Joab's Pagiel | Part 1

Joab's Pagiel

38:26

In the story, there is an Amish settlement called the village of Parmenus.

Parmenus did not start as a refuge, but it slowly became one.

Black families began arriving first—quietly, in wagons and borrowed trucks—because the land they came from was being choked by the KKK. Crosses were burning again. Men were disappearing. Native Americans followed. Then a few Mexican families. People didn’t come because they wanted to change the Amish; they came because they wanted to stay alive and live in a peaceful area.

The Amish took them in.

They shared food, land, and labor. The Amish did not shout about equality or make speeches; They simply opened their doors. They worked side by side in the fields. They let children play together. They treated Black people the same way they treated everyone else—plainly, kindly, without ceremony.

That kindness led to them becoming well-known for having other blacks like me in the area.

The nearby towns noticed first. Then the rumors started.

The Average population outside the town were saying stuff like “There are Black people living with the Amish.”

The Neo-Nazis were saying loaded phrases like “They’re mixing.”

And the KKK just plainly told each other “They’re betraying their own.”

Cars began slowing near the village. Men stood at the tree line too long. Notes were nailed to fence posts. At night, engines idled on the road, headlights off. The Amish did not answer violence with violence. They prayed. They watched. They kept working. Most of the Amish didn't think anyone was gonna do anything because they were not used to such violence.

The KKK did not stay away.

The ones who weren’t affiliated mostly avoided the village—it made them uncomfortable. But those who were affiliated came on purpose. They came to harass, to intimidate, to test boundaries. They shouted slurs from the road. They followed the children. They vandalized property. They wanted fear to soak into the ground as they started burning their houses down.

And once the Amish were seen protecting Black families, the danger doubled.

The Amish of Parmenus were no longer just seen as “weird farmers” by the KKK & Neo-Nazis... They were labeled race traitors.

White Amish women who married Black men were watched. Followed. Threatened. Children—mixed children—became targets. Not hypothetically. Literally. Stones thrown. Dogs unleashed. Gunshots fired near houses at night, not to kill—yet—but to warn.

Jews came too, some of them Messianic Jews, drawn by the faith in God and separation from the outside world. They came for a sense of peace from the anti-sematic population outside the town. Their presence only widened the target.

The violence didn’t stay theoretical. Biracial children were harassed openly. Their skin alone made them visible. The KKK said "It Made them hunt-able."

That was when the Amish leadership intervened.

Adiel Kanagy, one of the elders, called the coalition together. He was not loud. He did not dramatize. But his hands shook when he spoke.

He told them the truth.

At first, interracial marriages had been allowed. No one forbade them. The Amish were Swiss Anabaptists, not racial ideologues. They had never feared “being bred out.” They didn’t care about racial purity. What they feared was burial of the entire community by outsiders because their lack of fighting prowess caused them to die by the Neo-Nazis who burn down mosques and The KKK who burn down Black People's Home.

Because the KKK did not target partially.

Mr. Kanagy explained it plainly: "if everyone became mixed, then everyone would be seen as expendable by the KKK. There would be no white Amish left, thus the KKK would leave No one spared. The KKK would continue erasing us until the town was a literal ghost town."

He knew how mobs worked. He knew history. He knew that racists don’t stop at one child.

Some Amish women had chosen Black husbands for practical reasons as well—melanin protected against skin cancer, which had been spreading through the community. Darker skin meant fewer deaths from skin cancer.

But that benefit came with a cost no one had fully calculated.

Because the same skin that protected against cancer was the same skin tone the KKK had marked children for violence against.

So the rules of the town had changed.

Not because they believed interracial marriage was sinful, Not because they decided that Black people were unwelcome, But because the KKK had turned mixed children into their targets.

The elders banned marriage decisions based on skin tone. They distributed sunscreen instead. It felt awkward, But a lot of the residents, even the people of color, thought it was safer than burying children and their descendants because the KKK didn't like the color of the next generation's skin.

Mr. Kanagy told the crowd in front of a podium out on a stage what few felt safe to say out loud: "if some families remained unmixed, someone might survive an attack from the KKK. If everyone mixed, no one would survive the KKK because the KKK would not allow us to survive. The KKK has guns. We do not know how to fight."

