Kinkeeping

Cecily:
Both of my grandfathers were in the military during World War II, so seeing a scrapbook with, like all these different soldier, men and people, was kind of like, I wonder if my grandfathers are in somebody’s scrapbook somewhere, kind of unidentified, but there’s like a story about them there.

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My name is Cecily Alexandria and I’m a creative, storyteller, speaker, comedian, human person, a bunch of things.

My grandfather was able to purchase a house in Cobbs Creek in the late 1950s, which is kind of a big deal. My mom has described this particular block in West Philadelphia as being a tree lined street where working class black families were beginning to move in as the Jewish neighbors were moving to settle elsewhere.

This particular area had twin or semi detached homes. Most of the homes have a very similar floor plan, but each twin has its own unique exterior aesthetic. This community was fairly quiet but friendly. They took pride in taking good care of their properties.

Well manicured gardens, swept porches all the way down to the sidewalk. As you approach the house, you notice brick and the beautifully crafted wrought iron rails and columns framing the porch.

As you enter the small vestibule, you open the second door and you immediately enter a large living area. As you walk back, there’s a formal dining room. Then, as you head to the kitchen, there’s a door hiding a set of stairs to the second floor, assumed to be for housekeeper access, but truly for the imagination of the children who would pass through this house.

So much detail was put into the house, from the crown molding to the intricate designs in the corners of the wood flooring and beveled glass accent windows. I did not grow up in Cobbs Creek, but my mom did. She moved back once my grandparents were dying and the house has remained in our family for almost 70 years.

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Growing up, I lived in Ohio, but we visited these grandparents who were eight hours away, more than my paternal grandparents who were only three hours away.

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It was always like, exciting to come into town, just even driving into town off the turnpike and seeing the city and then getting over to the house and having my grandfather sleeping on the couch waiting for us with the TV blasting but once we got in, he was excited to see us.

And, my grandmother, like preparing the rooms and being concerned that we were comfortable. And then we would just explore and see what random, random things they had in the house.

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There was a silver planet moving sculpture with a planet or two missing; A Chinese checker game also missing some of the balls. My pop pop added a gumball machine to the room. He tended to like funny novelty items like the singing bass or the wildly popular “Tickle Me Elmo” (when we were already teenagers.) My older cousin brought back a set of nesting dolls from Russia that I always got a kick out of whenever I came to visit.

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I’m not sure if my grandfather used his GI benefits after the war to purchase this home, but I do know how important the house is to my family. The house holds a lot of memories for us. So, when I had the opportunity to view the photo album in the Atwater Kent collection, all of these memories of my grandparents and my time in their home came flooding back to me.

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Jamie:
From WHYY, you’re listening to Philadelphia Revealed. I’m your host, Jamie Jay, Executive Director of First Person Arts, a non profit organization that believes everyone has a story to tell. Across 10 episodes, you’re going to get a tour of the Atwater Kent Collection, sometimes called Philadelphia’s Attic.

It’s a collection that’s grown over decades, acquiring Philly’s material culture from individuals, families, institutions, sometimes literally from the trash. In every episode of this podcast, you’ll learn about an object in the Atwater Kent Collection and hear a story inspired by it from a First Person Arts storyteller.

We think every Philadelphian will be able to see themselves in this collection and that learning about Philadelphia’s many histories can help us understand its present and future.

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This is Episode 7, Kinkeeping, with storyteller Cecily Alexandria. Cecily is a producer, writer, actor, and motivational speaker, just to name a few. She spent much of her childhood in her grandparents home in Cobbs Creek, and lives there today.

Cecily:
The photo album in this collection was found in the garbage in Norristown. The outer cover is made out of a paper bag, likely a grocery bag. On the inside, there are pages full of photos of black soldiers in World War II. The soldiers are not identified. Later on in the album, there are more domestic photos of a black family in front of their home in what is likely West Philadelphia.

When I first saw this album, my first question was, who are the subjects of the photos? It’s clear whoever put it together took a lot of time figuring out where each photo should go. It’s not just thrown together. All of the people in this album have a story to tell and people who care about them. Of course, it will take some work to identify the subjects of these photos, so my question about who they are remains unanswered for now. But I would like to know how a genealogist or a historian would start their search.

Adrienne:
If you are lucky, you probably grew up in a home in a space or had someone in your family who had photo albums and funeral programs and lots of pictures on the walls and lots of family ephemera.

My name is Adrienne Whaley, and I am a long time genealogist and a former president and programming chair for the African American Genealogy Group in Philadelphia.

Jamie:
Adrienne says that figuring out the identities of the people in the photo album can be like looking for a needle in a haystack.

But there are some questions a genealogist can ask to help guide the process.

Adrienne:
How was this photo album found? Where was it found? Who found it? In the area where it was found, do we know like who were the owners and residents of the houses that were nearby? What all can we figure out about that? That’s just sort of context setting because that information might be useful later on.

If we know that some of these families are connected to Norristown, then it seems like going out and finding, even if we don’t know the names of the families, do we know, is there like an African American community organization out there? Is there a specific church that it’s likely that these families would have attended?

