In Full Color Page 17

  In 2009, I added a line item to HREI’s budget for a Juneteenth program, and, working together, Albert and I organized the first Juneteenth celebration ever held in North Idaho. We succeeded in attracting more than three hundred people that first year. I handled the advertising, press, signage, food purchases, and T-shirt design, while Albert cooked chicken on his truck-sized barbecue grill in HREI’s parking lot and led Buffalo Soldier presentations on horseback.

  The more time Albert and I spent together, the closer we became. One day he asked me about my family. “Is it just you and Franklin? You don’t seem to have much other family involved.”

  I nodded.

  “Well, I don’t need to know all the details, but it seems like you could use a dad and Franklin could use a grandpa.”

  That he recognized there was a void in our lives meant a lot to me. That he was volunteering to fill that hole meant even more. I started calling him “Dad” soon after that, and he referred to me as his daughter when being introduced to my friends and colleagues. To Franklin, he was always “Grandpa Albert,” and Albert thoroughly embraced the role. He took Franklin fishing. He invited us to his house for holiday meals. He even celebrated his birthday with Franklin, as their birthdays fell in the same week in October. With one out of every six Black men being sent to prison at some point in their lives, Black children—especially Black boys—need as many male role models as they can get.

  Albert was so good with kids I invited him to speak about civil rights issues at a summer camp I organized at HREI called “Young Advocates for Human Rights.” He’d been an instructor most of his adult life, teaching in the Marines and at several high schools and a community college in San Diego, and his experience as an educator came across in his presentation. While listening to him, an idea occurred to me. As someone who was alive during both the Jim Crow and civil rights eras and who was so knowledgeable and entertaining, he’d make a great guest lecturer for some of my classes at EWU. I was delighted when he agreed to do it.

  When I introduced my classes to my dad and he spoke about Black history in the United States, he took events that might have seemed dull and antiquated when students read about them in a textbook and, by sharing his personal experiences, made them come alive. He talked about the day-to-day difficulties—eating at a restaurant, seeing a movie—of living under Jim Crow. He described how as a child he’d fled the South for the North with his father and brother as part of the Great Migration after his dad had an altercation with a white police officer. As a former drill sergeant in the Marines, he could also speak with authority about what life was like in the military before desegregation. Not easy, according to him. On three separate occasions, he’d had his life threatened by white subordinates who refused to acknowledge his superior rank. EWU was a PWI—a predominately white institution—but many of the students who listened to him loved him. Even those who could barely remember a single thing I’d taught them could recall Albert’s stories.

  My relationship with Albert felt perfectly natural. We already related to each other as father and daughter, so using those terms changed almost nothing. Nobody ever asked me if Albert was my biological dad. They just assumed he was, based on my appearance and his, which was a mix of Black, Native American, and Scottish. Visually, we made sense. The fact that his wife Amy was white may have lent even more credibility to the idea, although, just as I’d done with Spencer’s wife Nancy, I never referred to her as “Mom,” and she never called me her daughter. Family is a private matter, just as one’s identity is, so I didn’t feel obligated to explain the situation to other people. People saw my identity and my family correctly, even if what was “correct” to me would be considered rare, nontraditional, or unreal to others. This was my life, not theirs.

  From time to time people I didn’t know very well would ask me if my mom or dad was Black. I’d usually say that my mom was white because to say that neither of my biological parents was Black, that my chosen father was Black, and that I identified as Black would have created a long conversation that, to be honest, I didn’t feel obligated or comfortable sharing with total strangers or casual acquaintances. I had learned from my time in Mississippi that most folks, if not all of them, who asked this question didn’t want a longwinded answer. Even for people who became my good friends over time, it felt awkward and unnecessary to have to explain the very complex evolution of my identity and my unique family. Between raising a small child and working nearly every minute of the day, I didn’t have very many close friends, and I didn’t want to risk losing the ones I did have by oversharing. I was content with them seeing me as me, and if they were ever to hear the details of how I’d come to be that way, I trusted that, given all that I’d been through, they would understand why I’d chosen not to share everything with them. As for everyone else—strangers who only knew me as an increasingly public figure in a very small city—it really wasn’t any of their business, was it?

  If you’re hoping to protect those you love from the judgment of others, as I was, you have to be cautious with whom you share all the intimate details of your life. To that end, I tried to answer questions about my identity with the greatest degree of accuracy while not compromising my need to protect Franklin and myself. By doing this, I hoped I could shield our small family from people’s misunderstandings, conflicting definitions, and beliefs about race, identity, family, and love.

  Understanding how miseducation about race and the cultural boundaries and codes that have been put into place in American society might conflict with my true nature, I decided that the most honest and real way for me to live was to be Black without any explanations, reservations, apologies, or room for negotiation. It had taken me so many years to finally embrace who I was and love myself that I didn’t want my understanding of myself to be muddled by other people’s perceptions or misunderstandings. I wasn’t trying to be anyone else. I wasn’t copying someone else’s life as a way of escaping my own. All I wanted was to be the most beautiful shade of myself I possibly could.

