A Mighty Long Way

by Carlotta Walls Lanier

  Maceo’s attorney, Will Shepherd, who had advocated for the moratorium, was an ongoing burr in the side of the white establishment in Little Rock. A new jury trial was set for Maceo to be held on December 7, 1961, but there is no record that the trial was ever held. As far as I know, Maceo was never retried and did not go to prison. I never saw him again after I left Little Rock. Cemetery records show that he died on January 13, 1972. He was just forty-two years old.

  After Maceo’s conviction was overturned, Governor Faubus was determined to upstage the state supreme court. In July 1961, the governor commuted the sentences of three of the Labor Day bombers: J. D. Sims, John Coggins, and Jess Perry. Then, two months later, he reduced the sentence of the only Labor Day bomber still in jail, E. A. Lauderdale, Sr., making him immediately eligible for parole.

  By then, though, my parents had already cut their ties to Little Rock.

  At the end of my summer at Beaumont High School in St. Louis, Mother and Daddy drove to pick me up, and we traveled together to East Lansing. They stayed a couple of days to help me get settled on campus at Michigan State. During those long hours on the road and in my dormitory room, Mother and Daddy gave no indication that they were contemplating a major life change. But about two weeks after they left me in Michigan, I received a shocking letter. The first thing I noticed was that the letter listed a return address in Kansas City. Their letter said simply that they had moved there with my sisters. That was it. There wasn’t a word of explanation, nor were there any expressions of sentiment or regret. And to this day, there have been none.

  My parents never explained how long they had been contemplating the move or why they left precisely when they did. As I’ve said, once Mother and Daddy made a decision to move forward, they were not prone to look back. But I know this: Little Rock was all both of them had ever known. Except for my father’s tour of duty during World War II, neither of them had ever lived more than ten minutes from their fathers and the wide net of support provided by their extended family and friends. However quiet they kept their deliberations, the final decision to venture beyond that safety net must have been gut-wrenching.

  Their sudden move told me what they could not: that I wasn’t the only one who yearned for a fresh start.

  CHAPTER 13

  Finding Focus

  At Michigan State, I was happy to be just a number. More than twenty-four-thousand students attended the East Lansing university, and nearly one thousand of us were black. My schoolmates barely even noticed when I walked past. After three years of being at the center of so much negative attention, I was grateful for the chance to just blend in with the crowd.

  The university was a city unto itself, spread over fifty-two-hundred acres. It drew students of all races from every part of the country and the rest of the world. Being among people with such diverse backgrounds was exciting to me. I made friends easily. Few of them realized at first that I was one of the nine black students who had gone to Central High School in Little Rock. I certainly didn’t volunteer any information. But when they learned I was from Little Rock and saw me hanging out with Ernie, they began asking questions. They didn’t bombard me, though, and gave me the space I needed from Central. I had left my past in Little Rock.

  I did, however, bring one thing with me: my desire to be a doctor. I had known since I was a little girl what I wanted to do with my life. I’d even chosen Central in part because I believed it would better prepare me for that career path. So I decided right away to declare a major in pre med. For some reason, I thought I had to declare a major immediately. But after reviewing my transcript, the freshman counselor wasn’t sure I was up to the task. I was missing some high-level math and science courses that I had not been able to take via correspondence or summer school in my junior year when Faubus shut down Little Rock’s high schools.

  “I can put you in the premed program, but you’re going to have trouble,” the counselor told me.

  That comment sparked the part of me that couldn’t stand people telling me what I could not do. I took the counselor’s doubt as a challenge and insisted on being placed in the program anyway. I didn’t recognize then that I was mentally exhausted. I just wasn’t ready to work as hard as I would need to work to catch up academically. I was ready to have some fun.

  For the first time, I had true social freedom. I could come and go as I pleased, without anyone watching over me and without fearing for my life. And there was always plenty to do. One of my frequent hangouts was the student lounge, where I enjoyed mingling with my peers practically every day. On weekends, I often joined my new friends at the fraternity parties on campus. And then there was football.

  Football has always been at the center of social life at Michigan State. It quickly became the center of my social life, too. I knew more about the sport than most of the other girls in the dorm because in the South, high school football was what we did. If you didn’t play, you sat in the stands and cheered on Friday nights. I wasn’t allowed to go to Central’s games, so I rooted for the teams from Dunbar and Horace Mann. In the South, Friday night football games were also part fashion show, so the girls always fussed over what they wore. But I quickly found that at Michigan State, it really didn’t matter. I could throw on a casual skirt or slacks with a comfortable sweater and fit right in with the crowd of students cheering in the stands on Saturday afternoons. Michigan State had one of the top football teams in the Big Ten Conference and was usually a championship contender. The atmosphere was always electric.

