Folklore for Black History Month and President's Day: "People Who Could Fly," "Honest Abe," and Honest George

For the rest of February and probably into March, I will be posting some North American Black American folklore in the form of folktales and folk music and will also be doing posts on some other Black American literature such as poetry from African American poets, books by African Americans, and films by African Americans or depicting Black American culture. 

The stories I will tell today are from North American folklore, the first being from Black American plantation folklore, and the second two from America's presidential history. Some are fictitious stories and some are true. 

People Who Could Fly

This story was told among enslaved African American plantation workers. To this day, many wish its ending were true.

Long ago when black people were taken from their homes in Africa and forced to come here to America to work as slaves, they were put onto ships and many died on the voyage across the Atlantic Ocean. Those that survived stepped off the boats into a land they had never seen before and put to the fields of plantations to work. Some refused and were killed. Others worked but were whipped by white men across their backs to make them work harder and they would turn and fight. Some of them killed the white men with their whips in the fight and others were killed by the white men. they wishes they could go home, back to Africa. 

Some of the enslaved would run in hopes of getting back to Africa, where there were no white men to enslave or whip them, where they would work only for the good of each other. There were tales that some of them ran as far as the ocean then ran into the ocean and no one knows for sure if any of them ran across the ocean and made it back to Africa or if they drowned. They figured they did not care so long as they were not slaves anymore. 

When white men took Africans upon the slave ships, they did not know who they were taking, if they were taking musicians, artists, or witch doctors. As long as they were strong, he took men, women, and children. Thus, sometimes he did not know that there would be a witch doctor among those he had captured. If he had known, and known that the witch doctor was a medium of the gods, he would have thought twice. But he did not care, Those he counted as they were taken to the ships were nothing but money being counted into his pocket to him. 

One ship of Africans was taken to a plantation in South Carolina had a witch doctor among them. He was the son of a witch doctor who was learned in the medicines and mediumship with the gods and carried the secrets and powers of the generations of Africa with him. 

One hot day when the sun singed his the very hair on his head and he was working with the others in the fields, the very air seemed to be on fire,. A young woman whose body curved with the child growing inside her fainted. The white man with the whip came and whipped her and forced her to get up after she had fallen to the ground. The others watched and said nothing and the white man yelled at them to get to work or that they would be whipped too. The pregnant woman fainted again while trying to work some more, and the white man came back with the whip. She screamed and fell to the ground again and this time the witch doctor went to her side when the white man was not looking and whispered something in her ear. Then she whispered it to the next person who whispered it to the next and so on until all of them had heard the whisper. They did it so quickly and quietly that the white man noticed nothing.

A few minutes later someone else in the fields fainted and when the white man with the whip rode toward him on his horse, the young witch doctor yelled, "Now!" He uttered a strange word, and the person who had fainted spread his arms out and moved them like wings and flew away into the sky and out of sight. 

The white man yelled, "Who did that? Who yelled out?" but the witch doctor did not answer and no one else told. "Just wait until I get my hands on him!" said the man with the whip.

Then the young woman with child fainted again. When the white man was almost upon her with his whip, the witch doctor yelled out, "Now!" and once again uttered a strange word. She, too, rose from the ground and, waving her arms like wings, she took to the sky and flew away into the distance and out of sight. 

This time the man with the whip knew who was responsible for this and as he pulled his arm back to whip the young witch doctor, the young man yelled, "Now! Now, Everyone!" He uttered the strange word, and all the Africans dropped their hoes, stretched out their arms and flew away, back to their home, back to Africa. 

That was long ago and no one remembers or knows what that magic word was that could make people fly. But who knows? Maybe someday some morning someone will awake with the strange word on his tongue and uttering it we will all stretch out our arms and take to the air, leaving these blood drenched fields of our misery behind. 

The tale as I told and typed it here is only one version of this tale. Other versions are often called "The People Could Fly" rather than "The People Who Could Fly" and the contents have slight differences.  There is a book entitled The People Could Fly by Virginia Hamilton (b. 1934, Yellow Springs, OH, d. 20023); in this book, she retold 24 Black American folktales including this one, and was illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon, and was published in 1985. She wrote many children's books and another was titled Many Thousands Gone which tells stories from the history of slavery and of the Underground Railroad in America. She tells us 35 stories of 35 desperate escapes and about some daring protests. This one was published in 1983, also illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon. 

I recommend these tales and these books both for children and adults as part of our important literary heritage and our important North American history, to keep these stories alive, to pass them on, that they not be forgotten, ignored, or erased, or banned. There has been a lot of news lately about banning books and materials and historical content from schools and I would like to ask you to share and spread stories that tell the truth. This does not mean it is okay to ban or erase folklore or fiction even if it is not a "real" or "true" story; for instance, we all know people cannot fly without an aircraft, but there is still truth in this story that Africans were brought to this country to be made to work in the fields through enslavement and were yes this frequently and regularly treated badly, horribly wrong, much as some people might wish to deny that or have it erased from history. It is important that people remember.