Is there some community history and some interviewing that we could do? And can we take copies of these photos out there to these community group meetings, to the church to you know, whoever and show them around and see if anyone says “I recognize that person.”

Jamie:
Even without the names of the soldiers in the album, the Atwater Kent Collection has made some discoveries. In one of the photos, you see three soldiers are crouched around a sign that reads, “Company E 389 Engineer General Service Regiment.” It’s believed that one of them is Private First Class Clarence Jackson from West Philadelphia.

There are also photos featuring the Logan Pharmacy in North Philadelphia, which was owned by Margaret Logan, one of the first Black women pharmacists in Pennsylvania. In another photo, one of the veterans appears in front of a home at 3806 North 17th Street.

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At the beginning of World War II, black men and women were in service, though often limited to non combat roles. But as it continued, the need for manpower required the acceptance of black soldiers into combat.

Generally speaking, it can be hard to track down information about World War II vets. For example, when researching this piece, we weren’t having any luck finding information about the 389th Engineer General Service Regiment.

Finally, in a digital archive maintained by a World War II history enthusiast, we found a scanned copy of a book detailing the experience of the 389th during the war. The book also has a list of the names and addresses of all surviving soldiers in the regiment. There are Philadelphia addresses listed, but many of the addresses are not located in the area in which the album was found, making a correct identification less likely. Other addresses led back to empty lots or homes that had no property records in the city’s database.

When searching for black veterans. It’s even harder.

Even though nearly 695,000 black men served in combat units by the end of World War II, their experiences and achievements were not documented in the same manner as their white counterparts in other regiments.

When they got home, many black veterans were blocked from using their GI benefits because they were not awarded honorable discharges from service. They instead received what were called “blue discharges,” a neutral dischargement that, although not dishonorable, insinuated that the recipient had “undesirable” characteristics.

Out of the 472 veterans awarded a Medal of Honor for their service in World War II, not a single one was black.

In 1997, the federal government attempted to remedy this by identifying seven black men for the honor, but only one was still alive to receive his medal — Mr. Vernon Baker.

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This pervasive bias didn’t just harm Black service members and their families. It had the secondary effect of making it harder for researchers to create a comprehensive history of the Black experience during and after World War II.

Adrienne:
So people of African descent have been in the United States for centuries at this point. And many of the earliest people were here either as indentured servants or, for the vast majority of people, as enslaved people who were kept as chattel property and whose status followed the status of the mother, right?

That makes it very challenging to trace the vast majority of people of African descent before 1870.

Once you get beyond that, you’re still going to see the legacy of prejudice, right? And of power inequalities. You’re going to see, for example, and I’ve seen this in my own family research in the South, is that you’ll find, for example, marriage registers, like imagine these big old dusty kind of crackly books that are at county courthouses and archives like all across, all across the nation, actually.

And they record, you know, these two people have applied for a marriage license and the marriage license was awarded and these two people were married by such and such a person on such and such a date. When I do some of my family research, I have to look at a book that says “colored marriages” on it.

And there’s a separate book for the same location, same time period that’s for white marriages. So there’s not only the sort of logistical challenge historically, thinking about slavery, but then there’s the sort of psychological and emotional challenge of having to confront the legacy of inequality and racism and prejudice that existed in the past as we are doing research in the present day.

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Jamie:
Though information about the subjects is limited, Cecily says she still connects with the images in the album.

Cecily:
The photos in this album, in some ways, reflect my grandparents a bit. Though there aren’t a lot of photos of their every day life during the period after my grandfather returned from the war, the pictures they did take reflect moments they believed should be preserved; like photos of my mom and her siblings on Easter or out playing in the snow.

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I think it has often been the responsibility of the black community to keep a record of our history, largely because this history has often been overlooked. That tradition is shown through the album.

Jamie:
Adrienne says that there’s actually a word for this practice of documenting and sharing.

It’s called kinkeeping.

Adrienne:
Kinkeeping is a term that has been, it’s probably had a much longer history than what even I’m familiar with. It is the work of sending birthday cards and holiday cards. It is remembering the important dates in people’s lives and giving them calls. It is making sure that the family attends family reunions, sending out family newsletters and all of those sorts of things to make sure that the networks and the relationships, uh, among members of extended families don’t have the opportunity to fall apart.

Jamie:
This history of systematic racism makes kin keeping an even greater responsibility for many Black families.

Adrienne:
People of African descent in the United States of America have been told basically throughout our entire histories that our stories don’t matter. They have not been prioritized in record keeping for centuries in this nation. And it has been illegal for a good portion of time in our past for people of African descent, even to learn to read and write, which shapes the material that ends up in archives, whether they’re, you know, uh, public or personal or whatever.

And so, when people of African descent, when we maintain our records, when we hold on to the ticket stubs from concerts that we attended, when we continue to hold on to the military papers from our our grandparents and great grandparents, when we maintain these photo albums and make sure that they get passed down to future generations, when we document things on Facebook and Instagram and use all of those as methods of maintaining communication with our families and kin keeping, we’re putting a stake in the ground that says that our stories and our history absolutely matter.

