When Lucy Bell died out in Cheatham County 106 years ago this week — in September 1917 — her son Robert was the informant listed on the death certificate. He told the clerk, W.G. Perry, his mother’s name, her age, her marital status and the name of her parents. It’s possible that Perry wasn’t, shall we say, the sharpest knife in the drawer. For instance, he put down that Lucy Bell’s race or color was “collard.” (Though when I tell you more about Lucy’s family, we may have to concede that it would make sense if they actually had collard greens in their veins.)
I bring up the fact that Perry might have been a few bricks shy of a load because he actually recorded the name of Lucy Bell’s father. Or maybe he was new to the area and didn’t realize the implications in her father’s name. You’d imagine, if he had realized, he might just have put down “unknown” instead of “Montgomery Bell.” Montgomery Bell, the iron magnate, was the namesake and first benefactor of Montgomery Bell Academy. That Montgomery Bell was Lucy’s father.
And it was apparently so well-known and known as true that when she died, no one bothered to keep it off her death certificate. Lucy’s family didn’t benefit from being the descendants of Montgomery Bell, but they did find their own way to success. Lucy’s daughter Bessie married Robert Lee Swett. Bessie and Robert’s son Walter started the family businesses that have come down to us today as Swett’s Restaurant. Swett’s website states that Walter only had a second-grade education, and yet he and his wife Susie opened a gas station, bought a tavern, owned a grocery store and started Swett’s Dinette.Â
Walter’s accomplishments are ... I mean, the dude succeeded. Born only 40 years after the end of slavery, given a perfunctory education, and he does all this? Damn. But compare in your mind Walter’s empire with his great-grandfather’s. What if Walter’s grandmother had inherited part of Montgomery Bell’s estate? Montgomery Bell’s white daughter came out of the Civil War with a dozen kids, $40,000 worth of real estate (in 1870s dollars) and $1,900 as her personal estate. She lived in Cheatham County, in District 10. Lucy, Walter’s grandmother, had no money in 1870, owned no property, and worked for Monroe Bell (no relation that I can find), a farmer out in Dickson County, District 7. So imagine the Cumberland River, north of Ashland City, and imagine the Harpeth River and the Cumberland River making a T where the Harpeth meets the Cumberland. Montgomery Bell’s white daughter lived on the east side of that T, and Lucy lived on the west. There were 114 households in that Cheatham County district and 142 in the Dickson County district. They were neighbors. Sisters. With completely different fortunes.
What might it have meant for Walter if his mother could have put him in school past second grade? Hell, Walter was in his 70s before Black boys were attending his great-grandfather’s eponymous school. And yet, would there even have been an MBA without Walter’s family and the rest of the Black communities enslaved by Bell?
Imagine how Walter's trips to the bank for business loans or mortgages would have gone if he’d been Montgomery Bell’s white great-grandson who was a successful businessman. And this is the thing about Walter Swett: He was obviously a good businessman, and he must have been very smart to accomplish all he did with a second-grade education. Everything he accomplished, he accomplished with the deck stacked against him. Hell, not only was the deck stacked against him, but he was dealt two cards each time white guys got five. And he still did pretty well.
What might he have done with an even playing field? What was done to Walter is a kind of theft, but theft is too small a word for it. It wasn’t like he had resources and someone took them. It’s that the resources that ordinarily would have gone to him were never provided.
Federal data states that TSU has been shorted more than $2 billionÂ
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I’ve been thinking about Walter’s situation again, because last week the Biden administration informed our state that we’ve shortchanged Tennessee State University more than $2 billion dollars since 1987.
Dr. Learotha Williams told WPLN that now that this is known, Tennessee’s next step will likely be to claim TSU would have squandered the money anyway. From WPLN:
Based on historical precedent, Williams anticipates the state may get defensive.
“First thing you’re probably going to hear is that these schools have histories of mismanaging funds. And that’s something that goes all the way back to Reconstruction.”
He said allegations of mismanagement and corruption were used to discredit Black politicians after the Civil War.
“Those sorts of allegations are a common feature of being in positions of power at HBCUs,” Williams said.
