The world of my youth was a world of separation. The railroad tracks separated our town into black and white. There were two libraries, the Wilson County Public Library and the Wilson County Negro Library. Everyone ate barbecue from Parker's but my mother had to go to the back door to pick up our order; only white people were allowed to enter the front door and sit in the dining room and eat. The train station had two waiting rooms, one for whites and one for coloreds. The one for whites was bigger, brighter, and cleaner. In facilities where there was no separate area for us, the signs read, "no colored allowed," or "white only." There were even two hospitals. I don't recall the name for the white hospital but the colored hospital was called Mercy. These are my memories of growing up as a colored child in Wilson, North Carolina.
I was born in 1955; I turned eighteen in March 1973. The public school system in Wilson ignored the court ordered integration that came from the Brown decision in 1954, and it was 1971 before the school system fully integrated. I was in tenth grade. My dad, who had been one of four black men who integrated the Wilson police force in the 1960s, worked a detail at the only high school in the city of Wilson, Fike Senior High. The KKK had set up camp across the street from the Fike to make their opposition to the presence of colored students at the school perfectly clear. The police were there to maintain order.
My dad says that when he first joined the police force, the black officers weren't allowed to drive patrol cars. He was on the force when Dr. King and then Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. I remember him wearing his riot gear as he went to work. I was thirteen.
Darden, which had been the black high school before integration in 1971, became a school for tenth grade only. All sophomores, colored and white, attended Darden; all juniors and seniors attended Fike. Darden lost its status as a high school for participation in sports, choral competitions, drama competitions, and all other extracurricular activities.
When I began my junior year at Fike, I signed up for chorus. The chorus teacher commented that she had noticed that the colored students all had a lot of vibrato in their voices and asked uswhy we sang that way. At Darden, we had sung spirituals, jazz, and R&B as well as some classical pieces. At Fike, the spirituals, jazz, and R&B were not regarded as appropriate music for choral presentations. I dropped chorus and took art instead.
A new employee at my office is also from Wilson. She is my sister's age, two years younger than I am. She is white. She doesn't remember any of this. She says that her year at Darden was a lot of fun. She has asked me if my class ever has a reunion. I didn't have the energy to explain to her why there is no class to have a reunion. When we integrated, all it really meant was that we attended school in the same buildings.
My class was the first integrated tenth grade at Darden. We never became a class. When we got to Fike for our junior and senior, we were still separate, just in the same buildings. Fike was on the white side of town and the KKK felt that it was on its home turf. It was difficult to build bridges among the students when grown men in white robes and hoods were standing across the street shouting epithets at us every day. It was also common knowledge that some of the armed police officers who were supposed to protect us had white robes and hoods in their closets at home.
I had thought that I was done writing about race. Friends whose opinions I value, have cautioned me that I only upset myself when I write of these things. I had decided to move on to other matters and let it be. However, I've come to realize that although they are well meaning, they don't get it at all. Writing about my experiences, what I know to be true, doesn't upset me. What upsets me is that so many people want to pretend that these things never happened, that they are some distant echo of reality, that what I know to be true is insignificant. That's upsetting and something that I refuse to accept.
Why am I thinking of these things now, at this time? Because I am witnessing an amazing revolution, a revolution of heart and mind that I never believed that I would see in my lifetime. I am filled with a deep joy as I contemplate the very real possibility that a man, who has brown skin like mine, may well be the next president of this country, my country that for so long has rejected me and my people. I had long ago accepted that there were wounds to my soul that could not be fully healed, wounds made by bigotry and hate, by an unrelenting message that because of the color of my skin, of the skin of my people, we were inferior. Don't misunderstand, I never believed that we were inferior but it was far too daunting a task to have to constantly fight against the belief by the larger culture that we were, a belief bolstered by pseudo-scientific claptrap like The Bell Curve.
