Like a Strong Tree...

While reading through the incredible saga of Ida Mae and her husband George, I was most strongly reminded of a poem entitled "Like a Strong Tree" by Claude McKay from Locke's anthology on The New Negro. After being wrongly accused of stealing a few turkeys, Ida Mae's cousin Joe Lee was horrifically beaten and left for dead, which prompted Ida Mae and her husband to finally escape the violence and injustice of the Jim Crow south. Although at first, the analogy between Ida Mae's courageous migration away from oppression and a stationary tree may seem counterintuitive, I feel that the relation between the point McKay is making in his poem and Ida Mae's personification of the New Negro is a strong one.

McKay begins his poem: "Like a strong tree that in the virgin earth, Sends far its roots through rock and loam and clay, And proudly thrives in rain or time of dearth, When the dry waves scare rainy sprites away;"

Facing immense oppression from nearly every side during their time living in the South, Ida Mae and her husband had to fight through the "rock and loam and clay" of violence, segregation, restrictive laws and the unfair sharecropping system in order to provide basic necessities for themselves in order to survive and be as happy as one could be living in such horrific conditions. Ida Mae and George survived through the "dry waves (that) scares rainy sprites away," as the Jim Crow laws were the "dry waves" specifically designed to scare away any "rainy sprites," or means of independence and happiness, found by the Black population living in the South.

The poem continues: "Like a strong tree that reaches down, deep, deep, For Sunken water, fluid underground, Where the great-ringed unsightly blind worms creep, And queer things of the nether world abound:"

It is in these lines that I feel the tree metaphor does indeed relate to the migration of Ida Mae and the rest of the thousands of Blacks leaving the South. For many Blacks, the Southern way of life was all they had ever known, and thus, although desperate to leave the oppression of the South, migrating to an unknown land was a very intimidating thought. The "queer things of the nether world" represent the mystery of a new home and way of life outside the South, but in hopes of finding life-giving water underground, Blacks would have to, in a very real sense, spread their roots beyond the Jim Crow south into new and mysterious places. In Ida Mae's case, Chicago.

The poem ends: "So I would live rich in imperial growth, Touching the surface and the depth of things, Instinctively responsive unto both, Tasting the sweets of being and the stings, Sensing the subtle spell of changing forms, Like a strong tree against a thousand storms."

Ida Mae's experience in Chicago would not be perfect, as they still faced discrimination from whites, resentment from Black Chicago natives and competition from fellow Black migrants, yet the life she would find in the North was superior to that she had in the South. In tasting the "sweets of being and the stings," Ida Mae was able to effectively deal with the ups and downs of being an African-American in an oppressive American society. By branching out her roots, through the "rock and loam and clay," the oppressive institutions designed to hinder her progress, Ida Mae was finally able to build a life and find some semblance of happiness in her new life despite all that was stacked against her, "Like a strong tree against a thousand storms."