I think he’s right. We’re going to get defensive rather than apologetic. But again, doesn’t the word “theft” seem too small for this? Even if Tennessee immediately and without strings attached handed TSU the roughly $2 billion, what good does that do for the kid whose dorm was in massive need of upgrading in 1990? How do you calculate all the damage done because TSU couldn’t afford to hire more tenure-track professors in the late 1980s? What do you say to the disabled people who needed working elevators in all the buildings in 2000? This is years of stealing opportunities from people — decades, centuries even. How do you make that right?
It’s daunting to even think about. Do we just hand over the University of Tennessee system with all its resources to TSU? Does that make it fair? Or do we give the current university a billion dollars and then split the other billion between all the graduates of TSU during that time period who got cheated out of the full potential of college by our state?Â
To go back again to Walter Swett, there’s another wrinkle to his story that may have implications for how this shortchanging of TSU plays out. By the time Montgomery Bell’s wealth had been spread out over his white great-grandchildren — so people just as related to Bell as Walter, but with everything that whiteness can do for them — a lot of them also had hard, shitty lives. Walter at least got to go to second grade. Some of his white cousins hadn’t been to school at all. Walter at least came to own successful businesses. Some of his white cousins stayed stuck as tenant farmers.
If you had stood Walter next to one of those descendants and said to the white guy, “You all got what Walter deserved,” I’m sure that, at best, you would have gotten baffled looks, probably from both men. The dude who owns the restaurant has some moral claim on part of the nothing the dirt farmer has?
I can imagine something similar with, say, UT Martin. You stand UT Martin and TSU side by side and tell UT Martin that it got resources that should have gone to TSU, you’re going to see people from both schools looking around Martin and wondering aloud about what resource compared to what TSU has.
This is part of why I keep saying that white supremacy is a pyramid scheme. It extracts from as wide a base as possible at each level, and then comes up with reasons why not all of us can move up to the next level.Â
The sales pitch of white supremacy to white people is: “We are the best. We made this world. We should be proud to be white and proud to celebrate our legacy.” In the South, it’s with the added benefit of: “Look at these fine houses that famous and powerful white people lived in and probably still live in. Look at these schools and roads and towns named for white people, because we are the best. Look at all the places we can go and things we can do because we’re white and we’re awesome.”Â
But most white people’s lives are not super great. Sure, maybe Andrew Jackson lived in a great house, and maybe the railroads made some white guys rich beyond imagination, but most white people in Tennessee can’t afford great houses. They can’t find jobs that will make them wealthy. And a lot of them went to college and got married and did all the stuff they’re supposed to do, and it still didn’t open a lot of doors to them.Â
The racist and anti-Semitic views being peddled by the likes of Tucker Carlson and Matt Gaetz are nothing new
This ought to break the scheme. You can’t say, “Support whiteness as being the best and you’ll get all the stuff white people deserve,” and then not deliver on it without people getting angry. And obviously, people do get angry. The pyramid scheme just directs that anger toward the people on your level or slightly below you or slightly above. They’re the ones taking the job you rightfully deserve, getting the spot at college that should have gone to you. But what the schemers don’t want you to understand is that there aren’t ever enough spots. If the base of the pyramid scheme starts shrinking, the number of pathways up the pyramid also starts shrinking.
This is why, even as the state was shortchanging TSU, it wasn’t using that money to equally improve all the other colleges in the state. Even among those colleges, favorites get more, and it’s very likely that Tennessee will try to insulate its favorites from bearing the brunt of the repercussions of the theft from TSU.
White supremacy benefits from white people seeing Black people trying to get the resources due to them as them trying to steal from white people. But just like all of Montgomery Bell’s descendants have cause to ask, “Where did all that money go?” everyone who cares about higher education in Tennessee should be asking, “Where did all that money go?” It would not be right if it all went to, say, UT Knoxville instead of TSU, but at least then it would be obvious who benefited from the theft. I don’t think anyone would suggest that it’s obvious that the UT schools got the money that should have gone to TSU. They don’t look like schools with an extra $2 billion. So who did benefit then? As the legislature was shortchanging TSU, whose pockets were being filled?
I don’t know if we’ll ever get those answers, but when the time comes and people are squabbling over where the money to make this right is going to come from, we need to push for answers as to where it went in the first place.
