Stone Walls

For twenty five years, I have walked by the same stone wall. I never gave it much thought until one day I spotted the rock shown above. Not only is this rock interesting...as a rock, it jarred me into thinking about slavery and the equity some of us have or don’t have in America.

Where I live on the east coast, between 1619 and 1869, so many stone walls were built that if it was one wall, it would circle the globe ten times. There are stone walls everywhere; some with stones so big that you’d think they were placed there by the same people that built the pyramids. But that’s not far from the truth. At least some of these walls were built by slaves.

The next time you see a five hundred pound rock in a stone wall, ask yourself how it got there? Big old, white farmers, their bull-strong sons, and donkeys didn’t move all those rocks. Now ask yourself who benefited? Fields were cleared, walls were built, crops were harvested, and four generations later the land was sold to Walmart.

The fact is, someone owned the humans that built the walls that turned into generational equity for one family and not another.

Going forward, I think it’s important to find ways to level up the equity each of us has in America. Generations later, this is not going to be easy to do. Then again, neither was lifting all those rocks for little or nothing in return…