I invite you to listen to this post. I tend to write how I speak.
A LESSON FROM THE ENSLAVED MOTHER WHO KILLED HER CHILD.
Earlier this month, I visited Princeton University’s Firestone Library to experience their exhibition on Toni Morrison called, “Sites of Memory,”. The exhibition is a poignant exploration of how Morrison’s archive continues to influence the past, present, and future. If you have the time, please go see it (it’s free)! There are six parts to the exhibition (Beginning, Writing Time, Thereness-ness, Wondering and Wanderings, Genealogies of Black Feminism, and Speculative Futures). I probably stayed there for close to two hours, with most of my time spent in the section where there was a video playing of footage from a 1987 interview with Sigmund Koch and Hortense Spillers through Boston University’s Aesthetics Research Project.
Over 8 hours of footage was edited into a two hour long video. I started watching right as Toni Morrison began to recollect her time at Howard University. The interview then shifts to the origin story of Morrison’s prized novel, “Beloved”.
For those that don’t know, a few years prior to Morrison putting ink to paper for “Beloved”, she edited an encyclopedic look at the experiences of Black folks from 1619 to the 1940’s called, “The Black Book.” Within this almanac of Blackness is the story of Margaret Garner. I’ve linked her story here. Long story extremely brief; she was an enslaved mother that escaped with her family to Cincinnati, OH in January of 1856. Soon after their escape, they were found by a posse of brute and morose capturers to be returned into slavery. Instead of subjecting her children to the bastilles of bondage, Margaret attempted to kill them all. She managed to injure her two sons and kill one child, a 2 year-old baby girl. There was another infant child she did not have time to get to. She was arrested and put on trial where there was debate as to whether Margaret and her husband should be tried for murder (suggesting that both they and their children were human beings deserving of fundamental rights), or for theft and destruction of “property” under the Fugitive Slave Law. Margaret Garner’s harrowing story is the inspiration for Beloved’s main character, Sethe.
Filicide. Such a visceral reaction in response to the promise of capture. My initial, guttural instincts felt like this action is the antithesis of unconditional love. But what if it wasn’t? My reaction comes from a place of privilege, where I live in a relatively safe neighborhood with access to resources and no imminent fear of forced capture or imprisonment of me or my baby. To compare my current circumstances with that of Margaret Garner's is irresponsible and insensitive, and therefore, I cast no judgment. The killing of one’s own children isn’t a new phenomenon, though, especially for enslaved women. Stella Dadzie has a brilliant book called, “A Kick in the Belly: Women, Slavery, and Resistance,” that chronicles reproductive rebellion in the Caribbean during the transatlantic slave trade. She recalls stories of some enslaved women who, through infanticide, used the few granules of autonomy they had left to save their children from a lifetime of servitude. Birthing people from across the globe have used infanticide as a tool to liberate their children from unspeakable harm, punishment and suffering. I don’t wish to talk about the ethics or criminality of this behavior. Or morally denounce the act in itself. I don’t even wish to theoretically put myself in the shoes of Margaret Garner or any other person that felt like they had to do the unthinkable. What I want to think about, what I want to immerse myself in, is the truth of love. This truth is not always safe, virginal, and untroubled .
In the 1856 article where Margaret Garner is interviewed about her impending criminal trial, the reporter asked if she was “excited almost to madness when she committed the act,” hinting that she may have been in a mentally deteriorated state. She responds, “No, I was as cool as I now am; and would much rather kill them at once, and thus end their sufferings, than have them taken back to slavery, and be murdered by piece-meal.”
As a parent, I’ve learned to love as a practice. A ritual. I’ve used love as a fortress to take risks and to push myself beyond comfortability. Perhaps as birthing people, we have all experienced the love that brazenly emboldens you to do wild shit…like give birth in the first place. This love is a bountiful gift and equally an intense, emotional burden. With this love comes sacrifice, anxiety, sometimes depression and deep, unbound heartache. Imagine giving birth to a perfect, innocent little human being, knowing that there are people, systems, and institutions waiting for the opportunity to dehumanize, maim, and torture. It’s tough. Even debilitating at times. How far would we go as parents, stewards of the innocent, to protect our children; not through fear but through the deepest crevices of love?
I internalize Margaret Garner’s story as an ultimate example of what love looks like when it’s drowned, wrung dry, and stretched violently in ways that do not encourage healthy flexibility but profound wreckage. How do we learn from Margaret, realizing that what lies beneath her desperation is the bellow, “Sully me but not my children!”? How do we reconcile with the problem of remembering and recollection; despising the mind that does remember? Margaret so vividly remembered the perils of bondage, that she saw no alternative future outside of death and the hope of freedom over yonder. During her interview with the reporter, Margaret recalls, “that if they had given her time, she would have killed them all-that with regard to herself, she cared but little; but she was unwilling to have her children suffer as she had done.”
Margaret Garner’s harrowing story inspired a piece of literature that ineffably reshaped the landscape of literature. “Beloved” provided a provocative account of the hidden history of our country. Even when we close our eyes to the violence of the past, it doesn’t disappear. Instead, we are jarred wide awake with how relevant it is to our present and future. Margaret Garner wasn’t the first or the last mother to believe her children were safer dead than alive. She’s not the only mother, now, then or in the future, to question whether her sacrifices were made in vain. Is any of this worth it? Ultimately, Margaret and her husband were found guilty under the Fugitive Slave Law and sent back to captivity. During the journey, her boat capsized and her surviving daughter drowned. Margaret Garner died in slavery two years later.
How does Margaret Garner’s story reshape the landscape of your life? For me, I’ve thought of Margaret quite often over the last few weeks. Like Toni Morrison, her story haunts and forces me to sit with the gravity of love and what it means to safeguard innocence and freedom for our children. There is this compulsory urge to investigate indignation regarding the subjection of Black bodies and personhood in this country. Margaret compels me to find and use every tool I can to inch closer and closer to that liberation she so desperately sought for her family. Motherhood has radicalized and provided me with the gall to practice refusal. I’ve done things I’ve never thought I’d do. It has made me brave and unashamed. It has introduced and reacquainted me with the policies, systems, and ideologies that wallow in enmity. But motherhood has also forced me to dream out loud. To reconcile my memory with hopes for a better future. I dream of land and healthy food free of toxins. I dream of adventure and a world where people can be who they want to be without fear of assault. I dream of fruitful relationships that foster a beautiful life worth living. Maybe Margaret had the same dreams for herself and her children but were never afforded the opportunity to realize them. Her story will change you if you let it.
More resources on Margaret Garner:
Poem about Margaret Garner by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, “The Slave Mother, A Tale of Ohio”
Information about the Opera that Toni Morrison co-wrote based on Margaret Garner’s story
Recent article in the Cincinnati Enquirer. “Margaret Garner's story has resonated for the past 164 years. It's one she never got to tell”