My father's aunt turned 100 last week.  Her children and grandchildren traveled from Michigan to D.C. to honor this biological phenomena.  Intact both in mind and body, she transcends.  But the story she unfolded last week has our heads spinning.   

For years Aunt Lillie has unearthed plenty about her and my grandmother's beginnings in Georgia.  Their mother, a bootlegger and Christian, was nearly 40 when they were born.  Their grandparents, who they knew, had been former slaves.  And their grandmother gave birth to 12 children prior to Emancipation, but only knew the whereabouts of three afterwards.  Aunt Lillie's unveiled stories about ghostly balls bouncing down the stairs of former plantation homes, white people who were born blue, and the roar of elephants that shook open the red clay and knocked her first-born baby out of the bed.

But what she told my dad last week was a bit more unnerving.  She and my grandmother had three older brothers.  The oldest was 25 years their senior.  We knew two of them had died prematurely, but the cause of their deaths was never explained.  Well, she finally revealed that her brother Johnny caught pneumonia and died.  And her brother Charley, the oldest, was hung from his tree. 

A black man in the neighboring town had been accused of stealing goods from a local grocer.  And although he claimed innocence, the locals refused to believe it and quickly decided on a punishment.  So the man took off running and ran through the next town.  And what I'm sure he expected was the locals would follow.  They did.  They scoured every nook and cranny for the fugitive.  And then decided on a more invasive tactic:  go to the homes of every black resident in that town and demand to search inside.  Many obliged.  Charley, age 30, did not.  He explained one—there was no fugitive hiding in his home.  Two—they had no right to come into his house or stand on his property.  He paid for it.  And he paid the taxes.  In fact, he warned them, they were trespassing.  You can imagine the expressions on their faces.  A young black man courageously refusing to sway to the whims of their racism.  In one last effort, the locals demanded to come inside and look for the thief.  Charley still refused.  So they left.  However, they returned later that night with a mob, pulled Charley from his sleep and hung him from his very own tree.  His wife and two small children were forced to watch.

There are many stories like this in the African-American landscape. I know this.  Some too horrific to recall.  But for some reason Aunt Lillie decided to reveal this one on her 100th birthday and send us into a frenzy.  Maybe it was to warn us about the evils of small town living, or to remind us the sacrifice that comes with courage.  Maybe it was a subtle nudge to return to that town and demand some judicial explanation.  Whatever the reason for her blood-true parable, Lillie Ushery can lean back in the comfort of her chair by the window and know she left her descendants something to ponder [do with it what we may].