Sunday January 6, 2008

By Derrick McQueen

Chestnut Ridge.

There is much that I could say as an “outside observer” about Chestnut Ridge outside of Philippi, West Virginia. I talk about the beauty of the rolling hills, even on a rainy winter day. I could talk about the generations of families buried on either side of the road that tell the story of this ancestral homeland. I could also talk about the five or so churches all within a five mile loop of one another. Some of these churches have no more than five or six members but will welcome anyone in for worship. I could say how their mere existence is homage to the phrase “build it and they will come” or the biblical quote “where ever two or three are gathered together, there also am I”. Yes there is much that I could say when I think about Chestnut Ridge. But what does a romanticized account of an Appalachian community do to end poverty? No, I’d rather speak of the people of Chestnut Ridge.

Three groups of people settled up on “The Ridge”. They were whites, blacks and indians. The details of the settling are yet to be qualified as historically accurate. There is an outsider perspective that I consider one of those romantic notions of figuring out historical legacies. Once upon a time . . . . a hardy bunch of Scotch-Irish settled on the Ridge and built a community. Next a group of Native American Indians settled on the mountainside-Chestnut Ridge, in what would become Barbour County in West Virginia. They are said to have settled here when the American government forced them off of their lands. Pre-Civil War the Ridge was supposed to have been a haven for runaway slaves, African Americans. These three groups of people came together to and now there is a group of tri-racial people that have existed for generations on “The Ridge”.

I consider this the idealized, American version of rugged individualists retreating to the hills to form a unique and solitary community in West Virginia. An insider perspective, from oral history traditions differs from this one. A woman from The Ridge is of the understanding that these groups of people found themselves in community. As a matter of fact, a White settle came up and fell in love with a Native American Woman, they married and had children. This was the start of this multicultural community up on the Ridge.

However the dust settles and the history of the Ridge resolves itself there is a much more important event that has taken place. Up on the Ridge there were three groups of people that found a way to bind themselves to one another despite the societal roadblocks against race mixing. And since they were often criticized and discriminated against by the community folk in the valley of Philippi, they found a way to survive and overcome. This community has existed for hundreds of years. There is a graveyard of two major families that still exist across the road from one another. The homesteads include homes that are still passed down from generation to generation. The unique makeup of tri-racial family identity is still held as a source of pride and joy.

The key word for me is “still”. There are some we have made this journey with on this immersion tour that have spoken almost wistfully of the connections that exist up on the Ridge. The familial connections that we have sacrificed in American society for the sake of the American dream, the nuclear family. A nostalgia has been expressed for the notion of extended families that seem to ground people during times of plenty and want. As a web of relationship, I think the phenomenon of extended family is a natural one and has been thwarted by our economic system.

We have come to explore ways to build a movement led by the poor to end poverty; to raise a group of religious and community leaders to make this happen. This idea of the web of relationship as a foundational reality is key to ending poverty. It is this foundational reality that is systematically attacked by a system that needs people in poverty to exist. I hope in our relationship building we never take our sights off of the attack on the importance of extended relationships. In many of our organizational circles we call this networking, coalition building. I suggest we learn how to model these ideas after the family community of the Ridge and that we get back to the language of relationships.

Our job is to build the idea of familial relationships amongst those of us fighting to end poverty. We keep looking for common ground in the groups with which we work. I don’t think we need to look. We find ourselves together, needing to survive, as one family just like the Ridge.