Introduction

They are men whose lives began in slavery, who weathered the Civil War, and who grappled with the contradictions of emancipation through the turbulent years of Reconstruction. Portraying the lives of the families who dwell in The Bottom, a poor settlement just down Red River from Colfax, Louisiana, Tademy begins her story with a heart-wrenching battle for the Colfax courthouse. Newly freed men are fighting for their liberties, hoping the federal government will come to their aid. As tensions rise, a massacre ensues, and proud families are left to deal with the wreckage and find the strength to push on. Drawn from both historic fact and the author's own family history, Tademy brings to life a historical human drama left untold--until now.

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Excerpt

1935

Come closer. This is not a story to go down easy, and the backwash still got hold of us today. The history of a family. The history of a country. From bondage to the joy of freedom, and almost ten hopeful years drinking up the promise of Reconstruction, and then back into the darkness, so fearsome don't nobody want to talk about the scary time. Don't nobody want to remember even now, decades removed, now things better some. Why stir up all that old mess from way back in 1873? I don't hold with that point of view. I was there, watching, like all the women done, up close some of the time but mostways from a distance. They all dead and buried now. I outlast each one, using up my time on earth and some of theirs too. One hundred last birthday, trapped in this wasted body. All I do now is remember and pray the story don't get lost forever. It woulda suit Lucy fine, everybody forgetting. Lucy and me, that the only thing we usta argue about, when we was both clear-minded and had more juice to work up, but those talks never last too long. She just shut her mouth and shut her mind, refusing the truth. I still got heat around the subject, but where to put it now? Lucy gone last year. She turn one hundred five before she left this earth. Was two of us held on for such a long time, me and Lucy. Outlasting our men-our husbands, our sons, even some grandsons. We all had it hard, but the men, they had it worse, 'specially those what come up on life from the front. Women is the long-livers at the base of the Tademy family tree.

They don't teach 1873 at the colored school. Wasn't for my husband, wouldn't be no colored school for Colfax, Louisiana. That the kind of man Sam Tademy was. Could carry a vision in his head and stick to it no matter what the discouragement. Some men good providers, got a way with the soil or a trade. Some men been given a singing voice take you to glory, or magic in they bodies to move in dance and make you feel alive. Some men so pretty you gaze on them with hunger, or so smooth they get hold of words and make you believe any nonsense come out they mouth. Some got the gift to make you laugh out loud, and others preach strong and spread the word of God. My man, Sam, he quiet after his own way, look after his family, not afraid of the tug of the plow. He done some preaching, and some teaching, but always thinking about the rest of the colored. Not wanting to get too far ahead without pulling forward everyone else willing to work hard at the same time. Education mean everything to that man. Once he set his head on a colored school in Colfax, wasn't nothing could crush the notion. He mortgage his own sons to the plan, and it come to pass.

We been writ out the history of this town. They got a metal marker down to the courthouse tell a crazy twisting of what really happen Easter Sunday sixty year ago. The ones with the upper hand make a story fit how they want, and tell it so loud people tricked to thinking it real, but writing down don't make it so. The littlest colored child in Colfax, Louisiana, know better than to speak the truth of that time out loud, but the real stories somehow carry forward, generation to generation. Those of us what was there catch a retold whisper, and just the mention got the power to stir up those old troubles in our minds again like they fresh, and the remembering lay a clamp over our hearts. But we need to remember. Truth matters. What our colored men try to do for the rest of us in Colfax matter. They daren't be forgot. We women keep the wheel spinning, birthing the babies and holding together a decent home to raise them in. We take care of them what too young or too old to take care of theyself, while our menfolks does battle how they got to in a world want to see them broke down and tame.

