The Wall Street Journal has a fascinating story about “the black McCains,” namely the descendants of slaves owned by the McCain family, which has apparently been quite wealthy for a very long time. It’s interesting to look at the vastly different trajectories of the two branches of the McCain family. While the white side stayed wealthy and grew into a tradition of military service, the black side of the family was initially forced back into sharecropping pseudo-slavery, and was extremely active during the civil rights movement. They integrated schools, fought in wars, and sheltered civil rights activists in their homes.
The usual controversy about a biological link between slaveholder and slave remains with the white McCains saying they are unaware of any blood relation. I have a great deal of trust in the oral history of black families who remember these things. These families have little to gain from passing down these stories, while the descendants of slavemasters have every reason to obscure the ugly history of forced rape during slavery.
Mostly, however, stories like this are a reminder of how, despite vast institutional and cultural efforts to the contrary, black and white in America are inextricably, sometimes tragically linked. The damage done by those who would try to deny, obscure, or sever these ties is essentially the story of race in this country.
The article ends with this moving scene:
When George McCain was killed in a traffic accident in 2003, Frank Bryant, the aged former sharecropper, invited to the funeral Bill McCain, the senator’s cousin, who owns the remaining 1,500 acres of Teoc plantation and lives nearby. It was the beginning of a modern dialogue between the two families as equals. At the service, Mr. McCain stood in the family section with the black McCains.
Now that’s a beautiful thing.
–A. Serwer
