From childhood, the red clay of Alabama has been more than dusty earth beneath my feet — it’s been companion, witness, keeper, and quiet participant in this life’s southern screenplay. Those deep, iron-rich hues tell tales far older than roads, houses, or city outlines. This clay, saturated by millennia, holds within it the memory of those who walked, worked, sweated, prayed, and bled on it. I recall a professor once telling me, “This Alabama red clay is rich with the blood of your ancestors.” It was then that I began to understand — this soil is not just ruddy dirt; it is charged matter, a living archive.
In the age old folk wisdom of the South, particularly in the African American tradition, earth is not a passive object or substance. Clay and soil have long been used as vessels for intention — for grounding, for protection, for healing, cleansing, and for calling forth what is unseen. The red clay in particular, with its rich iron content, acts almost like a spiritual conductor, transmitting energy between the seen and unseen worlds. It anchors prayers, catches tears, and carries whispers into the earth’s core. But its power extends beyond the personal or mystical — it is cosmic. Science teaches us that the same iron oxide that reddens Alabama clay also exists in places like Morocco, Tehran, Nigeria, Kenya, and yes on the surface of Mars, giving the planet its scarlet glow. There’s something poetic in that: this humble dirt is a terrestrial mirror of a celestial body, connecting us to the wider universe. How we walk should not be common because what we walk upon is not ordinary — it is stardust, drawn down to earth, thickened and spread by time and memory.
This allows me to weave this red clay into my work not as a symbol of something superstitious, but as a tangible metaphor for what binds us all: dust to dust, earth to star, ascendant to descendant. It’s a reminder that our faith traditions, though varied, often share this same foundational truth — that life is cyclical, that spirit moves through matter, and that the earth itself is a key element in the divine story. I have come to see red clay as a sacred material. It quietly affirms what so many faiths already teach — that we are intimately connected to both the earth and the heavens. We are tethered to power. May each step we take upon this hallowed ground remind us of our origin story, our resilience, our rootedness, and our inevitable rising.
Notes of A Native Son 