Was a time we thought we was free and moving up. When forty acres and a mule seem not only possible but due. First we was slave, then we was free, and the white call it Reconstruction. We had colored politicians. Yes, we did. It was our men vote them in, before the voting right get snatched away. We losing that sense of history, and it seem wrong to me. Young ones today, they don't carry memory of our colored men voting. Like those ten years of fiery promise burn down and only leave a small gray pile of ash under the fireplace grate, and don't nobody remember the flame. Not like the locals made it easy, but we had our rights then, by law. We was gonna change the South, be a part of the rebuilding after the War Between the States. We owned ourself and was finding our voice to speak up. Some on both sides of the color line talked about us going too fast. No matter how hard times got then, when wasn't food enough for the table and the debt growed too fast to pay off at the general store, or a homegrown pack of the White League terrorize us or string up one of our men to keep us in our place, still our hearts and heads swole up with the possibilities of Reconstruction. Our men was citizens. We had the prospect of owning a piece of land for ourself. Ten years. Don't seem so long when you reach over one hundred years in your own life, but more hope and dreams in those ten years than the slave years come before or the terror years after. Back then hope was a personal friend, close to hand. Seem anything could happen. Seem we was on a road to be a real part of America at last.

I think on those colored men in the courthouse every day. They was brave, from my way of seeing, dog-bone set to fight for a idea, no matter the risk. Not all the old ones see it the same. Lucy used to say by stepping up, the colored courthouse men bring the white man down on us, but what foolishness is that? Some white folks never change from thinking on us as they own personal beasts of burden, even after freedom. Those ones down on us already.

But we got the strength to outlast whatever trials is put before us. We proved it. There a special way of seeing come with age and distance, a kind of knowing how things happen even without knowing why. Seeing what show up one or two generations removed, from a father to a son or grandson, like repeating threads weaving through the same bolt of cloth. Repeating scraps at the foot and the head of a quilt. How two men never set eyes on each other before, and, different as sun and moon, each journey from Alabama to Louisiana and come to form a friendship so deep they families twine together long after they dead. How one set of brothers like hand and glove, but two others at each other throats like jealous pups fighting for the last teat. How two brothers from the same house marry two sisters, sets of bold and meek. How men come at a thing nothing like what a woman do, under the names dignity, pride, survival. The words alike, but the path not even close between man and woman, no matter they both trying to get to the same place. Making a better way for the children. In the end, making a better life for our children what we all want.

Eighteen seventy-three. Wasn't no riot like they say. We was close enough to see how it play out. It was a massacre. Back in 1873, if I was a man, I'da lift my head up too and make the same choice as my Sam and Israel Smith and the others, but there was children to feed and keep healthy and fields to harvest and goats to milk. Those things don't wait for history or nothing else. But I saw. I cleaned up after. I watch how 1873 carry through in the children that was there, and then in they children years later.

My name is Polly. I come to the Tademys not by blood but by choice. Not all family got to draw from the bloodline. I claim the Tademys and they claim me. We a community, in one another business for better or worse. How else we expect to get through the trials of this earth before the rewards of heaven?

Copyright © 2007 by Lalita Tademy view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

From the Publisher:

1. RED RIVER gives a rich impression of a family history expansively and proudly told. Yet in her "Author's Note," Lalita Tademy tells us that extracting the history of her father's ancestors was sometimes painful: "a different type of family story, lacking shape and enthusiasm, only stingily disclosed, rationed with vague hints or whispers, and only then with great reluctance and obvious discomfort by the teller." Why would there be such reluctance to repeat these stories?

2. It's a tragic fact that the voices of many African-Americans who endured slavery in America were never recorded. Lalita Tademy's decision to re-create these lost voices by using the format of a historical novel is her artistic response to this gap in our national history. Does her artistic decision work for you?

3. The Prologue is written in the voice of Polly Tademy as she turns 100 in 1935. As the wife of Sam Tademy, she had lived through the Colfax massacre of Easter Sunday 1873. Of herself and her women friends, she writes: "Outlasting our men — our husbands, our sons, even some grandsons. We all had it hard, but the men, they had it worse, specially those what come up on life from the front." From what you read in RED RIVER, do you agree that the African-American males in this historical novel "had it worse"? Discuss why you agree or disagree.

4. One premise of RED RIVER seems to be that after the Civil War—leading all the way up to the present—black men suffered a particular kind of degradation different from that which black women suffered. Do you agree with this basic premise? Furthermore, in RED RIVER, would you say that the author deliberately sets out to explore more deeply the struggles of the male characters than those of the female characters?

5. Again in the Prologue, Polly Tademy extols the achievements of African-American males of her era: "What our colored men try to do for the rest of us in Colfax matter. They daren't be forgot. While we women keep the wheel spinning, birthing the babies and holding together a decent home to raise them in, taking care of them what too young or too old to take care of theyself, our menfolks does battle how they got to in a world want to see them broke down and tame." In this novel, do you see a comparison between the female struggling to tend the home fires, and the male struggling to compete and survive with dignity in the hostile world outside the home?