  And yet, as at home as I felt being Black, bonding with other members of the Black community, and being recognized not as an outsider who was “down” but as an insider who was truly in the know, I had a nagging fear that the wonderful and beautiful maturation of my identity I’d enjoyed balanced on a precariously thin precipice. Every job I took on, every relationship I entered, every word out of my mouth was a risk. I was stuck in an awful limbo. I’d never been entirely comfortable in white settings, but I also knew I couldn’t fully relax and reveal everything about myself in Black settings, either. Scientists and scholars knew race wasn’t a biological imperative, but many people still clung to old-fashioned beliefs, and if they were ever to see the parts of my extended family I’d turned my back on, my entire world could come crashing down.

  Chapter Twenty

  Malicious Harassment

  JUST AS SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA is known for attracting starlets with big-screen ambitions, North Idaho has earned a reputation as a breeding ground for white supremacy groups. When I moved to Coeur d’Alene, at least five of them were headquartered in the area, including the Aryan Nations, a neo-Nazi hate group founded by Hitler enthusiast Richard Butler. After retiring as an aeronautical engineer in 1974, Butler moved from California to Hayden Lake, Idaho, a small town just north of Coeur d’Alene, where he bought twenty acres of land and turned it into a military-style compound complete with a two-story guard tower and armed guards.

  The compound served as a factory of propaganda and violence. In 1981, Butler hosted the first Aryan World Congress, an annual gathering of the most influential racist leaders in the country and the white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and skinheads who followed them. The Aryan Nations made its presence known in Coeur d’ Alene that year when one of its members harassed and threatened a biracial family and defaced the exterior of a restaurant owned by Sid Rosen, who was Jewish, with a swastika and other hateful graffiti.

  Responding to these incidents, Dina Tann
ers invited seven other local activists to join her at the First Christian Church to figure out how to thwart such hate crimes, and together they formed the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations (KCTFHR). Two years later, the task force was instrumental in getting Idaho’s Malicious Harassment Act passed, making hate crimes a felony offense punishable by up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine. Working hand in hand with local law enforcement agencies, it also created a Victim Support Committee, which advocated for victims of harassment and hate crimes and sponsored human rights rallies like the one that drew more than a thousand people to Coeur d’Alene’s City Park on July 12, 1986. Two months later, Order II, a domestic terrorist organization affiliated with the Aryan Nations, responded by bombing the home of Bill Wassmuth, KCTFHR’s president and a popular local pastor, and, later that month, three other sites around town, including the Federal Building.

  Such violence would ultimately lead to the group’s undoing. On July 1, 1998, Victoria Keenan, a Native American woman from nearby Sandpoint, was driving home from her niece’s wedding when her son Jason inadvertently tossed his wallet out one of the car’s open windows. The bizarre incident occurred right outside the entrance to the Aryan Nations’ compound at a time when the security guards were particularly jumpy. When the Keenans’ 1977 Datsun backfired, the guards mistook the sound for a gunshot. Two of them along with a skinhead from California jumped into a pickup and chased after the Keenans for two miles, shooting at their vehicle until they succeeded in hitting one of its tires and forcing the car off the road. One of the guards grabbed Victoria Keenan by the hair and put a gun to her head. Another hit her in the ribs with a rifle butt. When asked if she was “an Indian,” she swallowed her pride and lied, saying, “No, I’m just a poor white farmer girl. I’m on your guys’ side.” Only after a car approached did the men decide to let the Keenans go.

  Afterward, the Keenans contacted KCTFHR’s attorney Norm Gissel, who teamed up with Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center and prominent local attorney Ken Howard, and filed a civil lawsuit against the security guards and Richard Butler. When a jury awarded the Keenans $6.3 million in damages, it bankrupted the Aryan Nations, forcing Butler to sell the compound. Greg Carr—the same Greg Carr who’d go on to contribute a million dollars to help establish HREI—bought the property, demolished the compound, and donated the land to the North Idaho College Foundation, which turned it into a peace park. Butler died in 2004, the same year I moved to Coeur d’Alene.

  With its headquarters destroyed and its leader gone, the Aryan Nations struggled to survive, but their brand of hate never completely disappeared from the area. Splinter groups formed, and they grew particularly enraged after Barack Obama became our country’s first Black president. The furor Obama’s election aroused wasn’t limited to North Idaho. The hope his ascension to the White House engendered in people of color was tainted by a harsh reality: Americans, by and large, were racist as fuck. Seeing a Black man in the Oval Office inspired those who’d previously contented themselves with making snide comments at the dinner table to start openly spewing their racially charged vitriol in public. During his two terms in office, President Obama would be called “tar baby,” “that boy,” and the “food-stamp president” by a succession of Republican politicians, all of whom were white and male. He was also treated with a level of disrespect—Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina called him a liar as Obama was delivering a speech before a joint session of Congress, and Arizona Governor Jan Brewer shook her finger in his face on the tarmac of the Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport—it’s hard to imagine he would have received if he’d been white.

