Preserving Your History

Papa with his granddaughter on his 90th birthday

My great-grandfather, Ed Rinne, was born in 1880 in Illinois.  As  a young man, he spent a short time farming with his father in Alabama.  I am lucky to have an audio interview with him done sometime in the late 70’s when he would have been 90+ years old.  But I was shocked when I listened to him talk about his time in the south. He uses the the word “nigger” repeatedly in telling this story.  I vacillated about posting it.  Would listener’s understand the language usage in the era he grew up in?  He clearly is not using it in a pejorative sense. As a matter of fact, he has scorn only for the white southerners.  But it is shocking to hear, nevertheless.

This has been an issue in the past with Twain’s Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. As well as Shakespeare’s language in The Merchant of Venice that is derogatory toward Jews.  Are we using any language today that will be shocking to our great-grand kids? Should we, or even could we, hide or sanitize our past use of language?  Here is his story as he told it, warts and all.  (Note: The “they” he refers to at the end are the white towns people.)

Papa Rinne on working in Alabama

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Letterhead from the India Office

The letter was dated August 3rd 1934 and began:

“Madam, I am directed to inform you that the decision to remove your son
from the Indian Civil Service was reached by the Secretary of State for
India after careful consideration of the results of an inquery into his
conduct and the decision must be regarded as final. Owing to your son’s
health it has not yet been possible to notify him personally but this will
be done as soon as his mental condition has sufficiently improved to render
it practicable to communicate with him.”

A year later a letter from the Medical Superintendent of an English mental
institution concluded, “I am afraid I cannot agree that your son has
improved so much that he is fit to be outside. He still has many peculiar
ideas and is very irrational in his conduct…he has quite recently made
unprovoked attacks on other inoffensive patients. He resents control and I
am sure he is quite unfit to be in a private house.”

Hidden within plain sight in a carved wooden box on my mother’s bureau
these letters introduced me to an uncle I never knew existed. I wish my
mother could have have answered the many questions these letters triggered
but her fragile mind had locked secrets away long ago and she was never
able to retrieve them.

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