Rep. Keith Ellison ‘My Country Tis of Thee’ book excerpt: From the Black Bottom to Cane River

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My dad’s grandmother died when he was about ten. After that, he and Uncle Bob lived briefly with their mother, but that didn’t last long. My father was headstrong, willful, and boisterous. I imagine he was resentful about his broken family as well, although we’ve never talked about it. In any case, his mother couldn’t manage him, and he was sent to live with Grandpa Zollie’s sister, Carrie, who had moved up to Detroit and, like Grandpa Zollie, was quite enterprising. Aunt Carrie, according to family legend, operated an after-hours establishment.

My father recalled that he liked staying with Aunt Carrie. For a while, he made good money on tips, bussing tables and getting cigarettes or drinks for Aunt Carrie’s guests.

Someone finally decided that it wasn’t a good idea for a teenage boy to be living in that kind of situation, so my dad moved in with Grandpa Zollie, who had remarried. That arrangement didn’t work out for very long, either. The new wife didn’t take to my dad, and at this point, my father wasn’t trying to accommodate anyone.

So, at fifteen, near the end of World War II, my father finagled his way into the United States Army. He was stationed in Hawaii and remembered that he spent a lot of time in the library, but he didn’t talk much about his army time. The rampant segregation must have made his stint very lonely and difficult.

When he was discharged, he came back to Detroit, finished high school, and enrolled in college. The GI Bill gave him the start he needed. He joined Uncle Bob at Wayne University (now known as Wayne State U), majoring in pharmacy science. He was on his way to graduation and a better life when he ran out of money and had to drop out. But he went to work in one of Detroit’s auto factories and saved up enough to go back to college. When he finished at Wayne, he was a little older than the other grads, but he made it.

With a background like that, my dad never made any excuses.  His mantra was, “There are no handouts or handups.” So guess what? None of his sons would have any excuses either. If he could make his own way in the world, so could we. Period. End of discussion.  And believe me, no one gave my father any back talk.

He had lived what some would call a rather rough life. He had to work for everything he got. He had watched his own dad build a business by the sweat of his brow, with no help and no educational foundation, so he knew that the effort would pay off.

My father knew what so many Americans believe: that if you put your mind to something and are willing to work hard, you can achieve your goals. My dad wanted to be a doctor. He wanted to see Dr. in front of his name. After graduating from Wayne State, he enrolled at the University of Michigan Medical School and got his medical degree with a specialty in psychiatry.

While at Michigan, he met my mom, Clida. She was, on paper, his polar opposite. But she provided just the balance he needed in his life. She had the right kind of strength to match his fire.

So I was raised by two very different but equally strong-willed personalities.

My mom is ten years younger than my dad. She was born in Cane River, Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, in 1938. It is an isolated, self-contained place on the banks of Cane River Lake—a tributary of the Red River that got cut off long ago—where the inhabitants survive on farming. A distant ancestor of my mother, Augustin Metoyer, the patriarch of a set of interrelated families who populated the area hundreds of years ago, built the Saint Augustine Catholic Church, in Melrose, around 1829. His portrait hangs in Saint Augustine Church to this day.

My mother’s father, Frank Martinez, was the product of a Spanish father (from Seville) and a black mother. People often mistook him for something other than black. My mother’s mother, Doris

Balthazar Martinez, was the distant granddaughter of a French merchant, Thomas Pierre Metoyer, and Marie Therese, known as Coincoin (pronounced “ko-kwe”), a slave. Metoyer freed Coincoin and gave her several acres. My mother was born on one of those plots of land.

My mom, an only child, was raised with a ton of love and support on a farm with a host of aunts and uncles, her grandmother, and chickens, pigs, dogs, and horses. Mother describes her childhood as wonderful and smiles when she recalls her horse, Pocketbook.  Growing up like that must have been fun.

She worked on the farm alongside everyone else, but mostly she attended school. She was sent to Holy Rosary Institute, a boarding school in Lafayette, Louisiana, because my grandparents wanted to protect her. Grandpa Frank, you see, was a civil rights activist, fighting for civil rights and voting rights, and the Ku Klux Klan used to harass him. My mom tells the story of how one time they set up a burning cross outside her family’s home on Lee Street (which is now Martin Luther King Jr. Drive). After high school, she went to New Orleans to attend Xavier University of Louisiana, where she graduated with a degree in medical technology.

Education was a priority in my mother’s home. My grandma Doris, whom everyone called Dot, taught the neighboring farm kids reading, writing, and arithmetic in a one-room schoolhouse.  Children of many different ages gathered in that classroom, some attending only sporadically, but she managed to make sure they learned the basics. Grandma Doris’s father was also a teacher, specializing in industrial arts.

As I mentioned, Doris was the distant granddaughter of Coincoin, who was a medicine woman, trained in pharmacology and nursing—skills that she passed along to her children. Both of Coincoin’s parents were straight off the boat from Africa, and I’m sure they handed down some old-country knowledge to her. We know that she was from the Ewe (pronounced “EE-vay”) people who inhabit the coastal nation of Togo.

I didn’t know the impact my grandmother had on the community until her funeral. I stood there with my mother at Saint Augustine Church on Cane River as person after person came up to her.

“Your mama would be there day after day and made sure us children got our lessons,” one said, clutching my mother’s hands.

“Some of us never had no schooling ’cept what your mama gave us,” another said, tears in her eyes. “I really thank your mama.”

My mother was so proud of Doris. My mom also clearly adored her father too. He died in 1957 when a tractor overturned on him.  His brother-in-law, my great-uncle Boo (Carroll Balthazar), tried to lift the tractor off him, but it was too heavy. Uncle Boo sat there holding my grandfather’s hand until he took his last breath. Uncle Boo, my mother’s uncle, was a farmer and industrial arts teacher like my grandfather. He was such a loving and supportive figure in our lives, I wonder if he thought of himself as looking out for his dead friend’s grandchildren. He was so awesome, I kind of think so.

My mom always talked wistfully of her dad. Besides being an activist, he was also a skilled mechanic. He trained black soldiers to fix airplanes during World War II. After the war, he continued to teach young black men how to fix trucks, cars, and planes.

She was very much a daddy’s girl and also a bit of a tomboy.  Probably because she was his only child, he taught her all the things he would have wanted a son to know. So while she learned to take care of a home, she also could build things and work around the farm. My mother was raised to be confident, resourceful, and selfreliant, and I am trying to raise my daughter, Amirah, the same way.

I remember the day my mother got it into her head that she wanted her children to have a sandbox. She was tired of packing us up and trekking to the local park when we had a perfectly nicesized backyard to play in.