I was recently laying awake thinking of my unlikely journey to where I now sit. I started this self indulgent trip down memory lane thinking about my great grandfather, Papa Brown, who was born in Mississippi in 1864 the son of a former slaveholding white planter and a slave mother. Family legend has it that Papa Brown left Mississippi to come to Arkansas in the 1890s under some duress after having a fist fight with his white half brother. In Arkansas he married a Choctaw Indian woman who Papa Brown called Sweet Georgia Brown. Papa Brown and Georgia had 20 children. You can see why they called him Papa. One of their daughters, Mattie Christine Oma Katie Lee Barbara Brown (yes that is one person, you would think that with so many children the names would be short and sweet) married Silas Davis. Silas was a preacher and a farmer in a town called Tilla, today population 247, where my mother was born. By 1940, Silas and Mattie with my mother had moved to the big city, Pine Bluff. My mother and father met at what was then called Arkansas AM&N where they married while still in school and in their late teens. I was the second son, born in Pine Bluff in 1954. We all have phenomenal stories of overcoming incredible odds to get where we are today. Those rich histories have helped to shape us, our way of thinking and even how we look. Even today my mother calls me Papa Brown for my iconoclastic views on things that apparently are strangely similar to the thoughts and beliefs of someone who lived 150 years ago. As I stopped this historical bit of entertainment, I concluded that whatever struggles I face, and probably this is true for you as well, they are miniscule compared to the struggles of generations past. So suck it up and get it done.
March 1, 2010
