CROSSING THE BOUNDARIES TO DRAW ANCESTRAL LINES
CROSSING THE BOUNDARIES TO DRAW ANCESTRAL LINES
BY STRESSLA LYNN JOHNSON
RESHAPING THE BOUNDARIES
At sixty-six, I no longer have elders to tell the family stories. When I think about an ancestor, the first person who comes to mind is Jo Berta Jones (1907–1976) — my grandmother and baker of the world’s best moist two-layer chocolate cake, with coconut shreds in the frosting. Each year on my birthday, I knew when I walked into Gramma’s house there would be the lingering aroma of a freshly baked cake. She would have my cake sitting under the glass cover of the cake-stand platter, shaped like a pedestal. When I think back, Gramma put a lot of effort into my cakes.
It would have been a relatively short walk to Gramma’s house, except she lived outside my range of travel. Her house was on NE Garfield and NE Failing in Portland, Oregon. For me to get to her house, I would have to cross N Vancouver, NE Skidmore, and NE Shaver, all high-traffic, or busy streets, as they were called. Clara Mae, my mother, had imposed physical travel restrictions on me, based solely on my age. These were not fictional or imaginary boundaries; they were real and served a purpose.
From five to nine years old, I lived in the 400 block of North Blandena, between Haight and Commercial; however, my designated range of travel stopped at N Albina, N Killingsworth, N Vancouver, and N Skidmore. If you are not from Portland these street names have no meaning — this was the center of the African American neighborhood, the Albina District. Invisible boundaries that the city government and private entities had designated sat over the top of my neighborhood. In 1962, when I was five years old, the Albina District was “targeted” for disinvestments and devalorization.
High unemployment, poor schooling, and an underground economy that evolved into crack, cocaine, gangs and crime ... some neighborhood activists argued that the redlining, predatory lending, and housing speculation were worse threats to community viability ... Portland is an exemplar of an urban real estate phenomenon impacting Black communities across the nation.
“Bleeding Albina: A Community History of Disinvestment, 1940–2000,” Karen J. Gibson
This so-called urban renewal and development was setting the boundaries of what became fertile ground for gentrification.
My boundaries changed when I turned ten in 1967. I now had new borders: NE Killingsworth to the north; NE Union (now Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard) to the east, NE Failing to the south, and the I-5 freeway to the west. My travel would have included Gramma’s house, but she moved. It would be a few more years until I was free to travel to Gramma’s house alone.
While I was young and adventurous, it never crossed my mind to violate these boundaries. I knew there was no way to go beyond my designated borders without being detected or even detained by an adult. I grew up in a time when every adult in the neighborhood knew what child belonged to what family. If I was to cross N Vancouver at five years old, I knew that inside the second house from the corner on N Going (with its long narrow driveway and little brick wall that wrapped around the lawn) was an adult who knew my mother. If she saw me, there would be an inquiry about why I was walking by her house unescorted.
There would have been several houses for me to go by (en route to Gramma’s house) filled with watchful adult eyes — they would certainly have detained me to find out what I was doing on this side of N Vancouver! And it would unquestionably lead to a phone call to my mother. The names of adults along this route have long been removed from memory by my many birthdays past; however, back then I knew each one of them by their proper name: “Hello, Mr. So-and-So.”
“Hello, Mrs. So-and-So.”
While these boundaries served multiple purposes, the main one was safety. My mother did not want me crossing the busy streets alone. The risk of being struck by a car was real. The boundaries seemed to be a community-based thing, because my friends’ movements were also restricted by age. It was more like a neighborhood/community meme.
I have many fond memories of my grandmother. She was a major figure during my childhood. Even with my travel restrictions, there were a lot of trips to Gramma’s house as I tagged along with my older brothers, aunts, and uncles. Oh, and there was always my annual birthday trip and that two-layer chocolate cake. I think I was her favorite grandchild — at least that’s how I felt growing up.
At times, I overheard the grown-ups talk about “back home.” Back home meaning Little Rock, Pine Bluff, and Fordyce, Arkansas. However, during these reflective times, children did not, could not, would not be involved in adult conversations. I don't recall ever talking to Gramma about her mother and father. Quite frankly, I don’t recall hearing my mother talk about her grandparents.
EDUCATION: SELF-CREATED BOUNDARIES
I recently completed an Introduction to Black Studies course offered by Portland State University (PSU) through Uhuru Sasa — the African American Culture Club at Oregon State Penitentiary. This experience required me to cross a kind of self-made boundary. I have resisted taking college classes during my incarceration. This resistance was born out of my personal experience with the education system and American academia. I remember being in elementary and middle school and the strong feeling that I was out of place.
