my mom , also a Berea alumna , told me she was part of this trip . I remember sitting on her bed as she showed me a Selma bumper sticker she purchased while there . It was a story she was quick to share and , as I learned about Civil Rights in elementary school , I was proud my mom had been a part of this history . So I often shared the story , too .
Except I didn ’ t see her among the group of students . I went to archival boxes and searched them for any record of my mom . They had a list of all students and faculty who attended the march and my mom ’ s name was conspicuously absent . I didn ’ t miss a beat , calling mom from a phone inside the climate controlled archival room .
“ I didn ’ t tell you I had gone . I told you I had friends who went .”
I immediately called my brother who verified that the story had always been that she , herself , marched on Selma .
For years after this confrontation , my mom would forget that I knew the truth and repeated the same story , that she had gone to Selma , and I would confront her again and again . She never relented .
This was a point of contention between my mother and me for more than 20 years . It was one source of our estrangement and it profoundly affected me . You see , in my late teens and early twenties , I realized that I also held on to that narrative and let it shape my reality . I overlooked racist behavior because I imagined she could not be racist . After all , she marched with Martin Luthur King Jr . I didn ’ t yet have an understanding that both things could be true . A person could support Civil Rights and still be racist — that believing in equality doesn ’ t mean you don ’ t hold prejudices .
This past December my brother and I cleaned out our mom ’ s house in Narrows , a home we left filled with things in 1989 . It ’ s hard to describe the work of going through every scrap of paper she saved for 25 years . It was an archive of her life — a cocktail napkin from a bar she worked in one summer in Indiana , letters from my father while he was working as a youth pastor , pictures of an unimpressive high school boyfriend . I began to see her life take shape in new ways , and my brother and I laughed imagining my mom coming home from college for the first time with a 1960s bouffant bun . My grandma described it in a disgruntled post- Christmas letter as a “ weirdo hairdo .” It is , incidentally , a hairdo she kept for the next 50 years .
We also found a bit of paper that took our breath away ; instructions for a March 5 , 1964 , Civil Rights March on Frankfort , Kentucky , with Martin Lurthur King Jr . It was a list given to attendees about assembly points and conduct during the march . My mom would have been a junior at Berea when 170 students and 30 faculty joined approximately 10,000 other demonstrators . The purpose was to ask the state legislature to consider a bill to remove racial barriers in public accommodations . This bill passed and became the Kentucky Civil Rights Act of 1966 , the first state-level Civil Rights Act passed south of the Mason-Dixon line .
I sat next to my brother as we looked at this scrap of paper and I sobbed . I felt ashamed . My years of frustration with her felt foolish . What if mom did march with MLK after all ? Family letters we found painted a new picture of my mom , one of a young woman defying her strict parents in small ways . A young woman from south western Virginia who hadn ’ t been to many places and especially not to many cities . She may have conflated Frankfort for Selma . She may have lied to make herself part of the larger , more well-known story . She may have saved the paper but not attended at all . Now , her dementia means that these questions will likely never be answered .
I contacted Berea ’ s Special Collections , and while they have an archive for the Frankfort march , it consists only of a few documents and there are no pictures or lists of attendees . It ’ s ironic to be an academic , to spend hours each week collecting data for a project I ’ m working on , and to turn to an archive that can never answer such a simple question : Was she there ?
Last weekend my mom was brought to the emergency room in Giles County . If you ’ ve seen loved ones become more and more frail , you ’ ll understand when I tell you that it hurt , physically hurt , to even look at her . She ’ s no longer my formidable opponent . When she finally stabilized and woke up she pet and hugged a stuffed toy cat I brought her and told me , “ Mama was here .”
I ’ ve come to my own answer in all of this , and the truth is that we are all so very complex yet we want to reduce each other to clear-cut simplicities . There comes a point when we find ways to love each other because of , in spite of , and through all those complexities . As adherent as she was to her Selma story , I was just as adherent to admonishing her for the lie . I never granted her an opportunity for complexity , the chance to have been mistaken , or the possibility of being ashamed for not taking part .
Confronting mom and standing up for what I believed was right is part of my complexity , too . I was ashamed to have perpetuated a lie of such importance and now feel ashamed to have let her lie become a wedge between us . Shame isn ’ t useless . It ’ s a barometer for growth . We can file away our stories , deeds , documents and newspaper clippings , but they can never illuminate a life . Life isn ’ t so neatly situated , and it is by sorting through life ’ s messy piles that we learn how to forgive each other and ourselves . �
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