Author: electricbarb

In college, I worked at the bookstore. It was the perfect job for a nerd like me. By my second year, I even had the chance to start managing the office supplies section of the store. Those of you who know me know how much I love office supplies!

My job came with a nice employee discount, and I spent more than might have been prudent on books – and not just the trade novels. Sometimes I saw books for classes I wasn’t taking and thought they looked interesting. That was the case for a book called Black Masters by Johnson and Roark. 

The book tells the story of a Black patriarch and his family as he bought himself and his family out of slavery in South Carolina in the late 1700s. It follows his struggle to keep his (and his family’s) freedom and his quest to enter “respectable” society. Part of his achieving economic success ultimately involved owning slaves himself. It was a rich and complex story that enumerated the multiple indignities experienced by Black people who escaped slavery and the machinations of the forces trying to force them back into it. 

Life gets busy, though, and I didn’t read the book until about 25 years after I bought it. When I did, it set my mind on fire, inspiring me to learn as much and as deeply as I could about early American history. My journey pulled me into the stories of the founding of this country in ways I never could have imagined in public school, where we barely made it past “Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492.”

I’ve learned too many lessons about the founders of the United States of America to enumerate here, but two rise to the top and inspired the song 56 Fishes:

1. They weren’t special. They were people, just like you and me, who each had their own experiences, opinions, and desires. 
2. They didn’t operate with a single agenda. They disagreed with each other, at times with grave hostility. Everything this country has become comes from this push and pull between varied positions.

Some people are afraid to admit that the founders of this country weren’t sainted icons. I think it’s exciting. It’s real. It’s raw. It includes all of us in the continuity of struggle for the direction of our country.

The 56 Fishes are the fify-six signers of the Declaration of Independence. “They all have their own itches. And we’re still fighting it now.”