Blackness storing nothing;
Making brightness the foundation.
Recently I found out something very ironic about my grandmother on my mother's side who was very prejudiced against Blacks and Hispanics and was also a fundamentalist Christian. She was a quarter Cherokee. I have a picture of her grandmother, Mary Ann Horton, who was very dark and dressed in the way full-blooded Cherokee women dressed back then. She was full-blooded Cherokee. She was married to James Miller Martin who was a miller in Wayne County, Tennessee. My grandfather always talked about being part Cherokee, which has not been proven yet, but she never mentioned a word. I now believe people when they say they are part Cherokee. The early settlers in Tennessee married a lot of Cherokee and many of these people moved to Texas as more settlers moved into Tennessee. My mother's father was descended from both lines of Hardins which co-founded Hardin County, Tennessee. Many of these people who had intermarried with Cherokee received a lot of prejudice from the new settlers during the time of the removal. They somehow managed to keep from being hauled off like animals but eventually moved to Texas. Some of my more distant relatives' families moved to Oklahoma and/or Arkansas as Old Settlers before the Trail of Tears or sometime after. Here is a letter of application to the Guion Miller Commission from one great great great uncle: