Grandmother was a racist

The more genealogical research I do, the more I have come to realize just how dysfunctional my family was. I say was, due to the fact that my mother married late, had me late (she was 37 when I was born) and I've outlived every close relative.

Take, for example, my grandmother. That's my mother's mother or, more accurately, my maternal grandmother on my mother's side. She was born in 1874 in Arkansas. Her father died when she was nine months old. I know very little about my great-grandfather aside from the fact the he died at the age of 38 and was very good looking. That I can say due to having a photograph of him that was taken in 1874 or maybe a year or two earlier. He was, of course, a farmer. The day he died, they were packing a covered wagon in preparation for traveling to Indian Territory (later to be known as Oklahoma) where they were going to prove up a claim for a section of land (640 acres).

They never made it because my great-grandfather walked down to the garden, pulled up a turnip, peeled it with his knife, started eating it...and then dropped dead from acute indigestion. It was acute alright. Obviously, he had a massive coronary. Considering the fact that everything was fried in lard that was rendered from hogs and bears, plus churned butter that was so yellow you could've used it for a traffic light, I'd have sure hated to have seen what his cholesterol level was!

Interestingly, my great-grandmother (who was at least half Irish) never remarried and didn't die until 28 years later in 1903. Definitely unusual for that time period. More often than not, a woman with children (especially when she had a 9-month-old infant to care for) would be remarried within a few months or a year at the most.

Anyway, my grandmother wound up marrying a man (my grandfather) who was a weird combination of abusive, tenderhearted, tough, a womanizer and an episodic alcoholic. She eventually threw him out and she, my mother, one other daughter and one of my uncles wound up in Memphis, Tennessee in 1922. From the stories I've heard, my grandmother never liked blacks and had the typical attitude of so many that blacks were beneath her and needed to stay in their place. It was fine for them to be servants, but that was as far as it went. As for marrying a black (or out of your race), that was totally unacceptable. It also didn't help matters that she couldn't or wouldn't differentiate between ethnicities and races. As I'm sure you know, there are only three races on this planet, but there are as many ethnicities as there are nations. Essentially, ethnicity and nationality are synonymous.

At any rate, in 1940 my mother married a full-blood Italian who was actually born in southern Italy. Didn't look it and in fact had an appearance more along the lines of a high-born Spaniard. Well, in 1942, when my mother learned she was expecting me, she told her mother. Was my grandmother happy? Not hardly. According to the story my mother told, my grandmother basically considered my mother to be no better than a bitch dog that would whelp puppies in the back yard. Oh, yeah, my grandmother didn't believe in having a dog in the house or taking the animal with you when you moved, either.

My grandmother lived with us, out of necessity, until she died when I was ten years old. To the day she died, she did not like my father (even though he wore himself out being nice to her). His own mother died when he was 18 years old and he would've carried my grandmother around on a satin pillow if she had let him. Any gifts he made for her (he was very creative) were simply put away and never seen again. As far as her relationship with me, we were never close. My only memory of her is a bitter old woman who existed simply to take care of me and tell me what to do...or not do. In the last few years, I've finally figured out that she considered my father to be of a different race (apparently didn't understand that Italians belong to the Caucasian/White race) and I was just that poor little mixed race child that she had to care for. In other words, the cross she had to bear. As far as I know, my mother was the only one in her entire family (and she had six brothers and sisters) who wasn't a racist or bigot. How she managed that I'll never know.

That's probably enough for now. If you want to know about how twisted some families can be, and how you can rise above it if you're willing to learn about the ugliness, stick around. There's more to come.