An Integrated Intimacy

by Anna-Lisa Cox

The extraordinary story of Covert, Michigan’s radical integration and racial equality has long fascinated me, and, like any author, I could not help but be changed by my years of research into its history.  Yet, my experience with the contemporary community of Covert has also profoundly affected me. 

I still remember visiting Covert many years ago to conduct an oral history interview.  I was to meet with the elderly descendants of some of the first black pioneers to settle in Covert.  I was in graduate school at the time, and had just finished taking a seminar on the practice and theory of oral history, and I really wanted to make sure that I got everything just right.  When I arrived I was very conscious that I was a white stranger in the home of a black family who had generously given me an opportunity to ask them intimate questions about their ancestors.  I was already nervous by the time I had to set up the recording equipment, and in that process made things even worse.  Soon the machines were rebelling, and I could feel myself starting to blush, and then was mortified to see my hands start shaking.  All of a sudden I felt a firm hand on my shoulder -- it was one of my interviewees.  The elderly gentleman smiled at me and said, “Girl, relax!  I’ve got cousins who are whiter than you!”  He started to laugh and I joined him.  After the interview I mulled over what he had said.  Intellectually I knew that Covert had been an integrated community, where whites and blacks had created a socially, economically, politically and physically integrated community a century before the Civil Rights movement.  Finally, however, I truly understood that this was a community where race was not just about theories; it was about intimacy – about family.

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Anna-Lisa Cox is the award-winning author of A Stronger Kinship: One Town's Extraordinary Story of Hope and Faith.  You can learn more by listening to an NPR story on Covert, Michigan and Cox's research.