Rep. Keith Ellison ‘My Country Tis of Thee’ book excerpt: From the Black Bottom to Cane River
BOOK EXCERPT - I have lived my adult life in Minneapolis, Minnesota, but I was born in Detroit, Michigan. My American journey actually began long before that...
She decided that she would build this sandbox herself. The only problem was that she couldn’t haul the materials in her own car. So she took my dad’s brand-new white Cadillac convertible with red leather interior (and whitewall tires, of course) and headed to the local hardware store. With the top open, the Cadillac was perfect.
It was a running joke in the neighborhood that my dad had all of these nice cars—including a Ferrari and even a Rolls-Royce at one time—and my mom drove around in these old, modest cars. But if you knew my parents, that was perfectly normal. My father was a flashy, over-the-top personality. He wore tailored suits and was opinionated. A real character. My mother was down-to-earth. She was no wallflower, but she was never loud or boisterous. She was levelheaded and even-keeled. The only time she would really show a lot of passion was when it came to her kids. If we needed something or she decided she wanted us to have something, nothing was going to stop her.
That day, she put us all in the front, so she could load up the backseat of Dad’s convertible. She put down plastic to protect the precious interior from the bags of sand, pieces of wood, nails, and fasteners. Once we got back home, she built us that sandbox. I was about five years old, but I still remember her determination to get it built. And I remember the fun my brothers and I had in it.
My father, who worked fourteen-hour days at his practice and didn’t drive the Cadillac convertible except on weekends—his get-around car was a Pontiac Sunbird—didn’t get home until late. You can imagine the argument that erupted when he noticed sand on the precious red leather of his baby. Apparently the plastic my mother had put down didn’t protect against all of the sand.
She heard him out but wasn’t fazed by his anger, and she wasn’t apologetic. She’d done what she had to do. She was taking care of her children.
This fierce desire to protect us played out a number of times while we were growing up. The year before, we had moved into a mixed neighborhood in Detroit, and a rash of robberies occurred shortly after we arrived. One of our neighbors who lived across the street started telling everyone to “watch out for those Ellison boys.” He claimed we were the ones committing the robberies.
When my mother caught wind of this, she gathered us all up and said, “Come with me!” We didn’t know what was up, but we all stopped what we were doing and followed her. She marched across the street with us trailing behind, went up to this man’s house, and knocked on his door. When he came to the door, he looked shocked.
“Sir, these are my boys,” she said firmly. “They are not doing anything to your property or anyone else’s. Before you start saying what the Ellison boys are up to, you should know what you’re talking about.”
She then turned and walked back across the street with us following, leaving that man standing there with his mouth open. She had made her point. My oldest brother, Leonard, was only nine. I was six. In other words, we were all little kids. There was no way that we were the menaces this man was claiming, and my mother wasn’t having anyone talking badly about her boys. We all thought it was funny: “Man! Mom is tough! Ha‑ha.”
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