Behind the scenes - Beneath the Black Oak

I have lived most of my life in the South, surrounded by my very intriguing family history. I grew up listening to a myriad of tales from my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncle—but my grandmother’s stories from her childhood have always been my favorite. Perhaps that is because she spoke them so often. Again and again, up until the day she died, she shared with me so many of the experiences that she had lived through, as well as those that had been passed down from her own grandparents. Over the years, she would tell me these stories so many times that they became part of my own DNA. It felt as if I had lived those moments right beside her; tragedies, humor, romance, and most of all, the perseverance of the many who came before me.

The tragedy of my great-great-grandfather, the man that inspired Beneath the Black Oak, was one of her stories that has always stuck with me. The details of his life as an iron worker and farmer, and how he never owned a vehicle and walked everywhere that he went. He was an indigenous man who came to be the victim of a known racist—a tragedy that was publicized as an accident, though my family always knew it as murder. This story has been told and retold over generations in our family, from 1935 to the present day, with my carrying on the tradition. The tale has been haunting my family for nearly a century, now lives with me, along with so many other stories that my grandmother gave into my keeping.

The house in Beneath the Black Oak, where they lived, is still in our family and has been for well over a hundred years. In my story, there’s mention of an outhouse still on the property years later, and that is just one of the many truths tucked into this book. Around 1995, as a teenager, my family all gathered for a reunion in Alabama—cousins as far as the eye could see! After the gathering, some of us went to the family homestead to see my great-uncle Fred, who still lived there. I was absolutely enchanted, walking in my ancestors’ footsteps: the property that surrounds the little ranch-style cottage, the old peanut fields, the remains of a wagon that had been left to fall apart right where it last sat, the old well, and yes, the outhouse. I asked why it was still there, along with a big metal wash tub on the back porch. My grandma told us that until a few years before—around 1990–92—there had never been running water in the house. Uncle Fred still took baths on the back porch, used the deep well, and the outhouse. I was shocked.

Inside the house, we walked over the creaking wooden floorboards of the simple layout. A living room that had doubled as my great-great-grandma’s bedroom, a small kitchen with a wood-burning stove, a newly added bathroom, and two small bedrooms. I could almost see the shadows of generations moving through the space, remembering my grandmother’s many stories that had taken place right within these very walls.

One room in particular caught my imagination as Grandma gave us the tour. We walked through the door, and the first thing I noticed was a high shelf that went all the way around the room, lined with various preserves in old mason jars, their contents still appearing fresh. My grandma explained how they had used every bit of space in that house, and that preserves had been a very important part of keeping food safe, since they didn’t have a refrigerator. She also told us that these preserves had been there since her mother had died, the same year that I’d been born. The past captured in dusty little glass jars.

No one mentioned anything about the place being haunted, but I felt it all around me, haunted by the stories these walls had seen. And unlike my book, no bodies have been buried on that property—at least not to my knowledge. Though there have been jokes behind hands about the possibility.

There was something else buried in that place though: a deep vein of family history, scattered relics from our past, the spirits of our ancestors, and the story of my great-great-grandfather still echoing like a tune on the record player, captured in the very bones of this ancient structure.

I don’t know what ever happened to the man who killed him. The newspapers give very little information on that subject. He probably went on about his life as if nothing had ever happened, while my great-great-grandfather lay broken beyond repair on that dirt road, and my great-great-grandmother had to go on with her broken heart, raising their six children all alone.

That was in 1995, my visit to the family farm, and I didn’t start writing this story until 2022. I was always intrigued by the details I’d collected, but it was never enough— until my curiosity was sparked further by seeing it all printed in black and white.

A dear friend of mine who was studying genealogy asked if she could use me as a guinea pig in her studies, to which I excitedly agreed. I gave her my great-great-grandparents’ names, asking if she could focus mostly on them, though I didn’t expect her to find much. She surprised me though—she found actual census reports, newspaper articles about the incident, as well as his obituary and an article about my great great grandmother suing the man responsible. From there, my imagination went wild, and a fictional version of the story began to take form.

This tale that I’ve written, Beneath the Black Oak, is a quilted patchwork of both truth and fabrication, facts and gossip. I’ve stitched this family tale together with others and with my own personal and supernatural experiences, embellishing with the shiny trinkets of my own imagination. You’ll find so much of me and my family in this book: the mason-jar preserves, the peppermint sticks, the outhouse, the dog, and even the mysterious owl. These are things that really happened. I’d say it’s a fifty-fifty mix of fact and fiction—a quilt of many varied fabrics, worked together into its final pattern.

I think some part of me just needed to tell this story. Some part of me needed to travel back there, to walk in their shoes, to sit with my ancest and make sense of something that was so senseless. It feels good to hold space for them, to give their story a conclusion, answering unanswerable questions— even if only through the work of fiction.

Perhaps now their ghosts can rest—at least for me.