The Story Behind We Are Bridges: A Memoir
with Cassandra Lane

Cassandra Lane | The Story Behind “We Are Bridges: A Memoir”

Heather Murphy: Hi, Cassandra. Thanks for joining me on the podcast today. I'm looking forward to hearing and sharing your stories. Could you start by introducing yourself?

Cassandra Lane: Hi, Heather. Thanks so much for having me on. I think what you do is amazing. My name is Cassandra Lane. I am a writer. I'm an editor. I'm a former journalist. I'm from Louisiana, which is where I started my journalism career. But about after about 10 years in the business, I really wanted to take the leap and pursue what I always truly wanted to do, which was creative writing.

And I went back to school, moved from Louisiana to Los Angeles, which is where I've been now 20 years. I am the editor in chief of LA parent magazine. I just published my first book a couple of months ago. We Are Bridges: A Memoir. I'm a mom. All of that.

Heather Murphy: Great. Thank you so much. Now, can you share what was going on in your life when you decided that you wanted to research your family history?

Cassandra Lane: Yeah, it all has to do with that trek, that migration from Louisiana to Los Angeles, which is a big culture shock. I was so far away from blood family while I was in Louisiana. I knew a little bit about my family history? So this book tells the story, our attempts to tell the story of my great-grandparents, Mary Magdalene McGee, and Burt Bridges who were so in love, very young and in love. And unfortunately that love was cut short by lynching around 1904. My grandmother was pregnant with my grandfather, my mother's father. And so I knew some of that story when I was a young adult and then a little bit, even before that, a little bit of it. But I wasn't obsessed with it and trying to pursue learning more until I came out to Los Angeles and I had just enrolled in an MFA program at Antioch University LA.

I went in with another proposal, but that ended up being, uh, changed to this. Exploration into what had happened to my grandfather or my great-grandfather and my great-grandmother and how that had impacted not only that couple, but the generations that came after them and including my own.

Heather Murphy: Okay. And so what was it like for you at the beginning of that journey? What steps were you taking to be able to find out the story behind the little bits that you have?

Cassandra Lane: Yeah. So this would've been around 2001, 2002. It was very frustrating. You know, it wasn't on social. We didn't have social media. I was so far away from family and for me it truly was an emotional journey. I was looking at myself in terms of why was the way that I am, around romance and marriage and race.

And I was in therapy. I was journaling a lot. So I just started talking to my grandparents by that point were all gone. but I started talking to my mom. Who's kind of a family historian and a story to an oral storyteller. I call her and my favorite uncle, uncle Cricket, who also was interested in. What had happened to, or our great-grandchildren ancestors and uncle Cricket, it was just very supportive.

Grandma Mary unfortunately did not tell us a lot when she was living. That was just such a painful part of her past. She remarried after the lynching migrated from Mississippi to Louisiana, which is where we all ended up being, married a man who unfortunately was abusive to her and to my grandfather. And so even though she didn't want to talk about Burt Bridges while she was living on her death bed in her nineties, he came back up for her.

And she, my mom tells me that she was crying to her about how beautiful he was. How strong he was, how proud he was, how much she loved him and how the white people lynched him. And then she just shut down and said, I'm not going to talk about my Burt anymore, baby. I'm not going to talk about him. So we've truly only had those two words, Burt Bridges, the fact that he was physically beautiful, that they were so in love and that he was my grandfather's biological father and that this atrocity happened. and my uncle, you know, found some family, distant family members ask questions, not much was revealed. I started looking, um, at calling the state of Mississippi for records. Unfortunately, in the county, in which that lynching likely took place there was a court house fire, in 1912. So any records prior to 1912, We're gone if there ever were any records on him. So it was a very frustrating, time to try to find, you know, facts and records since there weren't any, I wasn't really able to travel in the way that I wanted to. So for me, the story became more emotional and creative and what I focused on where the gaps and what do those gaps, especially in African-American families. So many of us don't have, we can't trace our family lineage back far too far. I wanted to look at what those, the impact of those gaps on, on a family. And so what I started doing was writing around that , in a poetic way, in a way that also fictionalized, I started fictionalizing a story around Burt and Mary, imagining them as two young people in love just to humanize them. So, yes, I, I wrote about the tragedy, but I also wrote about, or just imagine their love based on those few, little words that great grandma Mary said about, about his beauty and her love for him.

