A Growing Smoke in the Distance
The story of Betty Kilby Baldwin and Phoebe Kilby as told by them
Interpreted by Sha Jackson
Healing the legacy of slavery between Betty Kilby Baldwin and Phoebe Kilby has been an event that has hinged on the promise of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. His dream and their lives have coincided in a remarkable way and when told in their own words, their story holds a large degree of power.
Phoebe
April 4, 1968 bore a strange aura in downtown Baltimore. The usually vibrant orchestrated streets—filled with people and the music of inner city hustle and bustle—were dimmed and quieted by the assassination of the African American community’s “Drum Major”. Shops were absent of people, cars were missing from the four-lane road, and National Guardsmen patrolled the sidewalks with rifles clutched to their chests. I was fifteen at the time and just awakening as a thinking person. What I thought at the time escapes me, but what I can recall are vivid images.
What I remember most about that day is an unsettling quiet blanketing the area. I recall riding through Baltimore en route from a spring break in Rehoboth Beach with my classmate’s family. We were returning home from a vacation where we were carefree and detached from what was going on in the national climate. The first thing we noticed when we pulled off of our exit was that there was no one else on the road. We thought, “where [are] all the people?” and we slowly pulled to the side of the road. My classmate’s mother asked a member of the National Guard why the streets where empty. He replied with the question—“you haven’t heard?”—and proceeded to inform us that the city was under curfew. I remember thinking that something had gone terribly wrong [and that] Black people [were] going to be really angry but I had no idea of the larger implications.
Indeed something had gone wrong, and at the very moment it seemed as if these three women of European descent, sitting in the heart of Baltimore City, were the only ones in world who didn’t know that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had been killed. In the city, at the request of Governor Spiro Agnew, the Guard was in place to quell the expected violent outbreak in the days to come. From where Phoebe sat in the back of a station wagon, Baltimore was a ghost town, haunted by the presence of racial injustice, and in the calm of a storm that would be one of the most violent race riots in history.
Peering out of the window, her long, dark hair pressed against the back seat, Phoebe witnessed a clear sky that was tainted only slightly by a growing smoke in the distance. Eighty miles southwest of Baltimore, twenty-three-year-old Betty Kilby Fisher caught her own view of the rising smoke.
Betty
April 4, 1968 came to Middleburg, Virginia as an ordinary day for me. Tempered by a past riddled with racial hardship, I found myself numb to the news of Dr. King’s death. One hundred and sixty-four miles, and three hundred and forty-five years removed from the place where the first Africans entered the U.S. in Jamestown, I stood as the descendant of a long line of blacks who had been dehumanized, and I witnessed how many of them reacted to Dr. King’s death.
I remember watching television and [seeing] the people riot, knowing that [it] was not the way Dr. King would have wanted it. The nature of the fighting was against everything [he] stood for. He [was] a man of nonviolence [and it was counteractive to his dream that] we created violence in order to work through the emotion of his death.
With my eyes glued to the black and white television screen on April 9, 1968, I, along with millions of other Americans, witnessed what Ralph Abernathy, a civil rights leader and friend of Dr. King’s, called “the darkest day in history.” I watched from home as countless faces looked on from the sidelines of Atlanta’s Auburn Avenue, as the spiritless body of Dr. King was pulled humbly through the streets by a mule-drawn farm wagon. Dr. King’s casket, flanked with white lilies and chrysanthemums, reminded me of the life that blossomed a movement of change.
While watching the events unfold, I remember thinking that they had killed another leader, and [wondered if] it was ever going to be over.
Upon Dr. King’s death, I realized that in my mind it never would be. Fighting the battle of inequality had become normal for me. My experience as a pivotal figure in the integration of Virginia’s public schools, and then seeing a major figure in the movement slain, made it apparent to me that I had no more energy to offer hope for a life of equality for African Americans in the U.S.
It was just five years after I had graduated from high school, five years beyond the ordeal of Betty Ann Kilby vs. The Warren County Board of Education. I was still trying to heal from desegregation, and all the fight in me was gone. This was the period that I didn’t want to deal with [any social issues] so I got married, had my babies and was taking care of my family.
Although it was this experience that turned my eyes away from the struggle, they were only away for a moment, as the two children sitting on either side of Coretta Scott King caught my attention. With two children of my own, who were very close in age to two of the King children, I was reminded that they too had to occupy a space in this world and there was still a need to fight.
Dr. King’s death brought about much needed, contemplative and widespread conversation about the nation’s racial thermometer. The act of his death made it clear that the equality he was fighting for had not yet been reached, however, many actions after his death made the words of his final speech clear: “I may not get there with you … but we as a people will get to the promised land.” One of those actions was the recognition of Dr. Martin Luther King Day that became a national holiday in 1986. In observation of Dr. King’s dream, outlined in his widely-recognized “I Have a Dream” speech, that “one day the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners [would] be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood,” the intersection of the lives of Betty and Phoebe took place, fueling a new era of change.