I've been working over time to refrain from admitting to anyone, least of all to myself that at least part of the reason that I support Barack Obama is because he looks like me. I'm done with that. I admire Hillary's strong female base who have not shied away from admitting that they rallied around her in part because she is a woman, and they identified with her accomplishments as a woman in a male dominated world.
What Barack Obama has done is astounding, in a culture that is in its infancy of letting go of the racial apartheid of a less than 50 years ago, the culture of my youth, a culture that I know not through history but because I lived it. I get misty eyed and I have a lump in my throat just thinking about it. Every time I hear Barack Obama speak, I feel a sense of pride and joy that is intoxicating, and I shed all of those scars born of bigotry and I feel newly born into a world of promise. Finally, I can say with no irony, no sense of fabrication, to a little black baby, "Someday, you may be president."
I make no apologies for my unabashed support of Barack Obama. I have no more tolerance for those who profess that he scares them, that they worry that he's going to sell out this country. That's total nonsense and you're too ignorant for words to even believe it. If I hear or read one more person assert that he's a Muslim and that he's going to help the terrorists destroy the United States, I'm going to scream. And so help me, if I read or hear one more white person say that he is a reverse racist, I'm going to forget that I believe in nonviolence and slap somebody up side the head. By the way, my head was wagging when I wrote that last line.
Barack Obama is a man of principle. He is a man of intelligence. He is the man to lead this country forward on this journey of healing and I'm proud to claim him as my candidate of choice.
As a seventeen year old, I dragged around my guitar in a battered case with peace signs all over it, and sang songs about peace and love, but I was filled with the despair of youth, that the world in which I lived would never "give peace a chance," nor ever find those "answers blowin' in the wind." I thought that the racial division that filled my world would outlast my lifetime. My heart cried for the ongoing list of martyrs--Emmett Till, Medgar Evers, Jonathan M. Daniels, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, King, JFK, Bobby....
The Civil Rights Memorial that stands in front of the Southern Law Poverty Center includes the names of many of the people who risked and lost their lives in the pursuit of justice. I visited the memorial in August 1993. I recall my visit very clearly, because it was on that trip that I decided to go to law school. The memorial is black granite. It bears the names of the martyrs on a large disc in front of a slightly curved wall that bears a favorite line of Dr. King's, "Until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream." A steady stream of water bubbles out of the disc and washes over its surface, and water cascades down the curved wall.
When I visited the memorial back in 1993, I sat and stared at it for a long time and I cried. Not so much for the dead, but for the living, because I had no hope that we were going forward and I feared that their deaths had been in vain. I am allowing myself to believe that I was wrong. I am engaging in the audacity of hope, and it feels really good.
Below is a poem that I wrote after viewing the civil rights memorial in Montgomery, Alabama.
Memorial in Montgomerycasting long shadows in the afternoon sun
the wall is smooth, black
warm to the touch
the water falls down like healing rain
slides, swirls
drains away
washes clean…
close by, rising from the earth
stands the remembrance of struggle
a litany of the martyred
finite circle of sorrow and joy
cross over the river Jordan
fall down, fall down
like the walls of Jericho
like the walls of Jericho
dark mirror of tears take me home
wash my heart in justice
bathe my soul in peace
fall down, fall down
like healing rain
Tags: Barack Obama, the audacity of hope, civil rights, race, racism, civil rights memorial, integration
30 comments:
My young life in St Louis was not much different from yours so we both can now take a deep sigh and inhale the sweetness of the honest hope that it is real that a person who looks like us could possibly be the next president of the USA. I wenched like you each time his name was related to someone negative or he was called too black or too white. I struggled to hold my composure at the open ignorance so many used when they referred to him and simply tried to hold on to see how many people would be true Americans and weigh him not by his race but the issues and as a man who gives a damn about this country. It was a difficult road for many and I know we must face the inevitable sickness of racial slurs all over again. It will be interesting to hear the many who will create shallow excuses for not voting for him but are not honest enough to say because he is black. Those will be among the citizens who would rather continue living in this negative fiscal environment with sky high gas cost, a weak dollar, a historically high deficit, reduced respect world wide for our country and leaders who are more interested in lining their friends and associates pockets than to help the common man and vote for a black man.
