Jesse Edwards- The Southern Migrant by Renardo L. Edwards

Jesse Edwards

The Southern Migrant

By

Renardo Edwards

There are people whom are a living history and a bridge from the past to the present and one of those people is our very own Family Patriarch, Jesse Edwards. Jesse is the third child of Cora and Thomas Edwards he was born on December 21 1941 in Potter Station, Alabama. Jesse early childhood was one of a happy child even though he was raised in the Jim Crow south. Family was very important in those days much of one’s socialization and education was formed in a tight knit family village, listening to him reminisce how they all live and work together was something of amazement and wonder. Gone are those days. Jesse has an injured shoulder sadly an injury he had involving my dad and cousin Mary, to think that he fell off a wagon and suffered and injury that bad but he refused to tell his parents to get better medical help, this showed me the toughness this man had even as a little child. 

1940’s Alabama was a different time this was before civil rights or Brown vs Board of Education there was only two groups of people in those days and they were Black and White and for the most part lynching was rare yet the KKK was prevalent all over the Black belt and even than Black people were not only able to survive but in many cases they were able to excel in the trades and even in business.

Jesse grew up in Perry, Dallas, and Autauga counties in some of the most beautiful land on the face of the earth. In the 50’s things were hard but there was a since of freedom for the Black youth that really isn’t parallel even to this day for that matter one can say our youth of today have less freedom and privacy than Jesse had in the 50’s. Jesse worked in the fields when he wasn’t in school and on the side he work at a white owned pool hall as a pool boy, as a pool boy Jesse was privilege to a lot of conversation that whites normally would not discuss around blacks in general but the information he uncovered led him to leave Alabama and move to Chicago. 

Jesse graduated high school in a time many black boys did not, but he also seen a lot of his peers packing up and leaving the fields of the south and headed north to better conditions and pay so in 1961 Jesse and his girlfriend Carolyn took a bus to Chicago where his older sister Louvenia was staying sadly for Jesse his sister passed away with in months of his arrival. Jesse took on a job as a delivery truck driver and he married his childhood sweetheart Carolyn in 1962. Jesse left Selma before the civil rights movement but the movement wasn’t just confined to the south it was all over the north as well.

Chicago is nothing like Selma or Alabama for that matter, yet Jesse had the resolved to see it through when many others were falling on the way side he kept his head to the grind and made it work. There was no going back to the south because there was very little opportunity for African Americans in Alabama. Jesse was making way more money than his people in the south and he would send them support because he knew the monies he sent home would go a long way in Alabama. Jesse the Southern Migrant himself a pioneer because of his success others were embolden to make that leap to other northern metropolis like Cleveland and Detroit. Jesse is a great husband but he was a better father raising 5 kids on the south side of Chicago, I remember a reunion at Uncle Tom’s house where Jesse and the kids were riding ATV’s and just being kids in Jones, Alabama. To say Jesse is a chip off the old block would be a major understatement because it was those values that was engrained in him as a child that made him the husband and father that he is today.

The Patriarch the head of the family or tribe Jesse is our family patriarch he is whom we should model our lives to be so that one day we will be the Patriarch and there will be others to follow him that will continue to educate and grow our young people to make them leaders in hopes they will guide the next generation to even higher callings and planes. This in the fullness of time the truth becomes clearer sadly many of us are not given that much time but, for those who are blessed to see old age one can always look upon the past and see their humble beginnings and reflect on the process of growth that showed them to be right or wrong, and in their old age and know you did the best you could and now, you just wait on the harvest of a life well lived.