 Later in this, this is a story that I've been working on for almost 20 years. so later I did do more research. I joined Ancestry.com. I did a DNA test, you know, as technologies began to change and I have access to more. and the story has evolved in so many ways. For instance, at the time, The initial writing I was not a mom. I wasn't planning on becoming a mom. So all of my focus was really on Burt Bridges and what happens to him. In 2006, I was pregnant. and the book took another turn. I started focusing on the women in the family and my, and Vermont, Mary, and the fact that she was the survivor, what that must have been like for her to be pregnant and, and go through a lynching.

so I started weaving in, it became this woven story of this ancestral. Look with my contemporary story of becoming a mom. I did make a trip to that town, which is now a ghost towns in 2018. I walked around cemetery or walked around, the ghost town just done lots of research on the town. I've done a lot of research on what was happening in 1904 that we do know about whether that was nationally and Mississippi, Louisiana, et cetera. because I was very interested in contrasting those gaps with the solid hard facts that we have in order to amplify the gaps.

Heather Murphy: Great. There is a couple things. Touch on what you said is, um, one of the things I think it's great that if you didn't have the records, you've found ways, like you said to fill in those gaps, even though it wasn't specifically about your ancestor, that you were able to find out, what was it like to live in that place or what was going on in that time to give you more context to do that imagining part that you said.

Cassandra Lane: Absolutely newspaper clippings. I have tons of books,, on lynchings, the very famous book Without Sanctuary, which is a collection of horrific lynching postcards that people would mail out to their relatives And friends, just atrocious. but looking at those images again, helped my imagination. looking at newspaper clippings, I have, uh, a book about, you know, the lynchings that were written about, and in a lot of cases, they were, the victims were just called unknown.

So maybe he was one of those unknowns. Um, but I, yeah, I used all of those, those pieces of information to help construct the story.

Heather Murphy: And I think that's really valuable. Like a lot of times in genealogy, we're about the facts and what, what is the data that we can get? But I think it's so valuable to do what you've done and do that imagining contemplating what their lives could have been like would have been like. What has been the benefit from doing that for you?

Cassandra Lane: Just really, um, I feel connected to them in a way that, I didn't before I do remember grandma Mary, very, very well. I was 11 when she died after her. Husband her second husband died in the seventies, she continued on with her farm. She never had any other children but she continued on with her. She was a farmer and she continued on with her farm until she just couldn't do it anymore. And that would have been like 90

Heather Murphy: Hmm.

Cassandra Lane: and she moved into my grandparent's home at around the same time that my mother and, as kids moved back in after my mother's divorce. So here was this, you know? Yes, it was poverty, but it also was very rich because we had all of these generations living in one home. so I remember her food, especially her teacakes. I remember her shoeing away ghosts. I remember her napping and the old, you know, tobacco colored recliner and the dipping snuff. So I remember all of those like sensory details, but trying to imagine her as this young woman, trying to imagine her pregnant in love, there's sensual moments in the book, it just tied me to her and to Bert and a much more.

I dunno, deeper humane way of course, a lot of it's projection because I'm a romantic. So I was able to project that onto them. But yeah, they are my blood. And so a part of their DNA lives within me. so I was just feel much more ownership, a deeper sense of identity, and love.

Heather Murphy: And how has knowing their story better contributed to that better sense of identity for yourself?

Cassandra Lane: Oh, it's just been, one, I understand? You know, some of the insecurities, not only in myself, but in the family. How do we inherit depression? Mental illness? when I look back at my, at her son, my grandfather. Who I was an adult when he passed. I remember him very well, but you know, no one called a depression, no one called it mental illness, but certainly he was dealing with that.

so it just, it helped me look back at him and other people in the family and myself with a deeper compassion, a deeper understanding and appreciation of mental illness and how we need to make sure that we have the supports in place, for ourselves and our family members. Yeah, it's just absolutely a deeper understanding and the language to put around things that confuse you, that things that confuse you as a child, that you just don't understand.

And even as a young adult, And now I can, you see certain echoes within the family that sometimes are heartbreaking, but again, it's makes it much more understandable when you understand the roots.

Heather Murphy: what are some of the joys you've taken from researching and learning about those ancestors. Cause I know there's that trauma piece, but what about the other side?

Cassandra Lane: Yeah, I talk about the food. That's a big thing for me, cause I love, I love eating. My grandmother taught me how to cook. so I, I am so proud of these women and how yes, they were domestics. They learned, they knew how to quilt. They knew how to cook from scratch without measuring, but they also were laborers, farmers and gardeners.