Your poem is quite touching as is your entire article.
Thanks for sharing.
Spencer
Sheria, thank you for this post, I continue to learn about the plight of the African Americans. At 77 years of age I have never heard or read anything like you wrote.
Being from the Philly area
and living in the (white) surburbs my exposure to African Americans was very limited. My first real African American friend was Sgt. Burnett at Ft. Meade, in 1955, who took me a private to the "black" NCO club for a couple of beers. Yes there was still separation in the Army at that time. He died at Walter Reed not six months after our visit to the club. He was my friend and I cried openly at his funeral.
Not sure why I am relating this memory but I thank you for helping me recall him and the short time I had with him. Haven't thought of him for years.
Thanks again for you entry, Bill
I think your sorrows about the future as you stood in front of the memorial were a pleading that you be wrong. I think, in the spirit of the day back then, it was easier to see the gloom and hopelessness of our country's racial tension. Now I feel the hope, too, and it does feel good. I am as impressed with Obama's words of hope and change as you are. He's a leader I can get behind and support. Have a good weekend. bea
I have a friend, Ms Brown, who is about 80 now. She talks about race all the time, eloquently. I met her while I was working at an OB-GYN office many years ago. She told me she was the first black nurse to by hired at our local hospital, then the first to move to a private practice. We are not talking about affirmative action, we are talking smartest woman in any room. That is overwhelming clear if you have the privilege of speaking with her. Talking about race doesn't upset her, but the ignorant comments some of her conversations garner, they upset her, & rightly so. Sometimes making people uncomfortable is a very good thing. Ms Brown has quite the history of making people uncomfortable. This was an excellent entry, & I'll be sending it to her. ~Mary
while the majority of alabamians were very racist along with the rest of the south...there were many who believed the differences made between 'coloreds' and 'whites' was wrong. i remember when i was 4 having a girlfriend who was black...i didn't realize she was any different than me...my mother never made a distinction, and when i was older she taught all of us that God made us all and He looks at the heart and not the color of someone's skin. she told me about the separations and how coloreds were treated and how wrong it was. i am 3 years younger than you and with the event of integration, what i remember was being scared by rumors that the boys would be bringing knives to school and fighting "tomorrow". i never did see a fight between the boys, and had a few black friends. it grieves me that you suffered the grave injustices as a young girl, teen, and on into adulthood. there is no excuse for that and i'm sorry that you still carry these wounds. i do think that our country has come a long way, but realize that the journey is not yet complete. {{{sheria}}} a poignant entry and poem.
gina
Ok I meant to be hired not by, & overwhelmingly not overwhelming. I shouldn't write a comment after a beer :-).
Beautifully serene with a touch of hope and inspiration in the midst. I truly do get this in more ways than one...the mother who told me never to let anyone know what I was, never allowing your skin to darken for fear. Those men in white robes haunted mine as well, not so much...but I do get it...
I remember waking up from a coma after the worst beating of my life and seeing a blk nurse by the name of Grace sitting beside my bed. Turns out she had been there since the beginning even in her off hours. She was the one who cried tears of joy to see me awaken. When I asked her why, she said no one deserves to be alone. I already knew there was no line between color for me...she locked it in my heart in a way no one else could of. I lost touch with Grace over the years, I still think of her. I always thought how appropiate an angel named Grace.
