A month before the Selma marches in 1965, Jimmie Lee Jackson lay in a bed at the Good Samaritan Hospital in Selma, Ala. It was the only medical facility in the city that treated Black patients.
Earlier in the day, Jackson was shot by a white state trooper while picking up his family members from a voting rights march. After multiple surgeries and several days in the hospital, he died. Martin Luther King Jr. would later eulogize Jackson at his funeral service.
“While (Jackson’s) death was the principal reason behind Bloody Sunday, Turnaround Tuesday, and the final Selma-to-Montgomery march, most people do not even know his story, let alone his name,” writes Clyde W. Ford in his new book “A High Price for Freedom: Raising Hidden Voices from the African American Past” (out now from Amistad).
Ford, a Bellingham-based historian and director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Library Publishing Project at HarperCollins, unearths hidden stories from African American history like Jackson’s in “A High Price for Freedom.” The essays cover hundreds of years and explore things like Black women’s true roles in revolts aboard salve ships, early advancements in health care and the shared musical traditions of the African diaspora in America.
Ford spoke with The Seattle Times about the book’s inspirations, particular stories of African American history he uncovered and reflections on truth and myth within the field. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Can you talk about the origin story of this particular project and why this came about now for you?
In writing my previous book, “Of Blood and Sweat,” I wish I had the space to expand or delve deeper into a number of issues. It was somewhere after the election of Biden as president that the Juneteenth holiday was established. And I knew from writing “Of Blood and Sweat” that I had some real questions about that. So, I did a little digging and discovered an interview with a fellow named Felix Haywood, who was present at the first Juneteenth. And what he said in a 1937 interview, even though he was 92 at the time, was so completely different from the story that everybody has been told and most people, Black and white, believe about Juneteenth. It really was like a hammer across my head.
And unfortunately, we live in a time where telling the truth is actually subversive. So, the book started from that point, and then I said to myself: How many other things in the African American past are of a similar nature? What we think we know is not what really happened, and that was the genesis for the book.
How is the truth different from the common understanding of Juneteenth?
The popular story is that Juneteenth is all about telling Black folks they were free — the last enslaved people to hear that they were free. Felix Haywood, who was there, knew what was going on. Juneteenth is not about telling Black folks they were free, but telling white folks they could no longer enslave and kill Black people. And for me, I am not sure that’s an event that I want to celebrate.
You write that “Myths are not falsehoods. They are stories erected on pillars of truth in order to provide a framework for comprehending larger issues or sets of beliefs.” Can you explain how you understand myth as it relates to your work as a historian?
Myth is a double-edged sword. Many people interpret myth as simply something that’s not true. But the other definition of myth is a metaphorical way of understanding the truth. It’s important to separate those two things. And so when you read “the myth of,” you have to understand: are you reading something about something which isn’t true, or a metaphorical way of understanding that which is true?
Myth is often presented through story as a way of apprehending the truth. Myth is a way of helping people apprehend a bigger truth, sometimes to which there is no scientific understanding. For instance: Where does life start? How does life start? What’s the meaning of life? Those are big stories or big ideas that you can’t study scientifically, but you can tell a story about them. As a historian, you look back and try to do the same thing.
What are some of the more unexpected stories that you discovered in the research process?
I was of the opinion, as everybody was, most people are, that “Follow the Drinking Gourd” was an encoded song with a message about escaping from enslavement. The more I dug into that, the more I began to believe it’s probably not. It feels more like the kind of carry-overs you find from African sacred traditions to the New World than this very simplistic idea of this song being an encoded message.
Another thing that really stuck out was the extent to which Islamic traditions were present in America. I knew that a little bit, but I had no idea the extent to which that was true. I’ve been to Istanbul a number of times, and I’ve heard the call to prayer echoing across the city, but to listen to that and then listen to a blues holler … it gives me chills, even now thinking about what that was like for me.
You write that “History almost always has a backstory.” Oftentimes, many think of history as backstory itself. What do you mean by this?
There’s another quote that’s appropriate to that, which is “History is written by the victors.” So, if history is written by the victors, what’s the story they’re not telling? That’s the reason I wanted to write the book. That’s what the backstory is. The backstory is the popular truth, stories, myths around history that are not being told, something that people don’t get. That’s the backstory I wanted to write about.
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