VCC Magazine Spring 2019

V irginia C apitol C onnections , S pring 2019 7 Deep Wounds By Delegate Jay Jones Editor’s Note: This is a speech that Delegate Jones delivered on the House floor this past Session. The speech was well received by his colleagues. He gave us permission to reprint it exactly as he gave it. I have wrestled deeply over the subject matter of this speech today, but the last three weeks have prompted a significant amount of thought and reflection with family, friends, peers, and colleagues, and debate within myself. Today I am speaking as an almost thirty-year-old, lifelong resident of Virginia who happens to be a delegate with a platform. I speak for no one else but myself—no caucus or particular group within this body or around the state. Over the several weeks, deep wounds have been opened within Virginia, sparking a conversation and examination of a topic that often brings about significant discomfort when brought up directly: race in Virginia. Some people say race is used as a boogeyman, and others might try and use it to their advantage. I stand before you to simply tell it like it is. Make no mistake—I have spent these few weeks alternating between anger, grief, angst, despair, and physical and emotional pain. For long stretches, I have remained silent—unable to summon the words to accurately describe how I have been feeling when people have called, texted, or emailed to see whether I was alright. I decided to speak on this today because of another reaction I have heard personally and seen in the media. The reaction is one of surprise that things like blackface and other expressions of racism and white supremacy still occurred in our society as late as the 1980’s or even today. That surprise has been a luxury to many Virginians, most of them white. For many of us in this chamber, and millions of people across this country, the events that have gripped Virginia aren’t an aberration, an abstraction, or an anachronism. They aren’t a unit in a history textbook. To me, and many people like me, these events are a window into a struggle that defines daily life for black Americans from the day we are born until the day we die. I have thought a lot about my experience as a black man in this Commonwealth and the history of my family, the Joneses and the Simmonses. And they are my Black History Month spotlight today. As the grandson and son of men and women who spent the entirety of their lives attempting to push back against the horrors of racism in Virginia, I have long been acquainted with the pain and suffering of people of color in this state. As a child, my family made sure that I was aware that slaves were brought to Virginia against their will. That they were treated as inhuman, partial people who were not worthy of consideration as anything more than property. They made sure I was aware that a bitter conflict erupted in this country, in large part because some folks believed that slaves should be free, and others did not. They made sure I knew that even after the war, blacks weren’t even close to being equal under the eyes of the law or in the eyes of white people. That somewhere along the way, slaves from the American South had children who had children who ended up in Virginia. That those people became my grandparents and parents. My grandparents, whose only option for higher education was a historically black college, chose Virginia State University in Petersburg. My grandfather, Hilary H. Jones, Jr., who wanted to be attorney, could not attend law school in Virginia because blacks were not allowed at all white schools. He had to borrow other students’ bar preparation books because the white law libraries would not lend them to him. And this was in the 1940s, after he had served his country and risked his life in the Italian Theater inWorldWar II. He passed the bar, and they returned to Norfolk, only to be shunned by the majority population as second-class citizens. So they dedicated themselves to righting wrongs. To fight for equality and justice. To make sure their children did not endure the same struggles as they did. On the other side, my mother’s parents, Margaret and Charles Simmons, moved to Norfolk so that my grandfather could teach at Norfolk State University—because back then, a predominantly white institution wouldn’t dare hire him to teach. They too got involved in the struggle for justice just like my other grandparents. They served as a test case for the YMCA Beach Club and were rejected because of the color of their skin. My grandparents took my mother and her siblings on a road trip across the country through the segregated South, their home, only to run into the same poor treatment all along the way. They used the Green Brook that DelegateWard spoke about so eloquently just days ago. Despite my grandparents’ efforts to build a life for their children that was equal and just, my parents endured their fair share of racism throughout their journey. My father and his two brothers integrated Ingleside Elementary School in Norfolk in 1960, when my dad was just 6, only to be greeted with chants of “nigger go home.” Twenty years ago on this very same floor, my father spoke against the placement of the Confederate flag on a license plate. He recalled seeing a cross burning as a child with the Confederate flag waving alongside it. Some of the members in this chamber were there for that speech and felt the raw emotion that he felt on that terrifying day in the 1960s. He was just a young boy, filled with fear and all that the burning cross connotated. To him and others, those symbols mean hate and vitriolic racism. I remember vividly the hate mail that we received at our home for months afterward. But my family’s history of fighting for civil rights or enduring racism isn’t particularly unique. I share it because it illustrates the central point I hope to make today. It is part of Virginia’s history, whether we like it or not. And it is certainly part of black history that I believe must be shared. For people like me, the dark history of Virginia and the fight to change it are not confined to history books or remembrances around Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. That struggle is as personal and intimate to me and my family as my grandmother’s recipe for succotash or my father’s love of jazz music. And despite the generations of suffering and sacrifice, my own life has been impacted by the overt and covert racism that has haunted my ancestors for hundreds of years. And it wasn’t always racism overtly thrown in my face, but it was also the casual racism, the subtle comments, the jokes from white acquaintances who had the luxury of thinking about race as fodder for humor. Indeed, I carry with me to this day a memory associated with this hallowed body. I vividly recall a moment from my childhood when I was at a General Assembly retreat, with both Democrats and Republicans in attendance, and I was playing with the other children of legislators. As we played, our group was approached by a legislator’s significant other who looked at me and then told her little girl: “don’t play with him, he’s black.” Although as a young boy I may not have gotten it then, but I certainly get it now. And it still stays with me. Even as a young black man in today’s world, which my forebears had hoped would be one of equality, I cannot stand here and say that my experience has been markedly different than the generations before me. The hurt, anguish, and pain remains the same. But my family’s stories and my stories are but one small part of the lasting pain, anguish, fear, and despair that we have faced during See Deep Wounds , continued on page 8