The very real problems of the perceived identity of the questioner during Jim Crow days has to cause problems with the answers. I don't think that any of us now alive have any impression of what it was like for a black person to live during Jim Crow where a simple uttered word was enough to get one lynched. I remember seeing a music documentary where the great musician McKinley Morganfield asked the interviewer when the last black person was lynched in the South and I immediately thought of those horrible photos from the 1920's to 1940, but when he said 1969, it brought it home.

It may also be that Molly was as dumb as a plank and simply confused things, or was in some stage of dementia. Who knows. People will tell folks what they feel that they want to hear and if we're naive enough to take at face value, then poor us. I don't see intentional fabrication as the only reason why Molly made statements that were later proved not to be totally true. Check the headlines and it is still ongoing.

What it all boils down to is that like everything else, any statement has to be checked, validated, parsed, evaluated and then, most importantly, interpreted. Talleyrand's supposed statement on Metternich is totally appropriate "I wonder what he meant by that" upon being informed of his death.

Lyle Browning


On May 16, 2012, at 11:59 AM, Craig Kilby wrote:

> Paul, the bigger question is why Molly would have made all this up? You have shown she did make it up, but you didn't tell us why she lied in the first place.  This would put the human part of this story together for me.
> 
> One of my favorite quotes of all time come from a real estate class. The question was this; "Do people lie?"
> 
> Of course people lie. ALL THE TIME. But why? There's the rub.
> 
> Craig Kilby
> 
> On May 16, 2012, at 10:16 AM, Paul Heinegg wrote:
> 
>> At least one slave narrative was total nonsense. Molly Walden Markham, born 20 August 1857 and died 19 February 1941, told her story in WPA Project vol. XI, part 2, pages 106-8. 
> 
> 
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