I have to think time heals the splinters that dig in our hearts, whether it be race, political, age, abuse...the list goes on. It seems time is allowing your healing. (Hugs) Indigo
Mary highlighted your entry in her journal to check it out so I did and I'm glad I did; I am only 2 years younger than you and I grew up in So. Calif. I didn't even think things were still going on as you described them in the 1970s; I assumed, incorrectly, that there was equality throughout the country; I'm ashamed I never took the time to find out how life really was for my fellow Americans; thank you for writing such a very insightful, heart-felt entry
betty
Powerfull entry. Times are definitely changing fast, and I hope that Barack can maintain his message of change. My biggest fear is that he will compromise his original stance, and name Hillary as his running mate, which would cause many problems not only during the race, but also in office.
Mary sent me here to read. I enjoyed reading your entry. I am Hispanic and grew up in the 70s in a majority white town. My parents and grandparents even though were born here in the USA were never treated like people. When my sister was born in the white hospital her birth certificate states she is black because that was the only choice if you were not white...so hispanic wasn't even an option. They were nonexisit. My grandson is mixed and I hope that he doesn't grow up knowing a world you knew even though in this day and age he still gets remarks which burn me up from older white people because of his skin color. Even his great-grandfather (my ex's dad) will have nothing to do with him which is a loss for him because my grandson is a ray of sunshine if you let him in your life. I enjoyed your poem it was beautiful.
Take care, Chrissie
IN RESPONSE TO YOUR BLOG ENTRY:
I would like you to read this Sheria:
http://journals.aol.com/cmarlow480/ChristophersJournal/entries/2008/06/07/just-blown-away/1742
~ Christopher ~
Heart felt and thought provoking entry as always Sheria. I can well imagine how much pride your people feel in this great victory. I'm not sure how to put it into words but the way I feel about it is is that it will not be a real victory until we are all able to look at a man and see a man . . . end of . . . not a black man, not a white man, or hispanic, or Jew or whatever, but a man and a good man and nothing more, the right man. I am not sure if this makes sense or not, but then again I am speaking from the perspective of a person who grew up in an area where there were no such prejudices, or at least not that I was aware of anyways!
love,
marie
http://ayearatoakcottage.blogspot.com/
This was a BIG entry, and impossible to respond to fully in the space of comment. Some random observations:
1) We are witnessing the acceleration of history, and I see distinct parallels in the historic candidacies of Barack, Hillary, and the advent of gay marriage. None of us were really prepared even 10 years ago for this speed of this progress. Truly, this is the kind of change heralded in the coming of the Age of Aquarius. I attribute much of it to the writers of All in the Family, Mary Tyler Moore, and Maude, and all those who followed them. America's addiction to TV has been like a slow drip that kept laying the cultural groundwork for change. It's no coincidence that the KKK stopped demonstrating at your high school roundabout the same the Jeffersons became a hit, just as Will and Grace laid the groundwork for the acceptance of gay marriage.
2) I went to a majority black high school in the early 70s and we had assemblies to listen to our award-winning gospel choir, and I just loved it, though I had to show my enthusiasm discreetly because the white jocks frowned on it. I thank God for both my liberal Dad and French mother, who would have probaly only hit me for one reason only, and that would have been the use of the n-word (not even an option.) Still I was afraid of a lot of the black kids, but my parents pointed out it was a class issue, not a racial one. The poor kids, black or white, were much likely to be the angry kids, unless he was also a gay kid, and then we'd find each other in the Drama Society--and the rest is history.
3) The difference between Barack and Hilary is that I don't know if I'd vote for her if she was a man, but I'd sure as hell vote for Barack if he said the same things the same way and had two white parents. The man is exceptional by any measure of any imagination.
Quite an entry my dear. Have a glass of --ahem-- white wine on me.
That was a beautiful and very touching entry. Thank you for sharing it and your experiences with me.
I am voting for Obama, because I think the country needs a change.
I was very excited to see both a black man and a woman running for president.
It has been too long that our presidential candidates have been from the old guard club.
I was born in 1960, and I do remember some of the civil rights struggle.
I was fortunate to be born into a family who didnt judge people by the color of their skin.
When I look back at movies and documentaries of slavery and the civil rights struggle, it makes my stomach sick to think that any humanbeing was ever treated like that.
