Red River Examines Reconstruction-Era Massacre
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Red River Examines Reconstruction-Era Massacre
Red River gives a rich impression of a family history expansively and proudly told. Lalita Tademy tells us that extracting the history of her fathers ancestors was sometimes painful. A different type of family story, lacking shape and enthusiasm, only stingily disclosed, rationed with vague hints or whispers, and only then with great reluctance and obvious discomfort by the teller. Its a tragic fact that the voices of many African-Americans who endured slavery in America were never recorded. Lalita Tademys decision to re-create these lost voices by using the format of a historical novel is her artistic response to this gap in our national history.
The Prologue is written in the voice of Polly Tademy as she turns 100 in 1935. As the wife of Sam Tademy, she had lived through the Colfax massacre of Easter Sunday 1873. Of herself and her women friends, she writes: “Outlasting our men, our husbands, our sons, even some grandsons. We all had it hard, but the men, they had it worse, specially those what come up on life from the front.” One premise of Red River seems to be that after the Civil War leading all the way up to the present, black men suffered a particular kind of degradation different from that which black women suffered.
Again in the Prologue, Polly Tademy extols the achievements of African-American males of her era: “What our colored men try to do for the rest of us in Colfax matter. They darent be forgot. While we women keep the wheel spinning, birthing the babies and holding together a decent home to raise them in, taking care of them what too young or too old to take care of theyself, our menfolks does battle how they got to in a world want to see them broke down and tame.” In this novel, do you see a comparison between the female struggling to tend the home fires, and the male struggling to compete and survive with dignity in the hostile world outside the home?
In Chapter 1, Israel Smith describes his obligation to occupy the Colfax Courthouse as “a citizens job.” In Chapter 2, Isaac “McCully” McCullen talks about his brown fedora as his “voting hat.” When he first exercised his right to vote (casting his vote for the Republican Party), he wore this hat. He placed a heron feather in its brim and called it “a rare feather from the phoenix bird what lived in the desert for five hundred years, go up in flames, raise itself up brand new from the ashes.” McCullys brown fedora is passed down from generation to generation. Discuss why an authentic relic from a historic event acquires deeper and deeper meaning with the passage of time. Scattered throughout RED RIVER, there are over forty-four “Figures,” which are actual documents, photographs, and drawings from the historical record.
In Chapter 6, Sam Tademy learns that Spenser stole large quantities of foodstuffs from Crafts store to feed the men and their families who had been uprooted to occupy and defend the Colfax Courthouse. Sam opposes