Her shabby cabin dwelling had been her home for most of her life. Dirt floors, windowless walls and a stony fireplace shaped this one-room domicile. A chilly spring rain pattered a staccato rhythm on the tin roof above. Her black eyes etched in ebony displayed life’s difficulties within the wrinkles of this withered face. She had cooked, cleaned, washed and nursed both white and black children. In the dark, never really experiencing freedom, this saintly soul sat on her tattered bed softly singing an old spiritual that lifted the cool, damp air: Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen, nobody knows but Jesus, sing glory Hallelu!
Lost in the moment, her husband strummed his banjo along quietly, note for note, as she sang. He, too, was continuously haunted by the nightmares from his past, hounds on his trail and threats of beatings. Then there was the memory of being packed so tightly into a bale of cotton that the space his body occupied was scarcely three inches thick. For now, after the war, his pain and mental anguish was only released in singing and playing songs. Their musical cry as slaves had been a great gift, a creative expression to heal the pain and share the story to their young of persisting through the years after the Civil War.
Embedded in our rich musical heritage are tunes that have weathered hard times. It seems that no matter what happens, mankind has always found a way to escape hardship through song. These musical hallmarks, with their uncanny harmonies, are tunes that seem to originate from a single source and have been perfectly blended down through the decades into modern styles, a precursor to blues and jazz.
Before the war, slave songs could be heard as “field hollers,” which were sung by a single voice with rhythmic clapping and stomping. Many of the first blues may have originated from a single word or phrase repeated again and again. Early blues singers often would moan, shout and slide from one pitch to another, emulating the field hollers. This technique is called melisma. This was popularized in the 20th century by Huddie Ledbetter, better known as “Lead Belly.” In his day, Lead Belly learned every early kind of African-American music that existed from these times and brought them into the 20th century as “race music” (so dubbed by the then-segregated music industry).
During Reconstruction, transition from slavery to freedom was as extraordinary as it was complex. Newly freed slaves experienced boundless joy as well as excruciating disappointment while establishing their lives as free persons. Freed slaves frequently encountered violent resistance to their efforts to become paid workers and active citizens. Most whites refused to accept former slaves as free. Through the immediate postwar period, mobs attacked public and community gatherings in several Tennessee communities with the formation of the Ku Klux Klan, which had a strong organization here in Murfreesboro. In late February of 1868, a riot developed at the courthouse as a disorderly crowd became inflamed. Some fired pistols, and bricks were thrown. After order had been restored, one former slave had been killed.
Murfreesboro had enjoyed a time of prosperity before the Civil War, all sustained economically by slavery. As a result, the social and economic readjustments after the war were slow and painful. According a written account in 1864, the region was riddled with damage:
Let this point (Murfreesboro) be the center and then make a circumference of 30 miles . . . it is the womb of destruction. Whether you go on to the Salem, the Shelbyville, the Manchester, or any other pike for a distance of 30 miles, what do we behold? One wide, wild and dreary waste so to speak. The fences are down: the apple, the pear, the plum trees burned in ashes long ago. The torch applied to thousands of splendid mansions the walls of which alone remain.
At the end of 1869, the riots and disorders gradually subsided. Many had envisioned a rapid economic development characterized by an expansion of manufacturing here in Rutherford County. Most companies who organized only operated for a short time. The poverty and destitution would continue well into the 20th century.
Both whites and blacks had to deal with the complexity and difficulty of Reconstruction times. My own great-great-grandparents had prospered during the war as horse traders for both the North and the South, assuming no allegiance to either side. After the war, they were considered enemies of both sides. With that, the family home and barn were torched, and they had to begin again and struggle in deprivation.
The Thirteenth Amendment prohibited involuntary servitude, but for both blacks and whites sharecropping or “peonage” continued in the Southern states until the 1960s. This system allowed for the leasing of land and supplies to pay off debts. Many former slaves and poor whites contracted with landowners and were compensated by receiving wages or a share of the crop. Sometimes they would be furnished with housing, food, firewood, clothing and occasional medical care. For former slaves, these compensations were often unfair and worsened with the legalized segregation of the “Jim Crow Laws.”
About 40 percent of all blacks in the South were imprisoned in peonage at the turn of the 20th century, enduring severe poverty, beatings and other abuses as discipline against the worker. Many continued to fight for freedom from this mistreatment believing for a better day for their children and grandchildren. So many poor blacks and whites who suffered continued to lay foundations by nurturing community institutions—family, schools and church life. The transition from slavery to freedom was more of a cruel continuing journey, an event that was claimed during the Civil War, worked out during Reconstruction, and continued more completely 100 years later during the Civil Rights movement.
