One Family's Great Migration...

We'll be discussing Ayanna Mathis’ Twelve Tribes of Hattie on Tuesday November 19^th, the story of Hattie Shepherd, who comes north with her family in the early 1920s, and raises her 12 children in Philadelphia. Each chapter focuses on a different member of Hattie’s family: the children , but also her sisters, granddaughter, husband, and Hattie herself. Through Hattie’s story we see the effect of one family’s great migration across eight decades.

Here’s a teaser: Hattie’s first afternoon outside the South…

“A Negro woman approached the cart…The white man stood -- he did not hesitate, his body didn’t contort into a posture of menace. As the woman with the flowers took her change…she upset three of the flower arrangements….Hattie stiffened, waiting for the inevitable explosion. She waited for the other Negroes to step back and away from the object of the violence that was surely coming. She waited for the moment in which she would have to shield her eyes from the woman and whatever horror would ensue. The vendor stooped to pick up the mess. The Negro woman gestured apologetically…In a couple of minutes all was settled…

Hattie looked more closely at the crowd on the sidewalk. The Negroes did not step into the gutters to let whites pass…Four Negro girls walked by, teenagers like Hattie, chatting to one another. Just girls in conversation, gigging and easy the way only white girls walked and talked in the city streets of Georgia…”Mama”, Hattie said, “I’ll never go back. Never”.

See you on November 19^th!