This is Bird Note.

Crows play many roles in human cultures, from ominous tricksters to sacred purveyors of wisdom.

But for much of American history, the social stigma around crows lent itself to a more pejorative meaning, says attorney and playwright Alice T. Crow.

The Crow is a very beautiful creature, very knowledgeable, very intelligent, but in the context of the system of racism, the crow is black, is ugly, is something to be feared.

And so the word crow was used to describe color.

We were called crows, and the image of the crow lynched upside down was used to intimidate us.

When Alice began looking into her family's history with the crow surname,

she discovered

a deep historical connection between the racist symbology of Jim Crow and the negative

image of these birds in many Western cultures.

A particular irony given black people's history with Crow's pre-enslavement.

Crow in Africa is a bird that was sacred.

We learned from the crow.

The crow is part of our culture.

Even the remnants of culture that people think we didn't hold on to from the African experience,

crow gave us that.

We held on to that.

For example, in some West African societies, crows symbolize wisdom and leadership, and their movements inspired dances.

While they were later appropriated and mocked by the Jim Crow character, Alice doesn't

let this taint her outlook on the bird.

Crows look at each other and they look at themselves and they see beauty. They don't see ugly.

They don't see feeble-minded and something to be mocked. They don't always get along.

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