By Patty Huston-Holm
“In 1966 we were going to change the world…but I’m not sure we’ve made progress.”
“I believed Black people were better off because we were taking care of them, but then I saw on television the hoses and dogs and policemen against them.”
“It’s important to talk to people who are different.”
The comments inside the Ocracoke Community Center on April 24 were many and followed a racial justice-focused documentary, “The Binding Truth,” and the stories about the film’s two male “stars” – Jimmie Lee Kirkpatrick, who is Black, and H.D. Kirkpatrick, who is white.
Jimmie’s ancestors were once North Carolina slaves of the great-great grandfather of H.D., who goes by “De.” They have the same last name because enslaved African Americans often had the name of their slave owners.
“I carry the wound of being an ancestor of people who owned people,” De said of the discovery Jimmie made in genealogy research in 2014. “When Jimmie called me, I was shocked, shamed and full of guilt.”
“Put aside your guilt, and I’ll put aside my anger,” Jimmie had replied.
The two men graduated from the same high school in Charlotte in 1966.
“We’re two retired guys launching this second career,” De said. “We’re talking honestly about how the United States was founded on slavery – politically and economically.”
De was a forensic psychologist. Jimmie is a retired education administrator with a teenage reputation of scoring 19 touchdowns in one high-school season, which is still his school’s record.
Being Black cost Jimmy a spot to play football in the Shrine Bowl, North Carolina’s annual all-star game, and put him at the center of a racial discrimination lawsuit.
Fast forward 50 years. The retirement gig of De and Jimmie is focused on reconciliation.
Following the film production and a 10-year friendship based on honesty, the two septuagenarians launched the “Stirring the Ashes” initiative, under which they help educate and build relationships based on facts about African American treatment in the United States.
On Ocracoke, they engaged adults and students.
“Some of the most profound questions come from young people who have no filters,” said Jimmie, who began speaking about slavery to history classes before reuniting with De. “They ask me how it feels to have my last name a slave name.”
Youth involvement in racial and political discussion and action is important but lacking, several Ocracoke participants said.
They pointed to the nation’s university campuses with today’s anti-Israeli demonstrations related to civilian casualties in Gaza in comparison to lackluster interest in black-white relationship building and the 2024 presidential election.
At the same time, adults at the Ocracoke “Binding Truth” engagement admitted their own lack of understanding and action.
“Is it human nature to diminish someone else?” one attendee asked.
De referred to his 2022 book “Marse: A Psychological Portrait of the Southern Slave Master and his Legacy of White Supremacy.”
“Marse,” is an outdated word used in writing to represent spoken alteration of the word “master” associated with the speech of enslaved African Americans.
The book analyzes the minds and behaviors of people who justify owning another human being. In his book, De says that one key deficiency in the master’s mind is empathy.
It’s this mindset, he says, that twists the Christian Bible to endorse slavery. In the book’s epilogue, De asserts that former President Donald Trump has the Marse mindset – a correlation that understandably upsets Republican MAGA supporters.
As with white-black conversations about race, De feels the political exchange can be civil.
But not, as one off-island participant shared, when a neighbor has a “F**k Biden” sign in his yard.
“I knocked on his door to get to know him,” she said. But when he asked her political party and she said “Democrat,” he shut down.
While no black people attended either event, several attendees mentioned their immigrant backgrounds, positive growing-up experiences with nurturing black women and 2lst century relationships with people of multiple cultures and ethnicities.
One man said that the open-mindedness of people on Ocracoke provides a multi-racial welcoming environment.
“My grandfather, who is 98, says the real goal is that you’re color blind,” he said.
De and Jimmie noted 12 teaching points in a “Stirring the Ashes” handout.
Among those is that 10 of the first 12 American presidents owned slaves and that Thomas Jefferson’s words about equality referred to white men only and not women or people of color.
How do we connect to people uncomfortable connecting to us? How do we have conversations on difficult subjects?
“We can’t make progress unless we hear what somebody has to say,” De said. “I hope and pray we can have the kinds of relationships in this country that can lead us toward truth.”