Thanks to my mother (who was very adamant about the importance of education), I started school with my math and reading levels higher than most of the other students. The school had me skip first grade and start instead in second. I was six, and my classmates were seven. It did not take long for me to lose interest in what they were teaching. Of course, not being challenged academically led to boredom, which was mislabeled as a behavioral problem. This was standard operating procedure for most African American children in the Portland K-12 grade school system. It felt like there were no benefits for me in the lessons that were taught. I am not diametrically opposed to education, but there was no point of interest for me. The rigged educational system was designed to ignore my ancestry and Black history. Limiting what was taught was a boundary — a boundary to keep me in a designated educational box.
As a voracious reader, I have crossed my educational boundary through books. Honoring my mother’s insistence on education, I have used my prison sentence to educate myself and heal. I’ve read several books that allowed me to cross some of my internal boundaries — boundaries that were preventing me from understanding the bridges and pathways between that five-year-old Stressla and the forty-something-year-old Stressla. A few of my favorite books include: The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley; The Souls of Black Folk, W. E. B. Du Bois; Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl; Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma, Peter A. Levine; and The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk. I also discovered the importance of personal journaling as a means for healing. Journaling became a major part of my wellness routine. It allowed me to start taking personal internal inventories and honest self-appraisals that aided in my healing process. Through journaling, I was able to visibly see the effects of some of my developmental childhood traumas and understand some of the mental and psychological boundaries I had created.
My self-education laid the foundation for me to crossover into the collegiate arena. Our first week’s reading in the Uhuru/PSU Black Studies class contained a detailed timeline charting the beginning of human life on this rock we collectively call Earth. The timeline was quite remarkable and gave me a new perspective into several areas of my knowledge base. It charted major events in Africa across millennia, and uncovered some of the rich history that evolved:
53 million BC | The first hominids, known as australopithecines or “Ape-Men” lived in East and Southern Africa.
3–1.5 million BC | Early stone age, emergence of Homo habilis, “the toolmaker.”
1.75–1 million BC | Evolution of Homo erectus, who used hand axes and shaped stone scrapers.
1 million–40,000 BC | The Middle Stone Age saw the evolution of an early form of Homosapiens or modern man.
40,000–10,000 BC | The Later Stone Age, the rise of Homo sapiens, development of the bow and arrow, rock painting, the emergence of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
from The Story of Africa, BBC World Service
The boundaries and borders came much later. Human beings began to separate themselves from one another and create invisible lines as territorial borders. There is a lot of data about the beginning of human life on this planet, starting on the African continent, but this piece is not about the history of Africa; the colonization of Africa; or any of the other great stories about Africa’s rich history. This is about my ancestors.
WHAT’S IN THE SOUP & TWEAKING THE PARADIGM
With all this new technology and science for tracing, tracking the origins of human DNA, my ideas and thoughts about ancestry have expanded. There are some scientific empirical facts: All human beings have their nascence in Africa. Archaeologists have documented the specific finds on the African continent.*
A few years ago, my DNA was put into the Ancestry.com datasets. Their process is based on a probability model that produces estimates about ethnicity. This data is used to create geographical locations of DNA’s migration. I have a limited understanding as to just how this probability system works; however, according to Ancestry.com, my ethnicity estimate (EE) reads like this:
Nigeria 35%
Cameroon Congo Western Bantu People 28%
Benin & Tonga 9%
Mali 9%
England & Northwestern Europe 8%
Wales 2%
Ivory Coast & Ghana 2%
Senegal 2%
Southern Bantu Peoples 2%
Ireland 1%
Norway 1%
Indigenous Americans, Yucatan Peninsula 1%
I look at these African geographical locations with the knowledge that these names are not their original names; outside forces, invaders, and colonizers drew these invisible boundaries and assigned names to them.
This seems to be a really widespread ancestral footprint. In fact, based on the EE and the timeline data, I may have to tweak my paradigm on ancestry. I have a set of concepts, assumptions, values, and practices that constitute a way of viewing the reality of the shared African American experience. Of course, I am not suggesting a major paradigm shift for me. It is more rooted in how the discussion of ancestors, heritage, colonization, and the telling of history may require some new language, or different expressions.
When I look at this list of countries showing the migration of my DNA, I wonder what took place for the boundaries to be crossed. Unlike N Vancouver, which kept a five-year-old adventurous child in check, my ancestors were not confined by borders, invisible territorial lines, or even vast ocean boundaries. Which one of my adventurous traits stems from their explorations?
