I think I'd like to read a little bit--
I wrote a book called Generations,
which is a memoir of my father's family on this land.
My father when he was in his cups, and that was off and on,
he used to say to me, "Lucille, you are not the first Lucille.
The first Lucille was the first Black woman legally hanged
in the state of Virginia."
And I used to say, wow, all right.
And I didn't listen very much.
But before my father died, fortunately I
became wise enough to start listening to him
when he would tell the story of the ancestor who was called
Caroline, Mammy Caroline.
Born in 1822 among the Dahomey people,
kidnapped and brought to America in 1830,
walked from New Orleans to Virginia.
I used to tell my kids that--
they want bus fare to go around the corner.
And I'd say Caroline walked from New Orleans to Virginia
in 1830, and they'd remind me that it's now the '80s of 1900,
forget it.
And was sold to a man named Bob Donald.
So she was called Bob Donald's Caroline or Caroline Donald.
She worked in an orchard, and she was a midwife.
And there was also at that time a man
who was called Uncle Sam Lewis.
And he had been a Christmas present to the early family.
I always wondered did they have a bow around his neck?
Did they put stickers on them that said--
I don't know how they did that.
I'd like to see that.
And he was a Christmas present to the family.
And he had become a slave, too old to work.
And so he used to drive his master, who
was called by my father, old man John [INAUDIBLE],,
around in the carriage because he was also old
and he was blind.
Well, Uncle Sam Lewis driving by the orchard one day
saw Caroline Donald and asked that she
be bought for him for his wife.
Now what did he want with her, right?
Because he was too old to work, and they did not retire you
at good ages during those days.
However, she was bought for him, and they had seven children.
The first one was called Lucille.
And I have six, you know.
And Lucille, after the war between the states,
a man named Harvey Nichols--
I like to read this in Connecticut,
I often have because I'm devilish sometimes--
a man named Harvey Nichols came from Connecticut
with his family to Virginia to make money.
He was called a carpetbagger.
And it is alleged--
and now I have to say alleged because Black history is
usually alleged.
Everybody else's history happened.
Ours is just alleged.
And it is alleged that Lucy had a child by Harvey Nichols.
When the child was less than a year old,
she waited and she killed Harvey Nichols
and was tried and hanged.
The alleged child was called Jeannie.
His alleged child was my father, and I am truly
my father's daughter.
Anyway, this is a little section of that book.
The first part is in my father's language,
and then the later part is in my own language.
And what you want to remember is that the blood grandfather
is a white man from Connecticut named Harvey Nichols.
OK, here's my daddy.
"Yes Lord, he was born with a withered arm.
And when he was still just a baby,
Lucy waited by the crossroad one night for Harvey Nichols
to come to her.
And when he rolled up on a white horse,
she cocked up a rifle she had stole and shot him
off his horse and killed him, Lou.
And she didn't run away.
She didn't run away.
She waited right there by the body with the rifle in her hand
till the horse coming back empty saddle to the stable
brought a mob to see what had become of Harvey Nichols.
And when they got to the crossroad
they found Lucy standing there with the rifle in her hand,
and they didn't Lynch her, Lou, because she
was Mammy Caroline's child and from Dahomey women.
That's what I believe.
Mammy Caroline got one of the lawyers
[INAUDIBLE] family to defend her daughter
because they was all lawyers and preachers in that family.
They had a legal trial, and Lucy was found guilty and hanged.
Mammy Caroline took the baby boy Jeannie and raised
him and never let him forget who he was.
I used to ask her sometime, 'Mammy, was you scared back
then by Grandma Lucy?'
And she would look right at me and say,
'I'm scared for you, mister.
That's all.' She always called me mister.
She said I was Mr. Salle.
And Lou, I always was."
Later, I would ask my father for proof.
"Where are the records, Daddy?"
I would ask.
The time may not be right, and it might just
be a family legend or something.
"Somebody somewhere knows," he would say.
And I would be dissatisfied and fuss
with Fred about fact and proof and history
until he told me one day not to worry,
that even the lies are true.
In history, even the lies are true.
And there would be days when we young Salles
would be trying to dance and sing in the house,
and Sammy, my brother, would miss a step
and not be able to keep up to the music.
And neither one of us could ever learn how to dance.
And he would look over in the corner of the room and holler,
"Damn Harvey Nichols," and we would laugh.
[APPLAUSE]
We always blamed him for our lack of rhythm in my family.
You shouldn't have.
Well, it was his fault.