Love Remains
Fannie Sullivan lived through 100 years of treacherous times. Bearing witness to the difficult truths of an America of yesterday and today. Her life, at once, was a searing exploration that laid bare the tangled web of race, gender, trauma and memory. Fannie’s story is a powerful testimony of pushing forward in the face of disillusionment and despair to hope.
She was born on October 9, 1899 and named after a grandmother she had vague memories of knowing. Fannie was raised by a mother whose older brother and sister were sold as children to people “who took them to parts unknown.”
I am the legacy of four generations of women with formidable minds and generous hearts whose odyssey of “keeping the faith” tells me much about the nature of God – and the way we live now and how we might come to live, if we could. I have often thought, when looking at that picture of my great-grandmother and me, staring straight into the camera’s eye, she is saying, “See us, as God sees us.”
When I was a child, before I spoke a word, she would tell me that she sung over me … Some of those old Negro spirituals come to mind ... “Hush, Children Somebody’s Calling My Name … Steal Away to Jesus … There’s a Balm in Gilead … Wade in the Water”.
Most of those songs were sung before the Civil War. I supposed they were passed down from mother to daughter for generations in my family. My great-grandmother is my sacred text. She was certain that in her life God’s love remained, and in my life still remains.
So, if you ever hear Ella singing, “Hush, Children”– it’s an eastering up of where my great grandmother came from. And, more importantly, that God’s love remains.
—Joella Coles