Perle Champion

Day 16 of Blogging from A to Z.  Today’s letter is P

P is for Praise of Penned Paeans

praise for the paeans penned
by women through time gifting
us our history

© Perle Champion

Perusing the southern history room of Birmingham’s Linn Henley Library downtown is an experience that I savor.

The collection contains diaries, letters, photographs, financial records, news clippings, slave records and other materials documenting several generations of unembellished real life of the families that make these United States what they are today.

Much of the correspondence and journals were generated by the women of the family. It is here that we can fill in the blanks omitted as unimportant by the writers of our history books.

One quote that shines in my memory was from a young wife’s diary.  Long before MLK was born, she wrote, “Free at last, free at last – thank god I’m free at last.”  She wrote this on the day the first trolleys hit the streets of Birmingham.  Now she could go about her errands without waiting for her husband to drive her.  I kick myself daily for being in such a hurry that day that I did not write down her name or get a copy of the entry.  Turns out the diaries were on lone by a family and had been returned. Hindsight.