DNA is remarkable. When I look at an atlas, I see boundaries in the form of borders. These countries are not neighborhoods. DNA was not restricted to boundaries or borders. Or was it? Am I to think that my African ancestors were welcomed in England and northern Europe? And what about Ireland and Wales? However, I have no way to travel back to discover what my ancestors did, with whom. My African ancestors in America will not appear in the ledgers at Ellis Island. The historical records of their arrival in America would be logged as cargo and property. There are no names of my African ancestors, only the name of the individual who purchased them. I wonder which one of my ancestors made it to Wales, England, Ireland, etc. What did they look like? What does it mean when we say: Our ancestors done this or they done that? Am I only referring to my African ancestors, or does it extend to the 8 percent, 2 percent, and 1 percent of my ancestry identified by my DNA?
Up until April 8, 2022, my idea of ancestry was exclusively my African identity. I don’t have to change any paradigm in that area. The paradigm tweaks came in how to have meaningful conversations about race, history, colonization, and ancestry. The English language is rich with words and definitions to give meaning and context to the important issues. However, ancestry is an individual and family matter, that has its own language and meaning. My ancestors belong to the universe, in a real sense of how I am cosmically connected to the human family. When I’m looking at this EE, I think about how this 35 percent Nigerian translates into personality, character, dance, intelligence, and cosmic balance? And what of the 28 percent Cameroon Congo Western Bantu? Knowing the vast expanse of the
African continent, I wonder if the five- to nine-year old boys had mother-imposed boundaries. This river to that grove of trees. That hill to that ravine. Instead of chocolate cake, what was that grandma’s gift to her favorite grandson?
THE FREEDOM TO WRITE
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.
– John F. Kennedy
Throughout my writing life, writing has been an active, breathing form of freedom for me. There is a necessary time and place to be vulnerable and venture into new expressions for sharing my thoughts. I have challenged myself to enroll in the Uhuru/PSU course to cross the mental and psychological boundary I constructed in my head around academia. Writing something more than a poem or short piece forces me to cross another self-created boundary — to be academically adventurous. Borders are useful to create the space to express and convey meaning, so for this piece, I have cautiously subjected my thoughts, feelings, and ideas to a more regimented form.
Writing an essay about my ancestors provided me with the opportunity to think about how they sacrificed the comforts of being left alone to live their lives in order to set boundaries and encourage resistance to inequality and injustice. My ancestors were in a perpetual battle for freedom, liberty, and equality, while being subjected to boundaries that were created by laws, policies, and practice. Invisible barriers that played to the ideologies of segregation de jure.
As I conclude, I am reminded of the words written in 1925 by my historical ancestor Marcus Mosiah Garvey (1880–1940) as he sat in federal prison in Atlanta:
After my enemies are satisfied, in life or death I shall come back to you to serve even as have served before ... in death I shall be a terror to the foes of Negro liberty. If death has power, then count on me in death to be the real Marcus Garvey I would like to be ... If I die in Atlanta my work shall ... live in the physical or spiritual to see the day of Africa’s glory ... Look for me in the whirlwind or the storm, look for me all around you ... I shall come and bring with me the countless millions of black slaves who have died in America and the West Indies and the millions in Africa to aid you in the fight for Liberty, Freedom, and Life ... Again, I say cheer up, for better days are ahead. I shall write the history that will inspire the millions that are coming.
Afrikan-Centered Consciousness Versus the New World Order, Amos N. Wilson
I like to think that our ancestors knew and understood that their graves would not become tombs, that they would only serve as resting places until called into service by the cosmic prayer of their descendants, crossing the boundaries of time. | SLJ
AUTHOR’S NOTE:
The finds that archaeologists have documented on the African continent include
1925 | discovery of Australopithecus (Ape-Man), Taung, South Africa
1960 | Homo habilis, Lake Turkana, Kenya
1974 | semi-complete skeleton “Luck,” Omo Valley, Ethiopia
1975 | thirteen Australopithecus remains found in Hadar, Ethiopia
1976 | Australopithecus footprint found in Laetoli, Tanzania
1984 | almost-complete fossilized Homo erectus skeleton, Lake Turkana, Kenya
1997 | discovery of Australopithecus, Sterkfontein, South Africa.
STRESSLA LYNN JOHNSON WAS BORN APRIL 9, 1957 IN PORTLAND, OREGON. HE HAS WRITTEN POEMS AND JOURNAL ENTRIES AS MEANS OF HEALING. THIS ESSAY WAS AN EXTENSION OF THIS PROCESS.