6. In Chapter 1, Israel Smith describes his obligation to occupy the Colfax Courthouse as "a citizen's job." Discuss the special significance of a black man's progressing from slave status to that of a full-fledged, free citizen of the United States.

7. In Chapter 2, Isaac "McCully" McCullen talks about his brown fedora as his "voting hat." When he first exercised his right to vote (casting his vote for the Republican Party), he wore this hat. He placed a heron feather in its brim and called it "a rare feather from the phoenix bird what lived in the desert for five hundred years, go up in flames, raise itself up brand new from the ashes." Discuss why the phoenix rising from the ashes is an inspiring image for African-Americans emerging from the slave era in America.

8. McCully's brown fedora is passed down from generation to generation. Discuss why an authentic relic from a historic event acquires deeper and deeper meaning with the passage of time. Do you agree that each new generation should be taught to understand and preserve and cherish these relics that commemorate an ancestor's achievements?

9. Scattered throughout RED RIVER, there are over forty-four "Figures," which are actual documents, photographs, and drawings from the historical record. Discuss how the author's inclusion of historical documentation in the midst of her novel's fictional world enhances or detracts from your reading experience.

10. In Chapter 6, Sam Tademy learns that Spenser stole large quantities of foodstuffs from Craft's store to feed the men and their families who had been uprooted to occupy and defend the Colfax Courthouse. Sam opposes this theft on principle; others support it for a variety of reasons. Discuss both views: those opposing the theft, and those supporting it.

11. In the days leading up to the Colfax massacre, Jessie McCullen is murdered by a band of white men, and at the memorial service for Jessie, Sam Tademy expresses his opposition to the impending conflict. He says: "One day, Lord willing, we build a colored school right here in Colfax...We need education, not bullets. That the only way we win…We got to make stepping stones out of stumbling blocks. That the only way progress last." Despite Sam's speech, the Colfax massacre occurs. Yet Sam, years later, will achieve his dream of a colored school in Colfax. Do you agree with Sam Tademy that the Colfax massacre ought not have happened? As he preaches nonviolence, does Sam Tademy remind you of other figures from the civil rights era in the middle of the 20th century who also preached nonviolence?

12. In Chapter 7, Sam Tademy's childhood recalls the small cabin in which his mother raised him and his brother, Doe, and the brief late-night visit of a man his mother introduces as his father. This father impresses upon his sons Sam and Doe: "We from far away. We wasn't brought to this country as no slave. We come free, of our own will. We come from the Nile Delta, and my daddy pay passage by his sweat-work on a ship supposed to take him to a land of opportunity...Our real name Ta-ta-mee. Say it." How does this scene affect you? Imagine a young boy meeting his father only once, in one desperate and fleeting encounter. Discuss the cataclysmic effect of such a meeting.

13. During the Colfax massacre, Israel Smith endures and witnesses cruelties almost beyond what the human mind can fathom. His physical body, grievously wounded, does manage to survive; however his psyche never fully recovers. Nowadays, the medical/psychiatric professions have given a diagnostic name to Israel's mental state. Post-traumatic stress syndrome is a diagnosis for soldiers, especially infantrymen who have fought in the front lines in ground combat. Do you think Israel Smith suffered from this disorder?

14. At one point, Jackson, comparing his race to the Caucasian race, says: "We farm better, we breed better, we [survive] better..." How does his statement affect you, a reader in the 21st century?

15. At Noby Smith's funeral, his brother David comes to pay his respects, and his relatives whisper in his ear, "You're not welcome here." What, in your estimation, was David's most unforgivable crime? And do you think that by this time David's family and extended family should have forgiven him for the crime?

16. In RED RIVER, Lalita Tademy re-creates, in vivid scenes, numerous incidents of racially motivated hate crimes. Which incidents stayed with you the most powerfully? Why?

17. When Green, Jackson, and Noby go out night-hunting in Chapter 22, Green is accidentally killed. In what way is his death a catalyst in this historical novel?

Weblinks

»	Publisher's Book Info
»	Author Lalita Tademy's web site

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