By LILLIAN GLAROS

From lettuce to living in Hyattsville, local writer and professor Lonnae O’Neal shared the story of her family, intermixed with the story of the United States, in her new book, Bibb Country: Unearthing My Family Secrets of Land, Legacy and Lettuce, at an event held at Nest Proper in Hyattsville on June 21. 

“It’s a story of America as seen through a lens of Blackness,” O’Neal said at the event, which was attended by over 20 people and involved book signings, readings and questions from the audience.

The beginnings of her book trace back to 2019, with a Facebook invitation to a reunion of descendants of enslavers and those who were enslaved by Major Richard Bibb in Russellville, Kentucky. O’Neal is descended from some of those enslaved by the Bibbs, and might be descended from the enslavers themselves, she said. O’Neal said she originally did not want to attend, but her editor at ESPN’s Black-led media platform Andscape (formerly known as The Undefeated) persuaded her, and said it was a way for her to reclaim her family’s history and not feel trapped by it.

“We’re all grappling with enough in the present,” O’Neal said. “Who wants to dig up ancestral traumas, right?”

O’Neal said she wrote an article in 2019 for Andscape about the reunion and that was that, she thought. 

But one vegetable changed everything: Bibb lettuce, which is a Kentucky regional specialty, according to O’Neal. The creation of the lettuce is credited to Major John Bibb, Richard Bibb’s son, who enslaved around 100 people, O’Neal said. 

As she tells it, one day in 2020 she was in a Home Depot in Hyattsville, and bought some packets of Bibb lettuce, not intending to ever plant them, but her daughter accidentally planted it while helping her mother. O’Neal abandoned the garden because she wasn’t ready to address her history, she said. This story allowed her to understand that she needed to confront her family’s past, O’Neal told the Life & Times.

“I realized I just … wouldn’t get beyond it, so I needed to turn and face it, and that’s what this book is” said O’Neal.

After six years of coming to terms with her family’s history and four years of working on her book, interviewing family members, and looking up census records and other documents, O’Neal published Bibb Country: Unearthing My Family Secrets of Land, Legacy and Lettuce on June 17.

Part of the book mentions Hyattsville. On O’Neal’s first night in Hyattsville the police were called because their moving van was blocking the street, she said. O’Neal said she understood that the blockage could be an inconvenience but said whoever called simply could have asked them to move. 

“I made a decision at that moment, like I’m not going to let these folks steal my joy,” O’Neal said.

This incident inspired her to look deeper at her new home’s history, and she discovered a racially restrictive covenant was attached to her house. These no longer enforceable covenants were used to prevent people from living in certain areas by race. The language was “disheartening” she said. It included wording that prohibited those of Black descent from living in the house. 

At a book signing, reading and Q&A at Nest Proper in Hyattsville, O’Neal read a selection about Hyattsville and Prince George’s County from her book, linking it back to her childhood and her family’s legacy of migration. 

“Prince George’s County represented my approximation of the South Side of Chicago,” O’Neal said.

Miracle Howard-Khan, a Hyattsville resident who attended O’Neal’s event, along with over 20 other people, said she can relate to the difficulties of living in cities like Hyattville and her childhood home, Washington, D.C., where racism is still present. 

“I can already feel like it’s going to continue to connect with things that I’ve experienced,” Howard-Khan said of the book, which she purchased. 

Hyattsville resident Kelly Burrello said she thinks the themes of the book are very important. 

“It’s about having dialogue around very, very tough issues around race discrimination, systemic racism in this country, ” Burrello said. “It’s super important to have this discussion, especially right now, in this time of division.”

 

Lillian Glaros is an undergraduate student majoring in journalism at the University of Maryland.