28 Oct 20215830 Bird Song WayMelissa Carolyn Bruce I was going through stuff from my parents house and I found this migration story I wrote at one point for Bethany in high school for an interpretive dance presentation. My family has always told migration stories and I didn’t even realize that I incorporated it into Rooted Care. Each resident has a written migration story recorded by a caregiver that guides their daily care, meals and activities. Person centered care that takes into account ones history.
Migration Story
The Cambridge dictionary gives the following definitions for migration:
the process of a person or people travelling to a new place or country, usually in order to find work and live there temporarily or permanently:
the process of moving or being moved from one place to another:
the process of beginning, or of making someone begin, to use a new system:
These definitions are as multifaceted and fitting as my story and they evoke feelings just as diverse.
Sadly, like many others I will never fully know where my migration story begins, because it began in the early 1600’s when my ancestors began their forced migration over on slave ships. While there are parts of my history I will never know, thanks to the fire, determination and love for all mankind instilled in me by my father, I will get to decide how it continues and ends.
My father was born in Virginia September 7th, 1943, to a struggling single mother, my paternal grandmother Mattie Harvey Moore. Mattie’s grandmother Margaret Demry was born a slave. My dad, Marion Melvin Henry Harvey was the second child born of what would become 11 children. My dad moved from Virginia to Enfield North Carolina in 1943 to live and be raised by his maternal aunt and uncle, Jim and Ella Harvey.
My dad’s family lost their house and all their belongings in a house fire when he was still in infancy. In this same fire he nearly lost his life. While his family was struggling to salvage belongings, they had forgotten that he was in the home. Poverty kept then from rebuilding and they left the remains of the house and built a small one room home in front of it.
My father spent much of his infancy on a blanket in the fields while his mother picked cotton and as soon as he was walking, took up his work in the field as well. Many long and harsh days were spent behind a mule and plow. When not in the field he attended an all-black school, in a town whose geographic boundaries were as segregated as its restaurants, stores and opportunities. He went to school so hungry that when he would smell food he would vomit bile as his stomach was empty. There was the black side of town and a white side of town. Its symbolism was just one more reminder that for my father, nothing was ever going to come easy.
While my father was born two generations away from slavery, he came to age under the harsh conditions of Jim Crow and a heavy KKK presence. His young adult life was also influenced by the height of many of the great civil rights leaders and those who fought for what was right, despite the dire and sometimes fatal consequences.
When my father left home and the age of 17 he began his adult life migrating from North Carolina to New York to New Jersey, working many jobs with the hope of a better life. During this time, he was serving in a newly integrated Army that was still smoldering with racism and disgust at the fire and momentum of the civil rights movement. His fierce value and loyalty for family meant he would drive the long drive every weekend from NJ to NC to gather the neighborhood kids and his siblings and take them back for the weekend to work and attend church. Even before he had kids of his own he was shaping the future of many children who were experiencing the brutal lashing of life dealt to them without hope for a future. One visit home to North Carolina my dad had brought home a white friend. They were forced to stay inside all day out of fear that the KKK would burn down the house if they knew a white person was socializing with a black person.
He spent many years working for a restaurant as a cook and then as an engineer before making his way out west with a skill set he worked so hard for, in hopes of continuing the forward movement of my family. My father and mother ended up having 11 children of their own and our family was built upon that same loyalty, camaraderie and love that has defined him for so many years. Growing up and even today our respite from the harsh realities of the world has been, family, food, music. Most importantly hearing the history and powerful stories of migration that shaped the immovable anchor of our love and strength as a family.
IN 1994 the oldest of my fathers’ siblings was shot and killed while driving his car down a freeway off ramp in New York City. This crime was never solved, and it haunts my family 25 years later at the thought that there was only one motive and that motive continues to play out with great frequency still today.
This constant struggle of poverty, racism, and the battle for equality that would not and has not ever ended, shaped the strong, loving, wise and fiercely loyal man that is my father. His entire life has been a struggle, but he has never stopped being the primary force that has carried his family on his back to a better life. Growing up around the table at Sunday dinners we were told stories of our history, while we enjoyed a meal cooked by my father. The food was always warm, tasteful and rich in culture. It warmed our stomachs and our hearts to know that we ate to our hearts content on the same foods prepared the same way for many generations. In my family food is love.
One of the many reasons why my father has been able to change his family’s destiny was simple: He grew up without a father and was never going to allow the same for his children. Some phrases to live by were that, “we did not know how lucky we had it”, and that we would never go hungry. My favorite being, “I will always love and be here for my kids no matter what”. Not once in my life has he let me down.
My dad, “Made a way out of no way”, so that I could make a way for myself that did not include as many barriers and uphill battles. So that I could focus knowing that my basic needs that he went without for most of his life would be met. Without the pain of hunger, longing for love, safety and a warm bed, I could rise.
My father’s hometown of Enfield North Carolina used to be a booming peanut farming town divide by railroad tracks into the white and black half of town. When segregation came into play it destroyed the town due to the white residents moving to areas that could still be divided by segregation. These areas were places that while not segregated by law, black people could not afford to live in. This was due to the long-lasting effects of a lifetime of racism and segregation that set the tone for the institutionalized racism that still exists today, preventing, opportunity, education, income potential and housing.
When I visit Enfield North Caroline it took my breath away to see what appears like a museum of struggle that time has forgotten. Many black people are still trapped in poverty that doesn’t allow them migration. The white side of town abandoned. When I visit the black cemetery it a powerful, motivational and sad reminder that for some their migration ended with the same sadness in which it began or failed to begin.
The graves are rotted out and many without caskets or headstones. Buried with only a vault covered over by a layer of concrete. In some graves they have caved in and filled with water to the point of seeing remains and one must tread cautiously fear of falling in. These residents were born into racism and poverty and were memorialized in the same fashion. Deemed not worthy or able to afford a decent burial or casket.
These migration stories combined with my fathers and my own are the reason I will continue the fight for equality, love and a different migration story for the next generation.
