Two Steps Forward, One Step ....

Sen. Obama's speech on race was thought-provoking. It has been interesting listening to how those around me reacted to it. I haven't commented; as a middle class white female I'm accorded far more invisible privilege than I could possibly ever be aware of. In short, me talking about the racial climate is like someone who always takes a taxi describing what it's like to drive.

Interesting things do cross my desk though, and two this week dovetailed on the issue of race.

In the March 31 New Yorker there is a story, "Subprime suspect," by John Cassidy, that highlights the fall of former Merrill Lynch CEO E. Stanley O'Neal. In his testimony before Congress O'Neal stated that his grandfather had been born a slave in 1861. That is a long way to travel in just three generation. O'Neal was the first African American CEO on Wall Street.

The other item was the photocopy of an old newspaper article. The citation is hard to read but I think it is from the Philadelphia Evening Item, March 16, 1895; thirty years after the end of the civil war and the eve of the twentieth century. It summarizes a court case in Atlanta, Georgia:

The effort to break the will of the late George Washington Die, of Elbert county, has failed in the lower court. Dye left an estate worth $100,000 to his negro housekeeper and her six children, whose father he was. His relatives attempted to break the will, but the jury rendered a verdict to-day sustaining it. This is in accordance with the decisions of the State Supreme Court. After Dye died $40,000 in cash was found packed in an old trunk. He owned 7,000 acres of land in one body, and was known in his county as "Governor" Dye.

Initially I was taken by the attempt by the relatives to break the will, but relatives fight over money without any other social issues playing a role. On subsequent readings I noted that the jury upheld the will. Now possibly the relatives were out of towners and the jury thought it better for the money to stay in the area. Possibly the jury knew someone in town could separate the housekeeper from her newfound wealth, possibly they just thought it was deservedly hers and her children's. We will never know. But they did uphold the will.