“They got the judges
They got the lawyers
They got the jury-rolls
They got the law
They don’t come by ones
They got the sheriffs
They got the deputies
They don’t come by twos
They got the shotguns
They got the rope
We git the justice
In the end
And they come by tens.
– From Old Lem by Sterling Brown

Back in the day, African American elders used to offer life lessons to young people through storytelling. Folktales provided a vehicle to impart truths in a fun and non-threatening way. I wish that we did more of this today in our communities.

When I was younger, I went through a period when I read every African and African American folktale that I could get my hands on. I even took a job at the New York Public Library for a year as an information specialist. I worked at the Countee Cullen branch library which is adjacent to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. There I could read all day to my heart’s content and I took full advantage of the opportunity. It was then that I discovered Arna Bontemps, Langston Hughes and Sterling Brown. I became a particular fan of poet and folklorist Sterling Brown. He would often retell the story of Old Sis Goose. He told the story in different ways depending on the audience but the gist of the folktale is this:

While swimming across a pond, Sis Goose was caught by Brer Fox (who in some versions of the tale is described as a sheriff). Sis gets pissed off because she believes that she has a perfect right to swim in the pond. She decides to sue Brer Fox. But when the case gets to court, Sis Goose looks around and sees that besides the sheriff who is a fox, the judge is a fox, the prosecuting and defense attorneys are ones too and even the jury is comprised entirely of foxes. Sis Goose doesn’t like her chances. Sure enough at the end of the trial, Sis Goose is convicted and summarily executed. Soon the jury, judge, sheriff, and the attorneys are picking on her bones. The moral: “When all the folks in the courthouse are foxes and you are just a common goose there ain’t gonna be much justice for you.”

Folktales like Old Sis Goose were shared to impart lessons to young black people about understanding their place in the world and taking care not to step out of line in the white world lest they end up like Old Sis Goose. Some may find these types of folktales detrimental because they would seem to dissuade young people from resisting their circumstances. After all, Old Sis Goose ends up dead for feeling that she had a right to swim in the pond.

However, understood in their historical context, these stories were imbued with love and a desire to protect young people from the real dangers that they faced on a daily basis from a hostile and racist dominant culture. These stories about the rampant injustice in the system were meant to be cautionary tales.

In the Fire Next Time, James Baldwin beautifully expresses the fear that black parents, like his, had for their children:

“The fear that I heard in my father’s voice, for example, when he realized that I really believed I could do anything a white boy could do, and had every intention of proving it, was not at all like the fear I heard when one of us was ill or had fallen down the stairs or strayed too far from the house. It was another fear, a fear that the child, in challenging the white world’s assumptions, was putting himself in the path of destruction. A child cannot, thank Heaven, know how vast and how merciless is the nature of power, with what unbelievable cruelty people treat each other (p.26-27).

In his poem “Old Lem” (which I cite at the beginning of this post), Sterling Brown references the tale of Old Sis to make a statement about mob violence and the injustice of the criminal legal system for black people. Black parents like Baldwin’s knew that they and their children could suffer violence and even death at any turn. They looked for ways to cushion that reality by relaying stories that contained within them important lessons for living.

In the 21st century, we need a modern-day folktale admonishing our young people about how to interact with the police and the criminal legal system. We need our own updated version of Old Sis Goose. This time though, let’s make sure that Sis lives to fight another day..