Thank you again for sharing your experiences and your thoughts.
I greatly appreaciate them.
Shearia..as I have such a very heavy heart at the moment I am not respoding to all the wonderful journals that I receive, However your touched me so greatly I just had to say very very well done. It is a beautiful written piece and contains all my feelings. God Bless you all In the end all will be well. Praying hard for Obama and that when he gets into the White House he will be able and strong enough to beat the oposition he is sure to find to his wonderful vision of your great country X Love Sybil xx
Excellent entry :)
Peace
Dear Sheria ,thankyou for this thought provoking entry ,as a white English woman ,I have been educated in some of your experiances today ,I can remember ,most of the happenings and killings you mention ,and thought I understood but guess I need to walk a mile in your shoes , please God let us consign this to history ,but in doing so never forget ,...love Jan xx
An incredibley powerful entry, your memories so sharp as they would be, I have never suffered the indignity of segregation at school, colledge, but remember the signs in windows and shops when I was a young girl "NO BLACKS" it still feels like a slap in the face, and your right people just don't get it, they feel that just because they personally don't feel that way it's like somehow it never happend, I can't even imagine the fear that the KKK evoked. Obama spells hope, that your country can somehow be united, he has walked a long road to get to where is now, and now just a little further to past the post first. your poem speaks volumes, and so richley observed.
Take care
Yasmin
xxx
Sheria I have come to your journal from Mary - I have spent the last hour reading your journal and the comments and also Christopher's journal. I think now is a wonderful time because we can find out about each other and different cultures. I would not have ever began to know what it was like for you growing up if I didnt have a computer and didnt belong to journals.
I thought your entry was very powerful and emotional. What a fantastic lady you are and you should be proud! I really wish I could give you a big hug!
I have just recently been studying English and studied poems from different cultures and traditions. It really made me think about what other people's lives have been like while I selfishly lived my safe and happy life. I don't want to be ignorant anymore! I want to learn more about what other cultures lives were like. So that I appreciate how they felt. I am lucky that I was brought up to believe that we are all god's children and that is that! I am glad that I feel that way and have no prejudices at all. I am lucky - others who are brought up in a different way are not lucky because they have these prejudices. It means they cant fulfil their lives with meeting and loving different people and welcoming them into their lives. Instead they will be lonely and sad and bitter and twisted. So lets feel sorry for them! Don't waste our energy hating them!
This Poem I read recently really touched me and made me think. It's called "Biko the Greatness" by Benjamin Zephaniah. I hope you can find it on google if not let me know and I will email it to you.
I will add you to my journal as I love to make new friends!
http://journals.aol.co.uk/elainey2465/laines-world/
Love Laine xxxxx
p.s. hope I made sense I find it hard to say what I feel in words!
p.p.s. I think your poem is fantastic and I love the image that goes with it too!
Well Hello. I found you through Mary.
OBAMA ROCKS MY WORLD, TOO!!!
I was not at all put off that you were writing about race. In fact, I read this entry twice. As a 46 year old white woman, I can never hear enough about this subject as my experience is so different from yours, I can only learn. At the end of the day, we are all Americans. I personally find the possibility of us having a black president, given our nations history, much more exciting than having a woman as president (it's coming). And I DO so hope he wins. It will feel so good to feel proud to be an American again...
Have a happy weekend.
MJ
Sheria: Your poem is beautiful! It should be published.
I too came here via Mary... I would have to say I love the way you think and the way you write... your poem is beautiful... to me the world without "color" would make a very ugly place... color is what makes things come alive..... I look forward to reading some more from you...