 They knew how to build community. The community care. I remember our front door was like a revolving door. It was never locked. It locked in the community, came to these women. For cups of sugar and flour and prayer, and sometimes just a listening ear. and so I can see those things within me when I think about my community of friends, and the way that I've kind of built my community of friends, I can see my grandmothers in me.

So those are things that are very exciting to me. And despite the lack of physical wealth there's such wealth there. I appreciate nature because of my family and where we grew up. There was some woods behind the home that my son can barely identify different insects so I can see, you know, how not growing up in that kind of environment. You know how that's hurt him in some ways, of course, we, we make sure that we go hiking and we can take vacations and things like that, but he's a little bit more. And even my husband hesitant to eat some fruit off a tree that they can't. So it didn't come out of a grocery store.

Um, I also really value that we have this huge family. In this small town. because now in so many cases, families are divided by geography and we're spread out all over the place. My, my son is not growing up with the benefit of growing up with tons of cousins and aunts and uncles. so those are things that have been lost that I deeply value.

Heather Murphy: Or are there things that you do to try to. I didn't make up for that distance to make sure he's not completely disconnected from the family.

Cassandra Lane: Absolutely. So my mom now lives in Florida, which she has for 20 plus years. So we, we do see her every year or. Um, around the holidays and it's the south, it's not Louisiana, but it's, uh, it's still, you know, the south for him. It's very exciting. he's gone to, or we've taken him to New Orleans. He'd loved his trip to New Orleans.

 and he's been to my hometown to Ritter Louisiana, and he absolutely loved that and eating the crawfish and the boot and you know, all the cousins that he never knew about. So he is obsessed with Louisiana and the accents and the food. I make sure here in LA that we try to eat healthy, but on holidays I will cook those old foods that my grandmothers taught me how to cook.

he does all the research on his own and he'll ask me questions, you know, about different, whether it's musicians. My mom was a musician. Uh, so they talk all the time on Google duo about music and the past and all of that. When he's studying and school or history lesson, whether it's on the civil rights or what have you, he's able to, we, I encourage him to relate that back to his grandparents and how he needs to make sure that he's asking his grandma, well, what you were alive during that period, what was it like for you or both of his grandmothers? and he's done done that So that those are some ways we've definitely tried to. Keep it alive and keep those connections going.

Heather Murphy: So not everyone who researches their family history decides to write a book. Why did you decide to make it into a book?

Cassandra Lane: I think because I'm a writer and that's probably the only, I don't know if I would've necessarily researched family history if I weren't a writer. for me, writing is such a psychological dig. Whatever I'm writing even as a journalist. And so when I turned the lens on myself after looking outward for so long, for so many years, interviewing so many countless people, when I turned the lens on myself, I knew that I'm not an island, no person is an island. So I had to connect those dots. And so of course, I had to look at my blood line, and family yeah. So for me, I think it's the other way around for me, because I'm a writer because I'm constantly asking why are things the way they are? It drove me to my family. I don't know how they feel about that, but I was compelled to do it because of my own psychological and emotional work.

Heather Murphy: That's great because there is so much that we can learn about ourselves by learning the stories of the people who led to ours. Because I think of it as like, are our parents and grandparents, each generation has this little packet of beliefs and things that happened to them that they passed the next generation. And if you don't know what your parents got in their little package, how can you understand what they gave to you?

Cassandra Lane: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Heather Murphy: one of the comments that you made before we had this interview was that by writing this and by researching your family, you were leaving a blueprint for the future. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

Cassandra Lane: Hmm. Yeah. So I love the idea of blueprint and that my, I have to give it to my publishers for coining that, the marketing team, which I absolutely love. And I love that the cover of the book is blue to kind of match that. , I think what it means for me is that despite that I was faced with that, the family is faced with these gaps, not knowing, who our family was prior to Mary.

 And so many people in the family didn't even know about Burt Bridges. They thought that Buckley, which is the last name of the man, she married after the lynching. They genuinely thought that that was the biological last name. and so when I started doing this research and asking, there was a family reunion in 2001, and I was telling some people about it, they were, it was completely new to them.

so I think a blueprint is, yeah, it's something that you can create despite the gaps and despite the ghosts. it's something that despite the lack of land, despite the lack of a headstone, a birth certificate or death certificate through creativity, through crafting a story with love, with revision, with storytelling, there's something that I can pass on to not only my child, but hopefully his children and their children.