Wanting to fly away or get away or get back home, back to one's comfort zone away from horrors and pain is a theme common to African American plantation spirituals, These are a part of the folklore--not just the folktales. Folk music tells stories within the songs. In music class in school when we learned folk music we were taught the Black American plantation spiritual called "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot." Slaves wanting to be carried home, whether to Africa or their heavenly home; Many were tired and beaten and many died. Another song I learned at a young age was "Nobody Knows the trouble I've Seen." I haven't played some of the songs I learned as a child for many years now, but perhaps I will go back to them, practice, then add them here to this blog later or in comments under this blog. 

Honest Abe and Honest George, in Honor of Honesty and President's Day

President Abraham Lincoln was known as "Honest Abe" due to his belief in honesty as both a lawyer and president. As a lawyer, he spoke of and taught the importance of honesty in one's law work and felt strongly against lying or shifting the truth to win a case. He also believed in speaking for and standing up for his convictions, his beliefs, that all people are created equal and should be treated equally with human dignity. He worked to free the slaves. This is of course a true legend; just because it is told as inclusive in the genre of folklore does not mean it is fiction or false.

Then we have the folktale of George Washington, the first president of the United States. The legend has it that as a young boy he was given an ax by his birthday and ran outside and was so excited to use the ax that he cut down a cherry tree. When his dad asked him if he cut down the tree, George replied that yes he did, that he could not be dishonest, he had to admit it. The story has it that his dad then replied, "George, your honesty is worth 1,000 cherry trees!" There is no proof that this story is true. It is also part of our North American folklore, but unlike the story above about Lincoln, this one is not known to be factual or "real." It was included in a book that a publisher and bookseller distributed, possibly for money, to sell books and make money since the popularity of the president would make it sell well. In turn, this story could help improve or perpetuate the popularity of the president. The story may have been a marketing ploy.

Legends are a category of folklore. In a legend, we know the person is real (or probably real), was either famous or infamous (Abe Lincoln vs. Jesse James, e.g.),and we do not know the extent of the truth to a story. The facts can change, get exaggerated or downplayed through word of mouth as a legend spreads. Often, some elements of the legend become known as normal parts of the legend and become overall agreed upon. Then someday someone writes the legend down or else makes a song out of the legend to sing, then the songs get recorded or written down eventually, and then possibly a film is made. Many of us love legends for their entertainment values, even when about infamous (bad and unpopular) people/characters.

Again, just because something is fictitious or only partly true as in many legends does not mean it has no truth to it or is unworthy of knowing. This story of Honest George points out that honesty was a virtue much admired and respected and quite popular in our North American presidential history. With Honest Abe, we see that honesty in business was a virtue too--or at least considered as such by some. The moral is that someone very important and successful believed in honesty in business and honesty of speaking up and acting upon one's beliefs.

I have in the past taught Folklore and Children's Literature, and I liked including these tales in my classes to share them, to pass them along. They are part of our literary heritage and history--as I mentioned also above--and I believe it is good and vital to let history be known and not erased or altered or watered down. I especially detest when books or stories are banned, as I also already mentioned above. Whether you are a parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, cousin, older sibling, teacher of any kind whether of history or literature or music or the arts, I hope you can pass these on to others who will also pass them on. Many people who tune into my videos on Facebook or in to this blog already are people who already care about this stuff so it is a bit like “preaching to the choir” as the saying goes—yet it is harder to reach those who don't know how far these topics in the arts and in life go and don't care about if something is banned or not. It is important to keep educating the children in our lives from young ages through high school (and then adults, beyond childhood, in college) these stories, whether fiction or non-fiction. Of course by fiction I do not mean to go around sharing untruths and false news, mere gossip without fact checks, etc. That is quite a different story. First in folklore we identify it as folklore and whether or not the tale is based on a real person or not, etc. In fiction, it is said to be such and we know that animals don't talk and humans don't fly by flapping their arms. We know that Winnie the Pooh is not a real talking stuffed animal but we like to use our imaginations. Imagination is a good thing--it teaches problem solving, it develops hunches and hypothesis and intuition and curiousity that leads to discoveries, and we should not have to downplay the importance of entertainment in life, either.

I want to add that in my classes I also included the Declaration of Human Rights written and drawn up by the United Nations to stress the importance that all people be treated with dignity—and it lists ways in which this should be guaranteed, point by point.  

I do hope for the rest of this month of February of Black History Month to include more on this blog. From people who were slaves who could fly to people of a black family who drive a gold Cadillac to visit family down south (the true story The Gold Cadillac), to the person who travels south for a performance tour on piano who is a black musical artist (the film The Green Book), to the script of a play in book form by the title A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry and the poem about the raisin in the sun by Langston Hughes that is a prelude to the book script, to other Black American poets such as Nikki Giovanni, Rita Dove, and Maya Angelou, I plan to share more. I say plan (hope) because at this time I have no home computer and it is difficult to work on my phone.

Soon, I will start my own YouTube channel to tell stories and talk about them. I will describe more about this later. I do work with a library doing a folklore program that includes fairy tales and you can attend in person or online usually. They are recorded and then appear on the library's YouTube channel. I will do a blog soon after this month, probably in March, with links to my events at the library. 

Meanwhile, I am still working on typing and editing my books. Some should be available soon on Amazon. They are a long time in coming.