This is an opinion column

I haven’t written in a couple of weeks. One week by choice, the other interrupted by severe weather.

My last column was about the place where a friend of mine was raised here in rural Wilcox County. It is adjacent to where we both live. This is a column, not a book, so sometimes it just has to end, and that is when the craft of writing comes into play. I ended that column on a happy note, as so it was. But there was a rest of the story. And I don’t seem to be able to free myself of it. I don’t want to particularly write about it. I keep trying to move on from it. I want to ignore it, but it keeps coming back to me.

It was a long time ago, but we are still kind of close to it here. I’m not haunted by it, I am just aware.

We were standing there on the bank looking down at the flowing Alabama River sparkling in the sun. I guess it looked the way it always has. Just as it did before steamboats steamed.

Based on her memory, she felt sure she was near where her grandparents would trail down to the river and fish. We listened in silence for a while, to the sounds of summer.

She said her grandmother would run when she would see fishermen in boats trolling the bank casting. She was afraid of them. Sometimes they would call them names. She said when her grandmother would run, she would run too.

Her granddad wouldn’t run. He would only leave if they started acting like they were going to shoot, but as far as the names, they could call him anything they wanted. He wasn’t moving.

We went on with the day. We laughed. I came home. But in a lot of ways, I am still standing there looking down at the river.

My grandmother was a beautiful woman. She was kind, and always carried herself well and properly. My mind won’t allow the imagine of her ever feeling she had to run out of fear.

Words can capture moments like a picture. The only difference is you can shape words to make the picture look like you want it to look. You can show only the beauty, if you choose. And there is no denying that there is natural beauty here – in this land where plantation used to bump against plantation. My backyard was once a field of cotton. And I am hardly alone. There are always people in this area researching the history of where we are. There are ample resources.

The population of Wilcox County is currently around 10,000 total. In 1860, which was just before the start of the Civil War, there were approximately 17,500 enslaved people in this one county. I don’t know if that was an all time high. I do not know how many decades that had been the way of life. And I am not interested in discussing or debating or weighing any angle or opinion of the matter. I just live here. I have raised kids here. There is a history people of here have to come to terms with here. I have done that…I think. I guess my question, is where are all of those people buried. Minus any who moved north or lived beyond 1865. From 1819 when Wilcox was established as a county – possibly before – until 1865…where were slaves buried?

She said they would pass by graves almost 60 years ago that were not inside any gates. There were just sinkholes with a stone with names worn away with age.

It has been a long time. Everybody once there, is gone. Cotton hasn’t been king in generations. It is covered by history and woods now. But in these quiet woods…might lie a people. Maybe that is the spirit we so often speak of feeling here.

Amanda Walker is a columnist and contributor with AL.com, The Birmingham News, Selma Times Journal, Thomasville Times, West Alabama Watchman, and Alabama Gazette. Contact her at [email protected] or at https://www.facebook.com/AmandaWalker.Columnist