Category: georgia
Quotes of Category: georgia
The fear had precedent. Toward the end of the Civil War, having witnessed the effectiveness of the Union's 'colored troops,' a flailing Confederacy began considering an attempt to recruit blacks into its army. But in the nineteenth century, the idea of the soldier was heavily entwined with the notion of masculinity and citizenship. How could an army constituted to defend slavery, with all of its assumptions about black inferiority, turn around and declare that blacks were worthy of being invited into Confederate ranks? As it happened, they could not. 'The day you make a soldier of them is the beginning of the end of our revolution,' observed Georgia politician Howell Cobb. 'And if slaves seem good soldiers, then our whole theory of slavery is wrong.' There could be no win for white supremacy here. If blacks proved to be the cowards that 'the whole theory of slavery' painted them as, the battle would be lost. But much worse, should they fight effectively--and prove themselves capable of 'good Negro government'--then the larger war could never be won. book-quotewarwhite-supremacygeorgiaWhere's Shelley?" I ask, scanning the room."Playing checkers, as usual," Georgia says, pointing to the corner. Shelley isn't facing me, but I recognize the back of her head and her wheelchair.She's squealing, a hint that she won the game.As I get closer to her, I catch a glimpse of who's playing against her. The dark hair should have been a clue that my life is about to be turned upside down, but it doesn't fully register. I freeze.It can't be. My imagination must be going berserk.But when he turns around and those familiar dark eyes pierce mine, reality zings up my spine like a lightning bolt.Alex is here. Ten steps away from me. Oh, God, every feeling I've ever had for him comes rushing back like a tidal wave. I don't know what to do or say. I turn back to Georgia, wondering if she knew Alex was here. One look at her hopeful face tells me she did. book-quotegeorgiabrittany-elliswonGrowing up in Fitzgerald, I lived in an intense microcosm, where your neighbor knows what you're going to do even before you do, where you can recognize a family gene pool by the lift of an eyebrow, or the length of a neck, or a way of walking. What is said, what is left to the imagination, what is denied, withheld, exaggerated-all these secretive, inverted things informed my childhood. Writing the stories that I found in the box, I remember being particularly fascinated by secrets kept in order to protect someone from who you are. That protection, sharpest knife in the drawer, I absorbed as naturally as a southern accent. At that time, I was curious to hold up to the light glimpses of the family that I had so efficiently fled. We were remote-back behind nowhere-when I was growing up, but even so, enormous social change was about to crumble foundations. Who were we, way far South? "We're south of everywhere," my mother used to lament. book-quotefrances-mayessouthernersgeorgia
