The need for humans to emotionally “understand” slavery so often leads to the over interpretation or a complete manifestation of 19th Century emotions by appropriating modern day psychological evaluations. This happens ALL the time. This never works, nor is it in any way logical or fair to the people we are assigning feelings to. By creating a situation that our modern day minds can understand the reasons for and reactions too, we minimize the human experience of those who “did” the experiencing. We assign emotional intent and emotional responses. 

The complicated nuances of human relationships are oversimplified into three categories: victim, villain or hero. We miss the desire humans have to relate to each other through shared experiences, to bond.  No matter the situation, no amount of dysfunction can negate a persons’ basic human instinct to connect. The complex road of the human journey is paved with shared experiences.

Anna McKissack was a child, only twelve-years old when William McKissack died. She and her mother Almira were drawn by William’s daughter, Eleanor, and her husband Orville McKissack. Eleanor and Orville were known to be “harsh” slave owners. When she was only sixteen years old, Anna gave birth to her oldest daughter, Ella. The circumstances behind Ella’s birth are unknown and probably always will be. However, the family story is that Ella’s father was Orville McKissack. 

Upon hearing Orville’s name, the first thought I had was “oh no, that bastard raped her.” Anna was a sixteen year old baby, a slave with no legal, social or human rights. Orville McKissack was fifty-two years old. Immediate images of violence flooded my mind. I sat on this feeling of disgust for a few days, then I started doing my job. Not being ruled by emotion, but connecting timelines and building narratives with facts. I pretty quickly realized Eleanor and Orville had a son, also named Orville. This Orville was very close to Anna in age, within a year or two. He was young, but his father was old. Neither of their ages exempted them from being the father. A detail of the oral family tradition that very much points to Orville Jr, was that he often visited Ella and her family. The elder Orville died in 1887, but Jr. lived until 1915. Ella even named one of her sons Orville, after her “father.” 

It is equally likely that either or neither of the Orvilles were Ella’s father. Anna could have been raped, or she could have experienced human desire. One of these strips her of all power, one gives her power. I am uncomfortable with the idea of her being raped, but also am hesitant to strip her of perhaps the only power she may have possessed. 

Anna was a single mother. Only twenty years old when freedom came. She had been raised in an institution where the black family structure was completely broken. The status of slavery followed through the mother, not the father. Father’s became superfluous and slave women very often had children fathered by different men. Anna had three children by three different men, before she was married. This was not an uncommon occurrence. In fact it was a cultural norm, especially for a woman emerging from slavery. 

Between 1870 and 1880, Anna’s mother, Almira, died and Anna got married to a sawyer named John Bunch. At her marriage Anna had three children: Ella, Hattie and Sidney. She and her family moved into Rippa Villa to work as servants of the Cheairs family, most likely living in the rooms above the kitchen. Anna was employed as a cook. This position would have given her much security in a society undergoing a staggering shift.

Ella McKissack was born a black child with white skin. The complexities of that experience are sadly similar yet drastically different than being born biracial today. Biracial children share a singular experience that can be alienating, belonging, but not belonging to two different cultures. Ella’s skin would have given her a lot of social mobility within the black community, but no acceptance into the white community. In white society, there was no difference from Anna’s skin to Ella’s. Both were born black. Both were born slaves. 

Ella, an illiterate woman, married John Stephenson, a teacher. They had eight children, whom John educated and Ella nurtured. Ella’s life could be interpreted as  quiet compared to Anna’s, but both stories were necessary. Both show the development of the black female experience stepping out of slavery and building a future. Realizing that the journeys we have been attempting to make sense of are complex and unrelatable to any experience we understand is important. We do not need to assign a victim, villain or hero card, nor do we have to “understand.” This is perhaps a part of history that if we do understand it, we have lost a piece of our own humanity. Instead, let’s be grateful for the people like Anna and Ella, who were filled with bottomless amounts of resilience. Not victims, but survivors, whose strength nurtured the next generation.