It was Tallahassee's own Trail of Tears. But in its day it would have been called simply a "coffle." And it ended here at the lawn of Goodwood Plantation in Tallahassee. Yesterday, I looked out over that same lawn just steps away from the capital city's largest hospital and imagined the scene that happened in … Continue reading Tallahassee’s Own Trail of Tears →

William Faulkner's rambling prose was a challenge when I was in school. But I knew from my own life experience as a Southern child what he meant in his most sparingly short quotation. "The past is never dead," he wrote in Requiem for a Nun. "It's not even past." Seeing the Winter Building at Court … Continue reading The Shackled Ghosts of Montgomery →

It was only four times. You see,Tallahassee was a tolerant town for the era, at least compared to other parts of Florida. It only lynched four men in the years between Reconstruction and 1940. At least only four described in official records. Ernest Ponder and Richard Hawkins. -- Lynched in 1937 along Jacksonville Highway outside … Continue reading You See, It Was Only Four Times →

Look out from the capitol steps in Montgomery past the statesman statue of Jefferson Davis under its overhanging magnolia trees. And there on the next hill over you will see blood-stained memories crafted into metal sculpture and left hanging there in the Southern breeze. Sculpted memories of strange fruit swinging from distant trees. Memories of … Continue reading Strange Fruit →

Growing up a Southern child was an exercise in pretending that obvious pain did not exist. I was a thoughtful boy, as my teachers often said, with little talent for denial. So it was an exercise I failed. Relatives at reunions refought the Civil War with such red-faced anguish that I sometimes fled to the … Continue reading Growing Up a Southern Child →