Frank X Walker is a Kentucky poet who in 1991 became a founding member of the Affrilachian poets.
Walker says the word “Affrilachia” “spoke to the union of Appalachian identity and the region’s African-American culture and history.”
Walker has a new book, Load in Nine Times. Inside Appalachia host Mason Adams recently spoke with him about it.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Adams: Frank X Walker, thank you for coming on Inside Appalachia.
Walker: Honored to be here.
Adams: How did you first conceptualize this book? What planted the idea in your head?
Walker: Well, it came about organically. I had been hired to write some short biographies of Civil War soldiers for this new project in Kentucky called Reckoning, Inc. They wanted to take all these archival documents that were newly available and were being digitized, and alongside the invitation to do your own research, they would show examples of bios written by Kentucky writers. Then I realized this information that I was finding in these documents was so interesting, that I was more moved to respond with a poem than a traditional bio. I asked permission to also include poems with the bios, and they were very excited about that.
After about a half dozen anonymous soldiers with no connection to me, I recalled that I had relatives, but I didn’t have very much information, and I asked them if they would consider my own relatives with their research. A week later, they came back with a 99-page document of pension files and affidavits and records connected to Randal and Mary Edelen, which were my third great-great-grandparents. That changed my whole trajectory, and I just wanted to write about them. I wanted to know more about them, so I abandoned the project I already started, and just focused on researching the Civil War and writing poems in response to what I was finding out about how it impacted Black families whose men and women were connected to Camp Nelson, which had a refugee camp in what is now known as Nicholasville, Kentucky. I passed by this place for decades and only visited maybe once or twice, but didn’t know how much of my own family story was present there, both Randal Edelen and Henry Clay Walker. Another great third, great great grandfather had been stationed there at the same time. Just knowing that I had family members who had been at Camp Nelson made me really interested in going back and revisiting. This book has kind of grown up around that idea of trying to capture that story that’s not singularly about the Civil War, but it’s about the challenges black families faced before, during and immediately after the war, and it tells a different story than the story than textbooks have put forth.
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Adams: So, Mary and Randal Edlin and Elvira and Henry Clay Walker are family members to whom you dedicate the book, and they also appear in the book at times. Can you tell us a little bit more about what you learned about them in the course of researching and writing this?
Walker: One of the things that first made an impact for me when considering that question is that my name is Frank X Walker, and the “X” in my name is not my birth name. That became my nickname in college, and then became my legal name when I became a practicing artist and writer in the world. I wanted to be known as Frank X Walker because the “X” stood for the unknown in the traditional Malcolm X, and that unknown meant I don’t know my original African name, and that’s where I traced my lineage to. And that unknown also had to do with the period of enslavement, when census records did not include the names of individuals who were enslaved — just to age, occupation, and maybe the color. So, the “X” represents all that history. When I’m going through these files, I kept coming across Mary Edelen’s name, and I noticed one day that her handwriting kept being a little bit different each time. I took the chance to zoom in on one of her signatures and realized that in between her name, in between Mary and Edelen, it just said, “her mark,” and there was an “X.” And a bell went off. I pulled back from that image and realized in that document, there were two signatures to the left of that that vouch for her signature. It took about two more steps in my head to realize that she was illiterate, and so somebody else wrote her name, and she had to put an “X” in the spot, and then that spot had to be identified as her mark, you know. So, she was Mary X Edelen, and I was Frank X Walker, and I thought I’d been the first “X” in the family, but here was this woman for almost the same reason, reaching across time to her third great-great-grandson, to communicate something. To me, that was a really powerful moment.
Adams: This is a poetry collection, but it really feels not so much as a collection of poems, as this widescreen experience of the pivotal moment in American history — immediately before the Civil War, during and then picking up the pieces after. We see this moment through all these different perspectives — enslaved people, their former masters and some historic figures as well. How were you able to squeeze your brain into all these different perspectives to tell this shared story?
Walker: What I learned, having written five previous collections of historical poetry, is that the more points of view that are present, the closer to the truth the entire narrative feels. This was a chance to talk about something that everybody knows about. There are literally thousands of books about the Civil War, but I was trying to come at it from a point of view that challenges traditional narratives. Kentucky’s neutrality and then joining the Union, it almost presents a romanticized notion of what the Civil War was in Kentucky, but almost none of those historical accounts share a point of view that’s from the black families, the soldiers and their family members, as far as the Civil War was concerned. I wanted to approach it from that direction, and I knew that I’d have to have villains and heroes. I wanted to make sure women’s voices were present, and the children were also included. If I was going to discuss enslavement, I needed to have the individuals who oppress the other people and their victims in the same space.
Adams: The first section really bracingly drops us into pre-Civil War slavery, and then the book progresses. Can you describe how it’s kind of constructed into three parts, and how it flows and why you chose that construction?
Walker: I wanted to make sure I told a full account of the Civil War through these soldiers’ eyes, which meant I’ve had to really unfold how they all came to be soldiers, and what the motivation may have been. The biggest motivation was when they changed the law and not just allowed soldiers in Kentucky to join up, but guaranteed that once they signed their names, their children and their wives and their mothers also became free. But I also wanted to make sure that the soldiers had a chance to tell their story. So the middle part of the book is mostly in the voices of soldiers who participated. Then once the war was concluded, I think a story that’s undertold is how much effort Kentucky, as an institutional space using legal means, tried to reinstate some of the benefits of having enslaved free labor available. There was a period of almost 10 years where there was this effort to put newly free people back in their place, and a whole period of domestic terrorism that was rendered upon free Black people by former Confederate officers. As you know, there were 25,000 African American men who joined the Union army. There were also as many Kentucky white men who joined the Confederate Army and then returned to Kentucky after the war. For 10 years, groups of them, sometimes up to 200 former calvary men on horseback rode around central Kentucky terrorizing newly freed Black men and their families and chased them off their new farms that they were able to purchase with their $300 that was earned money from having been soldiers.
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Adams: When you were working on this book, what did you learn about the Civil War in Kentucky that most surprised you?
Walker: A lot of people think the Civil War is not over, and there’s evidence of those same battles for the same reasons are being fought every day, especially along lines of race and class. The landed, wealthy money corporation entities versus the people who have been dispossessed. Efforts to divide and conquer, divide peoples, particularly poor people, working class people, from each other and make them believe the enemy is that other person. I guess the energy we need to work on if we want to land in a better place is, how do we push against that division and figure out a way to support and push toward a common goal. I hope that people read these poems, and realize that they’re based on real human beings and get caught up and connected to the emotional stuff that’s infused in the poems. I hope they leave this book saying, “I felt something,” and will now think about this period in history differently, and will look for the lessons that I think are very self evident in this retelling.
Adams: Frank X Walker, it’s been an honor. Thank you for speaking with us at Inside Appalachia.
Walker: Thank you, Mason. I really enjoyed the conversation.
Frank X. Walker’s new book is Load In Nine Times. It’s available now.
