‘Tis of Thee

By Jessica Wilson

(Re-posted from Jessica Wilson’s own blog, A Year of Firsts.)

There was a very specific moment in my life when I formed my idea of what America means – what she is.

I was a junior in college, and because I was almost done with all of the requirements for my major, I decided to register for an Alternative Spring Break course. It included a semester-long class, as well as a trip to do community service during spring break.

That spring, I went, along with about 20 mostly white kids from Massachusetts to an all-Black settlement in Virginia called the New Road Community. While we spent the whole semester learning about the place, I was still utterly unprepared for what I saw when I arrived there.

The community was a 9-acre parcel of dirt-roads and tar paper shacks, with limited electricity and almost no indoor plumbing. People literally pumped water from big outdoor hand pumps to bring into their homes to cook, clean and drink. Folks used outhouses and families lived in just a couple of rooms. There was a chicken processing plant close by, where most people carpooled to work. It was 1997, and if you had told me just a few months earlier that people in America lived in such conditions, I would not have believed you.

The New Road community is part of the larger town of Exmore, where white people lived in suburban comfort just a short distance away from where we stayed.

The community group that hosted us was led by an amazing woman named Ruth Wise. They were in the process of raising funds for and building new homes. Her goal was to replace all of the current houses in the community with well-appointed, modern homes with electricity and running water and all of the functionality that would help New Road residents to thrive.

That week, my classmates and I slept on the floor of the New Road community center. Four amazing elders from the community made us lunch and dinner every day. We used porta potties because there were no bathrooms. We were brought to the local high school for one shower that week. While we were there we helped pick up trash in some of the lots where construction would happen, we painted a temporary home where people would live in-between when their current homes were demolished and their new homes would be completed. And mostly, we provided childcare for the many kids in the town who were also on vacation that week.

I remember a handful of kids who found us so interesting, and spent their week hanging out with us. We played games and talked and danced with them. There were little girls who wanted to play with our hair, jump rope, and get piggyback rides. There was a young boy who was so smart and was so conflicted about our presence that he had nothing nice to say to us. We loved him anyway. And there was one boy who had the body of a linebacker but just wanted to color, and laugh and eat candy and play.

There was an older man, Mike, who didn’t seem to have a steady home. He was happy-drunk most days and hung around in our vicinity. He was friendly and sweet, and told us lots of stories. I could tell the community understood his was not a sickness that would be cured, but they made space for him and cared for him, knowing doing so would reduce harm. I remember he lamented his situation, and said no one around here understood that he just liked his drink. When I told him I drank too (I was a college kid, I definitely drank!) I remember vividly he hooted and smiled and said, “thank you, thank you for saying that. I’m gonna give you a big Black kiss for saying that!” and he gave me a big hug and a kiss on the cheek. I am not sure if it was just that I was acknowledging that I was human too, or not shaming him for his drinking or whatever made him react that way, but I just remember being overwhelmed by his joy, and feeling a kinship with him, in all of his humanity, in that moment.

After our trip, I interviewed Ruth Wise for a radio show on our college station. I wish I still had the tape, because she was amazing, and she unfortunately left this earth in July 2017. She told me about how she left the community to get her education, and came back with a dream to create better housing and a path to homeownership for the hundreds of families that called New Road home. She knew that homeownership would help families build wealth and stability for future generations, and would mean a way out of poverty for the entire community. She worked so hard to make it happen. We saw the beginnings of her dream coming to life back in 1997. Today the community of New Road has been completely built out, and the community development group she founded recently bought 30 more acres to build a new community development.

And I know that while we were helpful while we were there, Ruth obviously could have met her goals without us college kids. But part of her goal was she wanted people from outside Virginia to see what she was doing. She wanted the story to be told, she wanted allies, she wanted to spark change. And as a former teacher, she told me saw value in bringing college students to the community of New Road and introducing us to her community kids. She wanted them to understand that college was an option for them. (And maybe to see some of the weird white kids they might meet there one day!)

The reason I tell this story is because what I learned that year is that the America I had been living in had only been part of the story. I faced the big truth of what had been hidden from me when I went to New Road.

America is a two sided story. Those like me who were raised in comfort are granted a privilege to ignore the needs of those who are without. I was living 470 miles away from the folks in New Road, but the white residents of Exmore were only maybe a ¼ mile down the street. And all of us were just letting them live without running water, without the comforts we take for granted, without a thought. I had always believed growing up that Americans took care of each other no matter what, and when I saw that just wasn’t true, it stung. It definitely had an impact on the trajectory of my life and career, and is a huge reason why I’ve always worked for organizations that build community strength. If there was one New Road, there are definitely more, and the fact that we don’t see all of the people in our country equally, and care about their needs equally, is an indelible part of my American story.

America is an argument. There is “the fight” that started our country. The fights we have every day about what it means to be a democracy, how our laws should be interpreted, who should get what resources. It has always been, and probably always will be. This is our relationship pattern as a nation. Even when couples go to therapy, no one says it’s to help them stop fighting, it’s to help them fight better. The positive side of this is that America traditionally allows us to have that fight, right out in the open. People bring all kinds of weapons to that fight – real weapons as well as lies and propaganda – but hopefully we can still keep talking.

America is an opportunity. Opportunities aren’t available for everyone all the time (despite what the best selling self-help books have told me), but they do come around. And what I saw Ruth Wise do was find opportunity and create a space where she could take advantage of it on behalf of the community she loved. She knew that a bunch of modern homes, and the capital to make 250 families in poverty homeowners, wasn’t just going to happen, so she got an education, she learned the system, she found a path to funding, she found a voice to speak the truth, she found the people to walk beside her and she made it happen. That is one of the things that is beautiful to me about America – that once in a while, the people who deserve an opportunity actually get it.

America is a push and pull. Our progress has never been linear. We’ve proclaimed equality, and then taken years and years to grant everyone equal rights. We’ve ended slavery, but created new systems to mimic that unholy institution. We wobble in every direction on drinking, drugs, abortion, labor laws, and on and on. We talk a big game about personal liberties, but those liberties are not afforded to everyone in the same manner. But we keep at it. We keep pushing or pulling, because it is worth it to get it right.

Above all, to me, that trip taught me that America is a beautiful group of people. We are here for such a short time. We are granted the opportunity to live on this magical one-in-a-million planet, and care for this incredible land. It would be a shame if all we did here was fight with each other. We are so much better when we come together in joy. We are meant to work hard for each other, to care for those who need it, to raise each other’s children with the same love and care we give to our own. We are meant to use our whole brain to learn, and then teach others. We are meant to see each other in all of our flawed humanity, and admit that we are not better than anyone else – that we are just the same, and we all are divine, and we all deserve to be loved.

And that’s why, despite (gestures broadly) I think there is a lot to celebrate on July 4th. There is knowing that we are still writing the history of this country, that we can still be the heroes of our own story. There is the memory of people like Ruth Wise – people who don’t make it into history books but absolutely deserve to be learned about, and who are as much a part of the fabric of our nation as anyone you’ll need to know for an AP history test. And there are the people in my life, the ones who I am lucky to call family and friends, who make me proud to get out of bed every day.

I will forever celebrate this beautiful America.

Ruth Wise reading guide:

Ruth Wise, Activist for Better Housing, Dies. The Daily Times, July 28, 2017

Ruth Wise Kellam obituary

Virginia Senate Resolution Celebrating the life of Ruth Wise, 2018

New Road Community Development Group Facebook page