Kelly~
I came here from Mary's and I read about a very determined woman with the mind of a steel trap:) I've had some of the greatest friends ever who were of color and how I wished I could have had some of that color. The poem is very good....alice
It's been a long time since I've read an entry as powerful as the one you just posted. It makes me ashamed of my race - for their intolerence, as well as bringing to mind the horror and cruelty we are capable of when one groups places themself above others as being more superior. Instead of holding hatred in your heart for the way you were treated growing up, you instead have opted to inform, educate and write with eloquence. You're damn right Obama rocks! I will be voting for him in November, and let's pray that God willing, he's elected, we will be witnessing another huge step forward in our evolution of realizing we are ALL created equal and that EVERY race deserves respect.
Hugs from Minnesota
Awesome entry! I have a better understanding of so much by reading it. As a 58 year old white woman who never interacted with a black person until I was out of high school because my neighborhood was segregated so tightly, I am thrilled that Barak Obama is going to be the Democratic candidate for President. I am going to support him with word and deed and much prayer. We all need him.
I was in Italy for the month of April with my mom, sister and daughter. Everyday we were asked, "Hillary or Obama?" by cab drivers, bus drivers, waiters and shop keepers. People on the street asked in passing. When we would say, "Obama", their faces would light up and they would always say, "YES."
They see hope and a chance for change in him, too. The world is hoping along with us.
Thank you for sharing such a personal part of your life. It helped to enlighten me.
Hugs, Kathy
http://journals.aol.com/kaydeejay5449/a-little-left-of-center-ii/
Powerful entry... I remember my son as a toddler having a friend in daycare... one day when I picked him up he said, 'Mom why didn't you tell me Andre was black?' I looked at him and asked if it mattered? He smiled and said no, and that was the end of it... until the next day when I dropped him off. I was upset that someone would make a deal out of it............
One thing in your entry did make me frown...
'I have no more tolerance for those who profess that he scares them, that they worry that he's going to sell out this country. That's total nonsense and you're too ignorant for words to even believe it. If I hear or read one more person assert that he's a Muslim and that he's going to help the terrorists destroy the United States, I'm going to scream. And so help me, if I read or hear one more white person say that he is a reverse racist, I'm going to forget that I believe in nonviolence and slap somebody up side the head. By the way, my head was wagging when I wrote that last line.'
I am not ignorant, I am not racist, but from day one I had a gut feeling, a mistrust, not the color of his skin but the way he spoke. Elegant some say, to me it's fake. I don't think he'll sell out the country, but I don't have a blinded trust. He's a politician. I can't stand by and be called ignorant for my opinion, sorry.
Good Day
d
We in Illinois are excited to share Obama with the rest of the country. He is needed in the Oval Office in so many ways, and I am hopeful and confident that he will be our next president.
Your writing is wonderful. I am thankful to Mary for directing me here, and I will be back!
I really think this is publishable, skin-tingling stuff you're written. From your heart. You're just a mere 6 years older than Barack Obama (and myself). That some places refused to integrate when the law was first passed does not surprise me. I'd see signs for exits to beaches (in New England even), indicating that some were just for "coloreds," and some just for whites. That didn't last long, and well, there were a ton less people with darker skin there, anyway. It's scary to think of the KKK right across the schools (what ,they didn't have jobs? sheesz). I like to think that our country is beyond viewing a candidate by his or her gender, race, or religion. Instead, as your words point out, in many places, it wasn't all that long ago that hatred and intolerance was a profound part of society. While I still believe a candidate shoudl be viewed first and foremost on things like character and policy beliefs, etc., it IS awfully exciting that a half-black man, and a white woman, were both such serious contenders for the White House, and it does make sense to talk about it. Heck, talking about it is a big step, and perhaps is even needed. I still think you should send this on the the Obama campaign. Seriously. This is that good.
I just cried when I read your poem. Gerry
Thanks for bringing back memories, I remember when the flowing Memorial was first unveiled I was astonished at its beauty, its meaning. I understood right away. And you're able to emote so well in prose, brings it right home. I like how you use a thread of healing throughout the piece. More! CATHY
http://journals.aol.com/luddie343/DARETOTHINK/
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