Phoebe
I had known for some time there were Black Kilbys living in Front Royal, Virginia, not too far from where my father had grown up. When I first moved to the Shenandoah Valley in 1988, there was a newspaper I frequently read that covered news in my area as well as Warren County. I constantly came across the name Kilby in conjunction with Black Kilbys who were involved in the civil rights movement. I had always wondered if there was a link between our families but was afraid to look into it. In 2006, after finally responding to my need to know and understand my family’s background, I began researching our history. In the research, I found that my family had in fact enslaved people, and Black Kilbys had lived on a farm that was adjacent to where my father grew up. I did not know exactly how to go about finding the descendants of the enslaved people but I knew I wanted to in order to somehow make amends and apologize for what my family had done. I decided to start with those mentioned in the newspapers I had read. I had remembered the name Betty Kilby from one of the articles and decided to search her name online. She had been the plaintiff in the Betty Ann Kilby vs. Warren County Board of Education case in the fifties. I made the decision to start by contacting her to unearth what I had always suspected—that my family was involved in slavery and there were Kilbys who identified with being Black. The need to contact Betty made me realize that connecting is not just about connecting to people you suspect are your family, but it’s also thinking about all the parts of your family that might be out there.
After careful consideration, I figured that contacting Betty by e-mail would be the best way. In the front of my mind there were these streaming thoughts: my family could have possibly owned slaves, slavery was an abomination, slavery was wrong, slavery hurt people and harmed people, how would someone whose family could have been enslaved by my family react to me? I was afraid of this but felt the need to go through with it anyway. I thought that Martin Luther King Day would be a good day to do this. I could talk about Dr. King’s words about the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners sitting together at the table of brotherhood and this could be framed as a positive way to cross that racial barrier.
Soon after I sent the e-mail she sent me one back entitled “hello cousin” and it was then that I knew this was the right thing because nobody is going to respond that way and be hostile. It was a “yes” moment because she was recognizing a connection.
Betty remembers what being on the other side of that correspondence was like.
Betty
The morning I received Phoebe’s e-mail, I had gotten up, and checked the address that is connected to [my] business. This e-mail, which frequently gets filled up with spam, began to download messages from previous weeks. That is when I saw the message from Phoebe. I had gotten mail from strangers before, [but this time was different]. In the subject box it said “contact with another Kilby” and when I opened it up it was kind of shocking because she was claiming kinship with me. She told me that she had sent me an e-mail a couple of weeks [earlier] and I hadn’t received it because of this glitch in my e-mail address.
It was close to Dr. Martin Luther King’s holiday, and I was, at the time, going around the country speaking about Dr. King’s dream and telling my story. At the time, I had already had a lot of emotion within me so when this white Kilby reached out and said that we could really live Dr. King’s Dream, these emotions escalated. I began to really think … to not accept this person or to not have any understanding of the situation would make me a hypocrite. I cried. And then I picked up the phone to call her because what I was feeling was not something I could put on paper. It was not something that I could sit down and think about how to respond to, so I called her. We laughed together. We cried together.
During the time frame of this conversation, my first documentary, Wit, Will, and Walls: The Betty Kilby Fisher Story, was about to premiere. Because there was no time to get with Phoebe, I invited her to a family dinner and the premiere. I did that without thinking about any of the ramifications. It was just what was in my heart to do. The night of the documentary, I introduced Phoebe. It was such an excellent segue because I had the opportunity to stand up and tell the world that we were living the dream of sitting down at the table of [sister]hood.
The connection that she and I have made is a testament to the years of personal and ancestral struggle that have brought me to the place that I am. In my wildest imagination I could not have dreamed of being able to sit down with the [white] Kilby family coming to this table, bringing me to my knees as far as facing the realities and putting the hurt in perspective.
Connecting on this level is important because the emotion is inside of us and if we can’t let it go, it destroys us. Linking and getting to know one another is the best way to break down these barriers of animosity that oftentimes unconsciously exist.
about betty and phoebe
- Phoebe Kilby works for Eastern Mennonite University as a fundraiser for the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, the sponsor of Coming To The Table. She has researched her family’s history of slave holding and was able to trace those slaves to modern-day Kilbys. One of them, Betty Kilby Baldwin, was a pivotal figure in integration of Virginia’s public schools. Kilby believes we are walking a journey together to uncover and explore the truths of our experiences and the possibility of racial reconciliation.
Betty Kilby is the author of her historical autobiography ‘Wit, Will & Walls” and public speaker. She speaks about racial healing, diversity, education, women’s issues and issues affecting the African American community. Betty was involved in a historical movement that opened the door for all races of people to be equally educated together in Warren County. She was an infant plaintiff in the case of Betty Ann Kilby vs. Warren County Board of Education. She earned an Associates degree in Business Management; Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration and an MBA with a concentration in Productivity Improvement in the Workplace.
(Photo provided by: Betty Kilby Baldwin and Phoebe Kilby)
Related Stories
Interview with Phoebe Kilby
“Some Americans Directly Confronting the Legacy of Slavery”