One of the first superstars of the Grand Ole Opry, Uncle Dave Macon, was one of the first white entertainers who blended both African-American musical styles and white rural folk songs of the 19th century and popularized them. Early string band music was the white man’s way of interpreting their hard times creatively. Frequently, these songs would have somber themes with lively, syncopated rhythms. These farm families and tenants would spend delightful evenings dancing on the wooden floors of their clapboard shanties or periodically gathering the community together for a barn dance. Some Southerners, even slave owners themselves, did not want to lose the slave music and cooperated by preserving and adapting the melodies and styles. These laments, work songs, and spirituals evolved into a well-spring of mainstream music during the 20th century as blues, jazz, rock ’n’ roll and early country. Some of these styles evolved and were experienced right here in Rutherford County after the Civil War.
Uncle Dave Macon, a Rutherford County native, was the son of a former Confederate officer. As a teenager, his family moved to Nashville and operated the old Broadway hotel. The hotel catered to vaudeville and circus performers coming through Nashville. In 1885, at 15, Dave got his first banjo and began emulating the powerful performing styles of the itinerant black minstrels. Macon had been exposed and absorbed in 19th century rural slave music, which would influence his performing styles for decades. Also known as the “Dixie Dew Drop,” Uncle Dave was a legendary performer who played his banjo with political conviction and commentary. His comedic style and dexterity followed the slaves he had watched on the banks of the Cumberland as a teen during Reconstruction. Once he commented before playing his infamous song, “Farm Relief” that the government’s new farm relief program is going very well . . . “The farmer is being relieved of everything he has!” With great zest and zeal, he would commence to laughing and playing his tune, swinging his banjo into the air strumming with one motion and then shrieking, “Hot dog!”
What links one generation to another? Is it all of mankind’s senseless acts of rebellion and destruction, the sharp line between believing and unbelieving? There’s no doubt that history can be a great teacher. We do not have to get stuck in well-worn paradigms. We can learn from the mistakes of our past and have a better future.
Perhaps it is the legacy of faith that links one generation to another. Only when we are at the end of our self-sufficient, self-determined ways will we receive by faith the promise—grace, mercy and forgiveness. All along, this has been the answer for past, present and future generations. Well, then how do we get past the negative barriers of pride, fear, guilt, worry and doubt, those obstructions that keep us from being all we can be? Regardless of the time in history in which we live, it seems that all of us have a sense of right and wrong. However, this does not mean that we will always choose right. Turning to God, the beginning of making right choices requires a decision. Apparently regardless of the era, common to all of humanity is the coming to a decision we will make about God. The difficulty is that decision involves our turning over our lives and our will over to God’s care. To procrastinate and not make a decision is a choice. In other words, one decides not to decide.
We might possibly look back into our history with a different perspective: to discover what we have in common with others in another time. This venture may give us clues as to why we have become who we are in this age. Looking to glean knowledge from a historical viewpoint may be the vanguard to the freedom we seek in this generation. Whoever does not seek to understand the past is doomed to repeat it!
Anything hidden has power over us, so perhaps buried in our pasts are wounds from individuals that unknowingly transferred their pain from one generation to the next. Buried within all of us is a desire for the meaning of life. In the process of navigating through life’s maze, it is easy to lose our way. The pressure of being human and living life, including all the demands that are placed on us, keeps us from a simple truth which transcends time and space, “The meaning of life and submission to God are one and the same.”
Could it be that we have the same troubling issues with those in our past facing us today? Could it be that we have extended the pain into one generation after the other without the healing of broken relationships? Is it possible that inherent to all humans is an eventual “crisis of belief,” that place of intense doubt and internal conflict about one’s preconceived beliefs or life decisions? Can we identify with their sense of powerlessness, their inability to control their tendency to do the wrong thing? Might it be that in order to redeem our past we must realize that hope is found outside ourselves? Could our need for God, His mercy and forgiveness be the common denominator linking all of humanity throughout the generations? Could it be that we need to complete the Reconstruction process to restore and experience true freedom from our past, a better life in the present, and a healthier future for the generations to come? As we actively seek change in our lives, we will share in God’s nature, receive new thoughts, and formulate new behavior patterns. It’s never too late to make a fresh start and begin again!
Uncle Dave Macon playing his music:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tFetm5mTQA&list=RD7tFetm5mTQA
Also, this song, “Hard Times,” written in 1854 by Stephen Foster, became the anthem during Reconstruction. The version linked below, sung by Mavis Staples, is moving as well as appropriate for today!
