The Art and Life of Clarence Major

ONE: Breaking Boundaries: A Family History

[ c h a p t e r o n e Breaking Boundaries: A Family History The history of Clarence Major’s family on both sides is a variation of the American racial family romance. It is a story of blacks and whites, men and women, who jointly create a network of relationships that has to be reconstructed through personal testimony as much as official documentation. It is also a story with gaps because African Americans, for a number of reasons, are less likely to appear in public records, newspaper reports, or historical or genealogical accounts. Tracing the connections often requires following genetic lines rather than legal ones and family stories rather than birth and death certificates and census records. It involves uncovering secrets and deceptions that were either socially convenient or absolutely necessary for survival. Some of them have been maintained to this day. In this sense the transgression of boundaries that has been the trademark of Major’s artistic career is in his blood. The paternal line can be traced as back as far as Ned Major, a slave on the John Major plantation in Chatham County, North Carolina. He was married to a slave named Peggy, who was born around 1820 in South Carolina. Since Chatham County was on the state border, it is possible that they were from neighboring plantations. Ned and Peggy had several children, including a son also named Ned, born around 1845. After the Civil War, the son settled in Smiths Station, Alabama, and was married to a former slave named Dellia. One of their children was George, Clarence Major’s grandfather, born in 1883. He moved breaking boundaries: a family history [ 7 to eastern Georgia as a young man, where he met and eventually married Anna Lankford Bowling Jackson. To this point, the genealogy is rather conventional , with all the individuals presumably African American; the only noteworthy point is that it is possible to trace a black family back into the antebellum period. Anna Lankford Bowling Jackson’s string of family names suggests complications now introduced into the family narrative, especially since none of them belongs to any men in her life. Jackson was the surname of a foster parent, Edith, who raised Anna in her very early childhood. Lankford is the surname of her birth mother, Rebecca, who was white. Rebecca was born in 1858 to Curtis Caldwell Lankford and Nancy McCarty. Curtis was born in 1827 in Jackson County, Georgia, and served as a private in the Confederate Army. This family line, being white, can be traced back several generations in Georgia and before that to Ireland and England. Nancy McCarty Lankford’s family tree is similar. After the birth of Anna, Rebecca filed suit against a white man, William Bowling, claiming that he was the father of the child. In fact, according to family lore, the father was Stephen Bowling , a local black man. The suit would appear to be a device to save Stephen from lynching. Rebecca gave the infant to Edith Jackson, a local black woman, with the putative stipulation that it not be fed from the same breast as Edith’s own infant. Later, Stephen’s mother, Harriet Bowling, adopted Anna, which is how she acquired that part of her name. Anna had nine children before she married George Major and six with him, including Clarence Major Sr., born 10 July 1910 in Atlanta at Grady Hospital. At various times she was both a domestic servant and a traveling preacher. She was divorced from George Major by the time Clarence Jr. was born (“Licking Stamps,” 175–76). Little is recorded of the life of Clarence Sr. He seldom appears in public records, such as census reports, and even then his name is usually misspelled as “Majors.” Moreover, he was reluctant to talk about his life to his wife and children. He seems to have lived virtually all of his life in Atlanta, owning various businesses, both legal and illegal. He had a particular dislike for manual labor, though that was the most regular work available for black men in the city. He much preferred to own or operate small businesses , even though these often failed (Come by Here). The maternal line cannot be so fully traced back (in terms of African American ancestry); it can be followed to one set of great-greatgrandparents , about whom nothing other than names are known. Sarah figure 1. Major...