Lady, Lady Ida Mae

While reading the sections on Ida Mae Brandon Gladney in The Warmth of Other Suns, I found myself mentally referring back to the poem entitled "Lady, Lady" by Anne Spencer.  Ida Mae embodied the words echoed by Spencer, and her story filled in the lines between each stanza.  This was especially clear when reading the excerpt on Ida Mae when she worked as a sharecropper with her husband in Chicksaw County, Mississippi in 1929.  The title of the chapter, A Burdensome Labor, indicates the tone of the story that is to follow.  Wilkerson illustrates the painful labor in which Mae and her husband must endure while sharecropping for Mr. Edd.  Resonating with the title of the book, she states that the sun often cooked the backs of Ida and her husband while they picked cotton, from sun up to sun down.  The sun naturally darkens the skin, which alludes to the line in which Spencer observes the dark color of the Lady's face, which is as "dark as night withholding a star."  The woman in Spencer's poem could perhaps be one who has worked the fields for years as a cotton picker, much like Ida, and whose skin has been exposed to the radiating and scorching Mississippi heat.

The line that caught my eye the most, and which I felt so strongly referenced Spencer's poem was, "The hands got cramped from the repetitive motion of picking, the fingers fairly locked in place and callused from the pricks of the barbed, five-pointed cockleburs that cupped each precious boll."  Ida's life experiences working as a sharecropper explains the "twisted, awry" hands that resemble so closely "crumpled roots."  When we were doing a close reading of this specific poem in class, we spoke of the many different causes of her hands being "bleached poor white."  Originally I had spoken about how I believed this could mean that her hands were white because her labor literally belonged to the white man.  The fruits bore from her rigorous work belonged to her plantation owner.  I still believe this to be true, and I find it rather ironic that Ida's job is a cotton picker.  In this specific instance, her hands are not bleached poor white because of washing, but could perhaps be white of cotton.  The cotton that caused her hands to cramp had "bleached" her hands white; again her labor did not belong to her, her hands did not belong to her.

The labor was so rigorous, that often times Ida would faint in the middle of the fields.  Ida and her husband were required to do exactly the same amount of work in the fields, speaking to the line in Spencer's poem when she states, "you had borne so long the yoke of men." I found it interesting however, that Wilkerson questions if Ida really was incapable of picking cotton at a quick pace, or if in fact she was silently resisting the oppression of the sharecropping system, and the larger system of inequality that has plagued the Black race in the United States.  In fact, early in the book Wilkerson states that Ida was good at doing things men did, and she very much enjoyed it.  This isolated form of resistance was something that was not uncommon; as Wilkerson shares, "For now the people resisted in silent, everyday rebellions...each one fought in isolation and unbeknownst to the others."  This statement truly attests to the courage that many Black sharecroppers had in the face of such brutal repression.

The final stanza of the poem, which speaks about the Lady's heart, also spoke of Ida's story.  Spencer states that the Lady's heart, regardless of her external stoic image, were altared by "the tongues of flame the ancients knew."  This to me, means that inside of her was a passion and a fire for justice, and that the work she has done thus far, will not be in vain.  The silent resistance of Ida as well as countless slaves and sharecroppers throughout history, will soon be noticed and heard.  This became clear when Wilkerson states that the silent rebellions so many participated in would "build up to a storm at midcentury," clearly alluding to the Civil Rights Movement that was to follow.

Ida Mae is a testament to The New Negro, and the spirit and ideology that embodies the term.  She and her husband realized that the brutality endured by sharecropping was not just, and therefore decided that they were going to defy the system.  They began to see themselves as deserving of a better life, and decided to flee Mississippi, and go North.  This new understanding of self and pride was something that Wilkerson said, was evident in Ida from a very early age.  She states that when Ida Mae detested her birth name, and demanded others to refer to her as "Ida Mae," "it was an early indication that she could think for herself when she chose to."  Fleeing Mississippi for a better life was the acting out that Spencer's poem refers to in the final stanza.  The passionate flames engulfed Ida's soul, and she made the decision to act on her feelings.