J. Chester Johnson - Damaged Heritage: The Elaine Race Massacre and A Story of Reconciliation

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR DAMAGED HERITAGE

J. Chester Johnson is of that generation of southern-born white people who came of age in the 1960s, deep in the heart of American apartheid, in hometowns they were taught to see as perfections of the American dream. Then they were tortured first by personal discovery of the white supremacist evil that suffused their idyllic worlds, then tortured by the failure of peers to make the same discovery, and finally tortured by revelations of the complicity of people they loved and admired most. In Damaged Heritage, Johnson poignantly reveals the demons he discovered in his own life and family, ties to one of the worst racial horrors in American history, his personal anguish, and his efforts to make amends and fill a desperate empty place in our hearts. Only a poet can see this clearly, be this honest, and still hope this much.

Douglas A. Blackmon, author of Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II, Winner of the Pulitzer Prize

Johnson poignantly tells of a personal family history that stretches from the darkest days of 1919 to a moment of grace nearly a century later, when he met with Sheila Walker. A moving and inspiring read.

Robert Whitaker, author of On the Laps of Gods

It is not permissible, wrote James Baldwin, that the authors of devastation should also be innocent it is the innocence which constitutes the crime. In J. Chester Johnsons Damaged Heritage, a native son has given up that threadbare old claim to white innocence, as he grapples with a beloved grandfathers role in the Elaine Race Massacre of 1919, in which more than a hundred African American sharecroppers were killed. This is a heartfelt and deeply personal contribution to the literature of white remembrance, and a serious reckoning with the past.

Patrick Phillips, author of Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America

If you think as a culture we have reached an immovable impasse, read this book. If you hold the belief that where weve been doesnt bleed into the way we live now, read this book. If you are beginning to suspect we are a people who have lost the desire to heal, read this book. J. Chester Johnson has done more than tell us a story that must be toldhe has laid the healing tools in our hands, and left instructions. This is how it starts.

Cornelius Eady, Co-founder, Cave Canem Foundation; Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize

Johnson is making a profound contribution to that sacred healing work with his truth telling of this long overdue story.

Catherine Meeks, PhD, Executive Director of the Absalom Jones Center for Racial Healing, co-author of Passionate for Justice: Ida B. Wells, As Prophet For Our Time

Damaged Heritage reverberates. This is not just an Arkansas story, not just a Southern saga, but a national one. If we can achieve reconciliation and genuine relationships that span the racial gulf, then this book is a beacon of hope shining a light on that possibility.

David Billings, author of Deep Denial: The Persistence of White Supremacy in United States History and Life

I read Damaged Heritage in one sitting. Its wonderfully written, a proverbial page-turner, and the right book for the present. I sincerely hope this volume becomes a bestseller. It certainly deserves to be, not least because of its timeliness and accessibility.

Larry Rasmussen, author and Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics Emeritus, Union Theological Seminary, New York City

PRAISE FOR J. CHESTER JOHNSON

St. Pauls Chapel & Selected Shorter Poems (2010):

Undoubtedly, this is a work headed for literary permanence.

Major Jackson, poet and author of Leaving Saturn; Hoops; Holding Company; Roll Deep: Poems

Johnsons St. Pauls Chapel is one of the most widely distributed, lauded, and translated poems of the current century.

American Book Review (Fall, 2017)

Now And Then: Selected Longer Poems (2017):

The scope of Now And Then is epic. It provides its readers with the same amplitude of intelligence, passion and formal achievement as our great American epicsMelvilles Moby Dick, Whitmans Leaves of Grass, and Ginsbergs Fall of America. It is a book of fierce spiritual and moral witness, energy and power.

Lawrence Joseph, poet and author of Into It: Poems; So Where Are We?: Poems; and The Game Changed: Essays and Other Prose

J. Chester Johnson is one of our countrys literary gems. From his work on the Book of Common Prayer with Auden to his chronicling and advocating for civil rights in the American South Johnson offers rare glimpses into what William Carlos Williams called news that stays news. Elegant, truthful, heartfelt, spiritual, beautiful. This is a book to savor and admire. Highly recommend this impressive book.

Elizabeth A. I. Powell, Editor-in-Chief, Green Mountains Review; poet and author of Willy Lomans Reckless Daughter and The Republic of Self

Auden, the Psalms, and Me (2017):

J. Chester Johnsons account of his long service on the drafting committee for the Episcopal Churchs project to retranslate the Psalter is a wonderfully cautious, sensitive and even-handed book Johnson is a fine poet himself. He is to be praised for his verbal attentiveness throughout the book, and not least for his orderly and sculpted expository style. A delightful book.

John Fuller, Fellow Emeritus, Magdalen College, Oxford University; one of Englands best-known and favored poets writing today; author of W. H. Auden: A Commentary

J. Chester Johnson tells a remarkable and illuminating triple story: the story of the English psalms in the past and present, the story of W. H. Audens profound engagement with the language of the psalter, and the story of Chester Johnsons engagement with Auden, the psalms, and the church. I hope this well-told story will be widely read.

Edward Mendelson, Lionel Trilling Professor of Comparative Literature at Columbia University; literary executor and principal biographer for W. H. Auden; author of Early Auden; Later Auden; and The Things That Matter

DAMAGED HERITAGE

Pegasus Books Ltd.

148 W. 37th Street, 13th Floor

New York, NY 10018

Copyright 2020 by J. Chester Johnson

Foreword 2020 by Sheila L. Walker

First Pegasus Books cloth edition May 2020

Interior design by Maria Fernandez

Grif Stockley, material from Blood in Their Eyes: The Elaine Race Massacres of 1919. Copyright 2001 by The University of Arkansas Press. Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of the publishers, uapress.com

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher, except by reviewers who may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review in a newspaper, magazine, or electronic publication; nor may any part of this book be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other, without written permission from the publisher.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.