  Much of the anti-Obama backlash in North Idaho was directed at HREI and—because I was the face of the organization and was commonly perceived as Black or biracial—at me. After settling into the job, my first big opportunity to expand the institute’s reach came in February 2009. For Black History Month, I developed curriculum guidelines, prepared handouts, and made suggested reading lists for local teachers. I also helped school libraries create displays that featured Black-conscious books. My efforts helped HREI’s audience grow, but they also attracted unwanted attention.

  Donna Cork and I were HREI’s only full-time employees, and when she went to lunch one day I was left alone in the building. I was writing thank-you cards to those who’d donated money during a recent fundraiser when the front door bell rang, announcing a visitor’s arrival. HREI was partly a museum, so it was common for people to drop in unannounced to view the exhibits. As I made for the front door, I was rehearsing the spiel I typically gave visitors when I rounded the corner and came face to face with two scary-looking white men with shaved heads, piercings, black leather vests, and swastika tattoos, and an equally tatted, pierced, and menacing white woman. The three of them stood like a wall in front of me.

  “We just want to let you know we don’t like what you’re doing here,” the man in the middle said.

  My heart sounded like a drum in my head. The institute didn’t have a panic button, an alarm system, or security cameras, forcing me to improvise. “Well,” I said, handing each of them a manual and doing my best to remain calm, “maybe you’re just not familiar with all the great new programs we have going on here. Welcome to the Human Rights Education Institute. Let me give you a tour.”

  Refusing to let on that I knew who they were, I guided them through the political power and human rights exhibit while silently praying that another visitor would stop by or that Donna would return early from her lunch break. When one of the men rolled his eyes and the other one saluted the swastika on a poster for the Social Democratic Party of Germany, which actually denounced Hitler’s Nazi regime, I pretended not to notice. My plan was to keep distracting them until I’d succeeded in leading them outside the building.

  As we were walking through the lobby on our way to the next exhibit, the man who first spoke up stopped me with a question that sent chills down my spine. “Where does your son go to school?”

  Shaken, I almost tripped on a crack in the cement floor. “I didn’t realize you knew I had a son.” I knew I needed to be vague. “He goes to school . . . in the north part of the city.”

  He crossed his arms and faced me, striking a pose that showed he felt like he had the upper hand. “And where do you live?”

  “A couple miles from here. Why do you ask?”

  “We don’t like what you’re doing here,” he reiterated before motioning to the others with a jerk of his head that it was time to go. Before walking out the door, all three of them gave the Nazi salute.

  My original birth certificate, which lists Jesus Christ as the attendant to my birth and no address, because Larry and Ruthanne were living in a teepee at the time.

  Josh standing in front of the teepee that served as our residence the year I was born and that, in television interviews, Larry and Ruthanne denied existed.

  Me, at one month old, with dark hair.

  Me and Josh. Notice the difference in our hair colors and skin tones.

  A self-portrait I drew when I was four years old.

  Me and Ruthanne in our “modest attire.”

  Izaiah, Ezra, Esther, and Zach in 1996.

  Ezra, Esther, Zach, and Izaiah entertaining Larry and Ruthanne’s houseguests in Montana during my college years in Mississippi.

  Me with Izaiah and Ezra during a trip home from college for Christmas in 1998.

  A flyer advertising an exhibition of my art in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1998, back when I was rocking Poetic Justice box braids.

  The Antioch community, with Spencer holding his daughter April Joy and wife Nancy beside him (top right), and Uncle Ron and Aunt Joanie holding their daughter Vera (bottom right), circa 1997.

  The cover of the last Reconcilers magazine, featuring a portrait I drew of Spencer that was also displayed at his funeral.

  Me graduating summa cum laude from Howard University in 2002 when Franklin was just a baby.

  Me, reduced to size
0 from eating disorders caused by stress, just weeks before leaving Kevin and filing for divorce in 2004.

  “Uncle” Vern and Franklin after collecting chicken eggs together during our post-divorce stay in his and Uncle Dan’s basement in 2005.

  Me and Franklin goofing off at his preschool, North Idaho College’s Early Childhood Center, in 2005.

  Me and Franklin, Christmas 2006.

  Me with my dad Albert Wilkerson at Studio 66 in Spokane, Washington, where I displayed some of my art in 2012.

  Amy Wilkerson, Albert Wilkerson, Franklin, me, and Izaiah, Christmas 2013.

  Izaiah and Franklin bonding during a visit to Montana in the summer of 2006 after Larry and Ruthanne returned from South Africa.

  Me, Izaiah, and Franklin after Izaiah’s high school graduation in 2013.

  The court order giving me full legal and parental custody of Izaiah in 2010. Some online sources still list Izaiah as my brother (possibly due to Larry and Ruthanne repudiating my right to claim him as my son) and do not acknowledge me as his legal parent.