HAMILTON
CHAPTER ONE
CHARACTERS
. . . it was just my good luck to have descended from a slew of talkers and storytellers—plain out-and-out liars at times—who did not merely tell stories, but created them when they forgot parts of real stories or family history, who in effect, recreated who they were and where they came from and what they would become through acts of imagination.*
VIRGINIA HAMILTON was born into a family of storytelling characters.
Their stories swirled around her like the summertime fireflies that flitted on her family’s land in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Their stories illuminated her mind with images of slavery, family, adventures, home, and freedom. Their stories floated into her imagination, their glow staying with her for years after.
When their memories of real events faded, Virginia’s family would get creative with their tales. She referred to this gray area between fact and, well, not quite so much, as Rememory. Virginia defined it as “an exquisitely textured recollection, real or imagined, which is otherwise indescribable.”1
As every story needs someone to tell it, let’s begin Virginia’s with those who would create these rememories.
The patriarch of the family was Levi Perry, Virginia’s grandfather.
Levi was just five years old when his mother, Mary Cloud, smuggled him into Ohio. Mary and Levi were living as slaves in Virginia. In 1857 Mary escaped and traveled from Virginia to Jamestown, Ohio, by the Underground Railroad.2
Many Perry family members had settled around Jamestown in the flat farmlands of the southwestern part of the state. Once safely there, Mary left Levi with relatives and was never seen again.
Levi was taken in and thrived among his family members. As a young man, he met and married Rhetta Adams. Her family members were also freed slaves and had settled in nearby Yellow Springs. The family took root and grew. Levi and Rhetta’s family blossomed as well: they had ten children. And at least once a year, all his children heard the story of how Levi came to live in Ohio.3
Levi would gather Virginia’s mother, Etta Belle, and her siblings and tell how his mother brought him home to his family. “Set down, and I will tell you about slavery and why I ran, so that it will never happen to you.”4
“And this was the original story as far as I’m concerned,” Virginia said. “That was the beginning of the family culture and, after that, storytelling must have been in that family from early on, because everyone told stories.”5
As Levi was just a child when they escaped, details of the journey were as fleeting as the fireflies. The power of the story was in the accomplishment. Mary’s actions provided freedom for Levi and his children.
Virginia remembered taking walks with her Grandpa Levi, holding on to his fist. His hand was permanently closed into a fist and scarred from a fire in the gunpowder mill where he worked as a younger man. He would lift her up and swing her around, and around, Virginia giggling away.6
“I knew him as this old friend, chewing tobacco, barely five feet tall, who, at eighty, could jump from a standing-still position into the air to click his heels together three times and land still standing. Never ever could I do that.”7
ETTA BELLE PERRY HAMILTON, VIRGINIA’S MOTHER
© 2016 The Arnold Adoff Revocable Living Trust
Years later when Virginia won the Coretta Scott King Award for her book The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales, she honored her grandfather in her acceptance speech. She told the audience, “Levi Perry’s life, or the gossip about his days, has elements of mystery, myth, and folklore. . . . It is from hearing such tales that I became a student of folklore.”8
As loving as Levi was, he was also strict as a father.
Virginia’s mother, Etta Belle, rebelled against Levi’s rules. Levi insisted when she began dating that she only go out with ministers. Etta Belle was so upset with his restrictions that she once jumped out a window and ran away. Eventually, Etta Belle moved away from Yellow Springs, to Detroit. While there, she traveled to visit her sister Bessie and Bessie’s husband in Canada. The trip would change the course of Etta’s life.
KENNETH HAMILTON, VIRGINIA’S FATHER (FIFTH FROM LEFT)
© 2016 The Arnold Adoff Revocable Living Trust
Bessie’s husband had a friend, a handsome man named Kenneth James Hamilton.
Kenneth had graduated from Iowa State Business College in the late 1890s. Back then, not many young black men completed high school, much less college. After obtaining his degree, Kenneth was told by his mother, a cook for a prominent banker, that there was a position for him at the bank. Kenneth dressed up in a suit and tie to apply for the position. He walked into the bank, prepared for perhaps his first job as a teller. Instead of being shown to the customer counter, however, he was given a mop and bucket. Kenneth walked out of the bank.9
Kenneth began traveling the country, playing his mandolin, and working various jobs, from serving on the wait staff at the Palmer House in Chicago to holding a position as a porter on the Canadian Pacific Railway.
One night during her visit with Bessie, Etta went to a dance hall. Ballroom dancing was quite popular then. Kenneth was an excellent ballroom dancer. He waltzed into the room to an orchestral rendition of “Bye, Bye, Blackbird” and Etta decided right then and there that he was the man for her.10
They fell in love and married. Kenneth wanted to move to a big city, but Etta felt drawn to return to her home and family. They came back to her land in Yellow Springs. Kenneth drew on his work experiences and settled into a job as the headwaiter of the Tearoom, the dining hall at Antioch College. Kenneth eventually became manager of the hall, and was beloved by teachers as well as students.
Etta and Kenneth started their own family, raising their five children on the twelve-acre farm.
Their youngest was a little girl with dark wavy hair, big hazel eyes, and the beautiful light-brown skin of her ancestors. Born on March 12, 1934, she was named after her grandfather Levi’s home state, Virginia. She listened to her parents weave tales during the day and fell asleep at night to the sounds of her mother’s lullaby. “Rockabye baby-bye, sleep little tot . . . I’ll rest you in the elm shade when the day gets too hot.”11
Virginia benefited both from being the youngest child and from having older parents. Etta Belle was in her forties and Kenneth in his fifties when Virginia was born. She was “spoiled” when she was young and allowed a lot of freedom to play with her cousins. Yet her parents had high expectations of her.
“My mother, Etta Belle Hamilton, was a perfectly round, small woman, not five feet tall. . . . She had a commanding presence, and a stern look from her could stop me cold. She was awfully good to me though and a wonderful teller of tales. I did my best to please her,” Virginia wrote.12
Beautiful and determined