The Amish were already under strain. There was a news report saying that some of Their Towns' populations came from limited bloodlines. Genetic disorders were a known risk. Marrying outside the racial group to non-Swiss members of the Amish community had once been encouraged to prevent disabilities & incest. DNA tests were already used to avoid incest without anyone talking about it.

They felt cornered by these Neo-Nazis and KKK members.

What terrified Mr. Kanagy was not losing Amish identity. It was losing the village entirely.

Parmenus did not believe they had become racist, but they had become afraid.

The fear is valid. They are watching KKK White knights invade their community past their home at night, and it left Adiel wondering if this was the night the KKK decided no one deserved to live there anymore.

What terrified Adiel was not a single attack. It was the math.

He could picture it clearly: trucks and cars arriving in waves, engines rumbling at the edge of Parmenus, men spilling out faster than the Amish could react. Too many boots. Too many guns. Too much hate concentrated in one direction. If the KKK came all at once—not to warn, not to intimidate, but to erase—the village would not survive.

Parmenus was a pacifist community. It had been one for generations. They had never trained for violence. They didn’t stockpile weapons. They didn’t patrol their borders. When harassment began—shouts from the road, vandalized fences, threats nailed to posts—they froze. They prayed. They waited for it to pass.

It didn’t.

Children were followed. Stones were thrown. Shots were fired into the night—not to kill yet, but close enough that everyone understood the message.

The Amish were losing.

Adiel watched his people stand in doorways at dusk, scanning the road longer than necessary. He saw elders whisper instead of speak aloud. He saw fear settle into a community that had never learned how to fight back.

And he panicked.

Not loudly. Not irrationally. Quietly—like a man realizing a flood is coming and knowing his house was never built to withstand water.

He came to a conclusion he hated.

If everyone in the village became visibly mixed, then everyone would be deemed disposable by the KKK. There would be no one left for the attackers to “spare.” No one to rebuild. No one to keep the name Parmenus alive. Just ashes and empty land.

So he made a brutal calculation.

If some families remained visibly white—if some children could pass as white—then even if the worst happened, someone might be left standing. The KKK would kill many, but not all. The village would not become a ghost town.

It wasn’t justice. It wasn’t moral purity.

It was triage.

From that point on, the rules hardened.

Mixed children were only permitted to marry other mixed children or Black spouses—unless the child looked white. If they could pass, they were allowed to marry into the Swiss Amish families. Native American children, in particular, were watched closely. The elders noticed that when Native Americans married white spouses, their children often appeared fully white—white enough to escape immediate targeting. They allowed Native children who appear white because their children would look white and thus be able to pass as white to help them survive the Klu Klux Klan.

It was scary, deemed very unfair. and depressing, but it was meant to keep some people left behind & breathing if the KKK comes back to ravage the town and kill everyone because they were so scared that since they didn't know how to fight, the Amish town would be put through a genocide by the KKK.

Adiel knew how bad it sounded. He knew history would judge it harshly. But Adiel felt that "history won’t be there if everyone died."

The community wasn’t winning against the KKK. His wife, Azaliah, kept complaining that "There was no winning. There was only delaying extinction."

Still, the plan cracked under its own weight.

Azaliah Nissley Kanagy—Adiel’s wife and one of the village’s sharpest observers—saw the flaw immediately. Azaliah didn’t raise her voice. Azaliah didn’t accuse Adiel. Azaliah simply laid it bare.

Azaliah asked Adiel what would happen to the people who couldn’t pass.

“What about the Black families?” she said: “What about the Native Americans? What about the Romani—the ones people already hate just for existing?”

She reminded him that Romani people could have very dark skin, that they were already demonized by racists everywhere racists lived. Protection by proximity wouldn’t apply to them. Neither would passing as white.

“This saves the white ones,” she told him plainly: “But the rest are still losing. They’re losing just as badly. And white people are still being attacked for being close to black people.”

And she was right.

The numbers made it worse.

Parmenus, counting both Swiss Amish and non-white residents together, numbered around twenty thousand people. Ten thousand white Amish. Ten thousand non-white families.

Seven thousand men who wanted to hurt them; That wasn’t a fringe group, That was an army.

Adiel realized then that his plan didn’t solve the danger—it only decided who might survive it.

And his wife kept crying out "There was no version of this story where everyone walked away clean."

To be Continued...