Memorial Day: Honoring The Ancestors of a Different Battle

marysmatters

With my grandfather Joseph in 1982 at family’s 50th wedding anniversary celebration

“I would fight for my liberty so long as my strength lasted, and if the time came for me to go, the Lord would let them take me.” Harriet Tubman

  My maternal grandfather, Joseph (Joe) Everett Parker, Sr., honored our history and this holiday in a different way. On Memorial Day during the 1960s, the children of the family accompanied him on an ancestral voyage. We went to the burial grounds of his parents and other relatives, some who were born slaves or in the reconstruction era. Here he honored their service. Because they had fought for racial freedom, persevering and sacrificing in the most horrid of conditions. I call them ‘old soldiers’ too, experienced on the battlefield of life.

The grave sites were located way back off a rural road, some 15 miles or so…

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