Yesterday, while walking across UDC’s Dennard Plaza to get to a writing class in the College of Arts and Sciences building, I stopped to answer a call from my sister, a retired school teacher. She had just read something she said I had to read later for a good laugh, an article about the hilarious answers students have given to test questions. She read a few to me. They were really funny, some intentionally so, others given in complete innocence. One made me consider the ubiquity of irony. To the question, “Imagine that you lived at the same time as Abraham Lincoln. What would you say to him or ask him?”, the student wrote, “I’d tell him not to go to a play ever.” The irony was that the professor whose class I was on my way to when I stopped and listened to that story has been bringing Ford’s Theater to UDC and is doing so again in four days.
The theaters in and around Washington, DC partner with local high schools and universities to provide and promote education in the theater arts (Woolly Mammoth with Howard University, Arena Stage with Georgetown University, etc.). Dr. La Tanya Rogers, a professor of English at UDC who is the former national vice president of the Black Theater Network, is the university’s go-to person for Ford’s Theater. She has been working with that theater’s arts education coordinator, Jennie Eng, to foster students’ interests and develop their creativity and skills. A couple of months ago, the two held an open workshop on campus to do just that.
I did not attend. I thought I had escaped that exercise, but a few weeks ago, Dr. Rogers made the writing of a monologue an assignment for the students in her class. Only later did we learn Ms. Eng would be returning to campus and attending our class to listen to the monologues being read and to give feedback. That turned out to be an emotional experience for some students who had poured so much of themselves into their work. Some found it difficult to continue reading through their tears. My classmates had written impressive pieces, quite moving, and had left me wondering if mine was any good. I had gone in a different direction, had not placed myself in the work, and Ms. Eng had said early on that such work minus the self cannot be good.
Eliza Speaks
“Momma been prayin’ a lot, Pastor Anderson, prayin’ more than she always do. I can hear her when she think me and Lizzie are ’sleep, askin’ the Lord to save her two girls, save us and Daddy, but she don’t never say nothin’ ’bout savin’ her, too, so I always make sure to ask Him to save all ‘a us – if it’s not too much to ask. The Good Book says it’s not.
“Lord knows we need His help. We need that and the other kind ‘a help her and Daddy been askin’ for, too. If the Lord got his hand in that – and why wouldn’t he – then I wish everything wouldn’t keep goin’ back and forth the way it’s been. One day we saved, the next day we ain’t. Momma say the same thing you say, Pastor, that we got to have faith, but she say that now we got to have faith in God and the gov’ment, too. She say the law is on our side, just like that last judge said it is, and that them Missouri Supreme Court judges is ’spose to set things straight. But I can tell the back-and-forth been botherin’ her, too, just like Daddy.
“All Lizzie know is things ain’t right yet, thing’s ain’t finished, but Momma and Daddy keep on tellin’ her they will be. But you know Lizzie still a girl, Pastor, just seven, so they don’t see no need to worry her ’bout this. Momma talks to me about some of it, though, and Daddy do too, sometimes. I guess they finally gettin’ to see I ain’t a girl no more. Momma told me I was born in the year of 1838, so that mean I’m almost fifteen. She like tellin’ me ’bout how I came into this world, ’bout how her and Daddy was on the river Mississippi on a steamboat named Gipsy, and ’bout how I refused to wait ’til that boat docked. That was back when they was still with Dr. Emerson, back before he died and the Widow Emerson went back to live on her daddy’s plantation while she hired Momma and Daddy out and collected their wages. Momma say when they was on that boat goin’ down the Mississippi they was passin’ by a free state on one side and a free territory on the other. ‘Which mean you was born free, Eliza,’ she always like to say. What I wanna know, Pastor, is why — if I was born free and they was already livin’ in the free land – then why they got to keep tryin’ to convince judges that we ’spose to be free? Now, every night, I hear Momma tryin’ to convince God of that, too. She be remindin’ him that even the Hebrew children got free.
“Momma do more than ask God to do somp’n, though. She said you was the one who told her ’bout how some slaves was going to court to get free ’cause slavery ’spose to be ’gainst the law in the free territory. She the one who got Daddy goin’. I remember when she first started talkin’ to him ’bout it. Daddy already had tried to do right and buy us from the Widow Emerson, but the Widow said no, so Momma said they had to do what white folk would do: sue. Daddy watn’t so sure ’bout the idea at first, said he didn’t see the gov’ment doin’ but so much for us in the first place and it could be just a waste ‘a time and might cause trouble just to ask. I knew Momma didn’t like hearin’ that ’cause she called him by his whole name, ‘Etheldred’, instead of just ‘Dred’ like she always do. She said, ‘Just how much trouble you think these girls and me is worth, Etheldred? How much trouble you think you worth?’ ‘Just let me think on it, Harriet,’ he would say. Watn’t too much of that or too long after that when her and Daddy started talkin’ to the lawyers ’bout going to court. But everything been back and forth, Pastor. One time we slaves, the next time we free. Now, ’cause the Widow is suin’ this time, we got to wait and see what them Missouri Supreme Court judges decide we are. Momma said if they go against us, there is nine more judges in Washington who get the last say-so. I wonder if they ever read that part of the Good Book in Matthew, 7th chapter, 2nd verse where it says, ‘For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged…’ They must ’a had, don’t you think so, Pastor? What good Christian man who can read ain’t read that? And Momma did say to have faith — same as you say.
“But, you know what I don’t understand, Pastor? Last Sunday after church, folk was comin’ up to just Daddy, like Momma ain’t even had nothin’ to with it, and was tellin’ him how they was all prayin’ for him and prayin’ that those who got to decide things won’t just see what’s right but will do what’s right. Some said they thank God for men like him. I don’t think that was right to leave Momma out of it like that, but she didn’t say a word. She just smiled.”
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