Although Baynard Woods is an accomplished journalist, we first came across his name in a piece he wrote for the Washington Post called “My name is a Confederate monument, so I cross it out when I write it.” Woods asks, how do you dismantle a name? He writes, “I quickly realized that, though I could no longer bear my name…I could not change it either. To change it would only continue the coverup that kept me from recognizing its reality. And any name I chose would probably be just as fraught as my own.”
After some research, Woods concludes, “I am trying to unbind the knots of power that still have effects in the present. As Jacques Derrida writes, when a name is “cancelled by a work of erasure,” it is “obliterated rather than forgotten, toned down, devalued.” And so I leave my name, but I cross it out, allowing the slash to act as crime scene tape, both marking off that history and acknowledging it. The strike through my name serves as a reminder of my civil, psychological and ethical obligation.”
Lemon Branch in Clarendon County, SC, where Peter Lemon was murdered
We encourage you to read the WaPo piece if you are a subscriber, and are pleased to bring you Woods’ research on a member of his family who was part of a group of white men who murdered a Black elected official, Peter Lemon, in 1871. If you are a NYT subscriber, you can read the original May 1, 1871 story here.
Woods concludes, “I could never amass enough evidence against I. M. Woods to prove beyond a doubt that he murdered Peter J. Lemon. But the conspiracy of white supremacy, which involves both silence and violence, was most certainly responsible for the crime and its coverup and by attempting to unravel that conspiracy, I was trying to extricate myself from it and dismantle it altogether. And so, what began as the investigation of a Reconstruction-era murder, became a chronicle of their effects on my own life, a recognition and a confession of my own complicity.”
Read the full story here.
Baynard Woods (photo credit J.M. Giordano)
Author: Baynard Woods is an award-winning writer and journalist based in Baltimore. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Oxford American Magazine, and many other publications. He is the author of Inheritance: A Legacy of Whiteness. You can read the first chapter here.
Since white supremacist power depends on silence and violence, as reiterated in this story, I am deeply appreciative that the editors and writers for BitterSweet speak up, in their own words and in uplifting the words of others. Baynard Woods’ story breaks the silence and names the violence. Thank you.
What an extraordinary story. Mr. Woods has shown me a new way to be accountable as a descendant of enslavers, and has introduced something that had not occurred to me: my name too is Confederate monument. Fleming comes laden with the love and joy and pride of the recent generations, and with the burden and, as Mr. Woods says, the complicity, of my ancestors, the enslaving Flemings of Charleston and Missouri.
I discovered, as did Mr. Woods, that enslavers marry enslavers, so I also have these names in my history: Lee, Janney, Irwin, Jefferson, Bland, Randolph, Fitzhugh, and many more. Every piece of the puzzle I solve reveals more and more enslaver pieces to discover.
My name will forever remind me to continue the work, to have the difficult conversations, and to share the whole truth.