 And a blueprint can also be a guide in some way. How do we want to live our lives? I talk in the book about looking at that history, in terms of what to keep, because it's so beautiful and joyous, as you mentioned, and what to discard because it is painful. but also even within that, that pain and tragedy, there are lessons.

So it's my particular philosophy and my particular story, but perhaps, you know, whether it's my, child or, or his children are just complete strangers readers who pick up the book, perhaps it will inspire them to create something for their lives as well.

Heather Murphy: What would you say to people who are a little bit resistant to imagine their ancestors lives? Because they feel like it's not accurate. How would you encourage them that it's okay to do that?

Cassandra Lane: Um, so again, I'm a writer, some so about play and, and you know, poetry. I'm not a poet, but I love poets and I love how poets play with memory and story. Yeah. I was a journalist. So it was all supposedly about facts, right? And all supposedly about being objective. But as a journalist, you can go and this has been proven and covered the same event as three other journalists.

And the reports are going to be slightly different. what people see, what people witness is always going to be somewhat different based on their perspective, where they were standing, what they're bringing to it with, they're projecting onto it. And So for me, memory is something that's not set in stone.

Memory is something that is flexible. That is malleable. And I think that's okay. and I think, if you're writing about family history that you can bring that understanding to it immediately. If you're writing for the public, you can definitely make sure that you say that in the beginning of the work, that this is a work of imagination or a mixture of imagination, and fact, and readers I've found are very much, um, they will embrace that because I think the reader understands that memory can be subjective.

Heather Murphy: So after you done this project, you worked on in grad school. Now it's a book. How else are you continuing to make this exploration of family history part of your life?

Cassandra Lane: Absolutely. That's great. I will continue talking to my son and, encouraging him to record. That's. One thing that I regret is that I don't have recordings of my grandparents' voices. I can remember them still, but one day I'm not going to be here. And I would love to have shared that with him. All of their idiosyncrasies, their cadences, their, you know, figures of speech, which he thinks are just so interesting.

So encouraging him because of that lack, I can now encourage him to record your grandmother, you know, ask her first, but record her. Keep a journal. She's bought him a journal before, and you know, interview, uh, he's 14, but he can start those explorations now. For me, the work continues. I did find, eventually, a death certificate for my great grand mother for Mary.

And there are pieces on there with that and were like treasure because it validated her. Of course, I knew that she existed. so I have those files. I have, military records. For son, my grandfather, draft papers. I have photos from the trip that I made to Mississippi. I will go back to stay longer.

I found some distant cousins through the DNA testing. I just have tons of files and records, beyond what happened to them that I, I need to continue to develop. I think there are definitely stories, that will come out of some of that might be just an essay or a poem or what have you, but I'll keep playing with that material. My mom really wants me to explore her mother's side of the story, which is a different part of Louisiana. so I'm interested in pursuing that as well. It's just never ending.

Heather Murphy: Okay. And, and even though it's never ending, how would you say that you are different between now and before you started this journey? Hmmm?

Cassandra Lane: I feel more confident. I feel more. I just feel more of who I am and who I was always supposed to be. I was always so definitely afraid of everything. So timid had not found my voice or I think it was internal because that was a writer, even as a kid, I read and wrote all the time. But I think I was afraid of that voice.

 I am no longer afraid even as late as 2019. I was saying how every time I even thought about public speaking. So that's one thing. Started kind of starting to heat up. I hadn't gotten the book contract yet, but it was getting close and people were inviting me to do readings and I would just get physically ill.

And now, since the book has been out, I've been, been doing just countless talks. I don't feel that same physical illness. I can laugh at myself, for wasting time going. And that's not to diminish that because that can be, that's a real fear for people and I've had it for many years. Uh, but I just feel by telling this story, that life is short.

There's so many things, that happened to my ancestors. I feel grateful that I have a life that's, that's not steeped in fear and danger. and so I need to embrace that, because I have freedoms that they didn't have. And so I just wanna tell the world about them and their story and no longer hide my voice.

Heather Murphy: Great. Thank you. I will have links in the show notes so that people can get in touch with you and find your book. If they're interested in learning more about that story that you shared today.

Cassandra Lane: Thank you, Heather. This was wonderful.

Heather Murphy: Great. Thank you.