It has been so hard for so many people for so long to record our histories and to uncover our histories and to disentangle them from the propaganda of racism and the challenges of unequal power structures and from the products and experiences of physical, spiritual, emotional, psychological violence that has been done to our people, that when we say, these things matter, whether it is a photo album or any other example of memory keeping for a family, it has this incredibly powerful, but also sometimes, frightening, I’ll say, ability to, to put a stake in the ground to claim the importance of our history.

The work of collecting these things and seeing the importance of storing these things, of saving these things, of pulling them out and talking to other people, all of that is also a part of this, this kin keeping work of making sure that we remember who we, who we come from and who we’re connected to. It’s the work of making sure not only that we’re connected in the present, but also that we maintain our ties to our history.

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Cecily:
We keep seeing throughout history how wild it is that Black people continue to show up for this country and are serving, protecting, and doing all these things and are not being recognized.

So I do think there is some level of pride that we have, and the need to have that pride documented in some way, even if it’s just for ourselves and our family unit.

Jamie:
Cecily was also inspired by another object in the collection; a for sale sign with text that reads “Colored G. I. Only.” It’s the kind of sign a realtor places on the lawn of a house that’s for sale.

The sign was found in the basement of a home in Mount Airy. Much like the photo album, it hints at many stories affecting black Americans without revealing the story itself. In a way, the sign is a direct call to action, encouraging black G. I. s to inquire about purchasing a home and claiming the benefits they earn through service. Adrienne says that home can play a key role in a family’s ability to kinkeep.

Adrienne:
The idea of home is a powerful, powerful idea.

People of African descent, throughout the hardships of our lives in this country, have always worked and fought to make home a place that could be safe for family and community. Having a stable place that you can call your own and that generations of your family afterwards can also turn to when they’re in time, in a time of need, in a place of needing comfort and safety and stability, knowing that that is a place that they can come back to, and then seeing that that is a place that they document as a part of their lives, whether it’s at the forefront or whether it’s in the background of their images, you can just see how much it means.

And I think that when we look at some of the pictures that are in this photo album, they speak to the importance of having that safe space. They speak to the ways in which we celebrate and are proud of these spaces as our own spaces, as spaces where we can express ourselves, where we can have important conversations and where we can gather with loved ones to engage in the work of kinkeeping and building family and remembering.

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Cecily:
After hearing Adrian’s expertise, I’ve learned that I and my mother are in fact kinkeepers without even realizing it.

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We have a space in the house with family trees for both sides of my grandparents. My mom wrote a book based on her grandparents love letters to each other during a brief separation to find a new home up north. I have been eager to know more about those who came before me, so I did my ancestry and created online trees using the database I had access to.

I found Adrian’s information to just strike me as, keep going, keep trying to figure out who I am and stuff. She was talking about the 1870 wall and I found that to be true. We start assuming information before that, like the 18s, 17s, all those, the information is assumed. And there’s some little trinkets of information, but there’s no real direct line. And so now I find myself trying to reach even further by doing the DNA stuff, which still doesn’t connect me fully because there’s still like pieces that are missing. So, it’s a lot of work. It’s a lot like heart work as well. But it’s important to keep the history.

Jamie:
Identifying those in this photo album will take a lot of time, love, and research. If you find yourself in a similar predicament in your search for family history, there are tons of resources to help you on your journey. And Adrienne shares some tips to guide your research.

Adrienne:
The beautiful thing about photo albums and other mementos and objects that remind us of our family history is that they provide us with an opportunity to connect with the people who came before us. And if that is something that you are excited to do, then know that there are a ton, a ton of resources out there to support you, both in general, and also specifically if you are someone who’s interested in African American genealogy. There is a local organization, uh, of course, called the African American Genealogy Group. There’s also a chapter of a national organization that is the Afro American Historical and Genealogical Society and they’ve got chapters all across the United States to support people who are interested in doing research into African American families.

Jamie:
Most of all, Adrienne stresses that the best place to start is at home.

Adrienne:
And when I say start at home, what I mean is our homes, as this photo album shows, are historical repositories. Think about the collection of report cards that your parents have been keeping for you for decades, you know, think about all the different photo albums that you have, the funeral programs that are in your grandmother’s dresser drawer, think about the suitcase that is in your great uncle’s attic and all of those things. We have to mine those because they’re full of useful information. They’ll sometimes keep you from having to spend money to send off for that information from other places. So start with yourself, work backwards, start at home, mine your family archives, and maybe, the most important thing that I can say, talk to your elders now. Talk to your elders and anybody whose memory may be fragile.

There is a proverb that you have probably heard that comes from West Africa, as I’ve been told, and basically, it says that when an elder dies a library burns. You can never get back the specific body of knowledge that each of your elders has when they pass. So if you do nothing else, get a recorder, get your phone, get a video camera, get on Zoom or Skype, or you know, whatever it is, and interview the elders in your family and the people whose memories are fragile so that you can record their voices, their likenesses, their stories.

Cecily:
Now, as an adult, I can feel the memories of the past and I get to witness them develop with each passing generation. To keep this living archive going, kinkeeping is essential.

The task can be exhausting, but I know it is worth it because our stories must not be lost or thrown away.

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