The
Oprah South African Leadership Project provides cross-cultural
immersion and international exposure through travel
and study in South Africa for Morehouse College students.
In the future, it will involve an exchange of students
between Morehouse and South Africa, and will encompass
ethical leadership training and community service
in both Atlanta and South Africa.
June
6, 2005
 Circa
1840s, my maternal ancestors, the Motleys, leave Danville,
Va., for Tuskegee, Ala., as slaves.
As the
family story goes, my great-great grandfather was
a slave trained as a brick mason and brick maker.
During January of each year, he was given "conditional
freedom" to hire himself out to work for white
folk in and around Macon County, Ala. After paying
a certain sum to his "owner" for the privilege
of working and earning an income, he saved the balance
of his earnings and, over a period of time, purchased
freedom for himself and his siblings.
His sons,
including Augustus, my great-grandfather, were trained
as brick masons and helped build Tuskegee Institute,
now Tuskegee University.
William
Motley Sr., Augustus's son and my great uncle, also
was trained as a brick mason. During the 1940s, Uncle
Bill left Tuskegee and moved to Rockville, Md., where
he was hired to do the masonry work on a number of
buildings in Washington, D.C.
In 1964,
when I was 13 years old, Uncle Bill invited two of
my older male cousins to spend the summer with him
in Rockville to learn the brick trade. They were not
interested, but I was. I begged my uncle to allow
me to spend the summer learning the family trade.
He refused, saying it wasn't work for a girl.
Today,
at age 54, in the Nyanga township in Cape Town, South
Africa, I realized a dream. I worked side by side
with Mark Rainey '05 and three South African brothers
making bricks that will be used to complete buildings
for Etafeni, a day care center for about 60 children
in the community.
The process
included shoveling a sand, pebble and cement mixture
into a brick mold, then lifting and pushing the five
brick mold shapers down through the cement mixture.
When we pulled the mold shapers out of the
brick mold, there were five perfect bricks.
During the three hours we worked, we made about 350
bricks! In addition, we stacked the bricks that were
made last Wednesday outside so the sun could complete
the hardening process. The bricks would be ready for
use in just a few days.
In a conversation
shortly before his death in the late 1980s, Uncle
Bill lamented the fact that no one would carry on
the family trade after he died. Obviously, I am not
a brick mason or a brick maker. Yet today, each time
I shoveled the cement mixture into the brick mold—pushed
the brick mold shaper into the mixture—pulled
it out and looked at a row of five perfect bricks,
I felt a special bond with my ancestors who did similar
work. When one of the South African brothers
looked at my bricks, smiled and gave me a thumbs-up,
I knew that Uncle Bill was smiling and was proud of
his niece.
The work
I did today, and the soreness I will probably feel
tomorrow in my arms, shoulders and hands makes me
forever grateful to my great-great grandfather, whose
love, labor and sweat brought the Motleys out of slavery
and into freedom.
Rheba Knox is the assistant director of Training
for the Leadership Center.
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