  My knowledge of sports helped me to befriend many of the players, including Herb Adderly, a star offensive back who was the first black tri-captain for the Spartans. He was dating my roommate and was drafted in 1961 by the Green Bay Packers. I also became great friends with basketball standout Horace Walker, who had graduated from Michigan State just months before I got there and had been drafted by the St. Louis Hawks. Horace was doing postgraduate work at the university, and I met him at a gathering for African American students at an apartment in Lansing. He would become my best friend, the big brother I never had, and the godfather of my children.

  At Michigan State, I was experiencing the exciting college life I had envisioned, except for one thing. For the first time in my life, I was struggling academically. The question in my mind about whether I could make it in pre med grew bigger. The counselor offered no encouragement. My grades at the end of the first quarter seemed to prove him right: I made a C in chemistry and even one D. I wasn’t accustomed to making bad grades, and I was very frustrated with myself. My other roommates—Ann Wynder, Connie Williams, and Ina Smith—encouraged me to study harder and seek help from a student counseling center on campus. I went to the center a couple of times but didn’t find it very effective. I had some thinking to do during the quarter break.

  Before joining my family in Kansas City for the Christmas holidays, I went to Chicago in early December 1960 and worked a few weeks for the U.S. Postal Service. I stayed with Aunt M.E.—the aunt who had housed me while I attended summer school before my senior year. While there, I took advantage of every chance I got to venture downtown after hours to hear the jazz greats, among them saxophonist Cannonball Adderley, guitarist Kenny Burrell, and my favorite songstress, Nancy Wilson. The Sutherland Lounge, which drew all of the big acts, was one of my regular spots. I also made frequent visits to a spot at 63rd and Cottage streets to see McCoy Tyner and John Coltrane. The jazz shows helped to lift my spirits.

  When I took the train from Chicago to Kansas City, I found that my parents and sisters had settled in a wonderful, family-oriented neighborhood on Mersington Street. They had grown close to some of the neighbors, who had children the same age as my sisters. Mother was working part-time, since those icy mid-western winters often left Daddy out of work. It was good to see them so relaxed and happy. I couldn’t bring myself to tell them I was struggling in school.

  I returned to Michigan State for the winter and spring quarters, but I continued to have trouble as
my core courses got tougher. Summer break gave me the time away that I desperately needed. I took the train to New York to spend the summer there, working for the Hotel Employees Union #6, the group that had sponsored the New York trip for the Little Rock Nine in the summer of 1958. A friend from Michigan State, Brucetta Hower, joined me, and I helped her get a job with the union, too. But Brucie’s father, a well-to-do funeral-home owner, sent her enough money to live on, and she quit her job after the first week. She stayed a few extra weeks, though, to explore the city with me. Brucie and I split the rent on a small apartment on East 10th Street in Greenwich Village.

  Now on my own, I wanted to rub up against the Sugar Hill I’d heard Mother rave about throughout my childhood. I wanted to touch and feel the Harlem I’d read about in stories hailing the 1920s renaissance. I wanted to set my feet in the legendary jazz clubs, like Small’s Paradise, which joined Harlem’s Cotton Club as one of the popular nightclubs and restaurants in the 1930s and 1940s. It was Small’s Paradise where I first saw the husband-wife jazz duo Shirley Scott (on the organ) and Stanley Turrentine (on saxophone). I also spent time on 52nd Street, listening and watching the antics of Thelonious Monk (not yet realizing that he was the “wino” I’d first encountered as an eight-year-old on the playground of my aunt’s apartment complex).

  Harlem never slept. When I stepped into a fairly new high-rise for an after-hours party about two o’clock one morning, I got a taste of what I’d imagined Harlem was like during the great renaissance. Several artists lived there. My friends pointed out the apartment of one of my all-time favorites, Count Basie, and I lingered in the halls to be close to the sights, sounds, and smells all around. The intoxicating scent of food saturated the halls. Horns and a piano traded riffs in one apartment, and the strong, bluesy vocals of a female singer rang out from another. I learned later that those vocal cords belonged to Gloria Lynne, a rhythm and blues and jazz singer who recorded a number of hits in the 1950s and 1960s.

  New York was also home that summer to another Little Rock native—Mrs. Bates, who had relocated there to work on her memoir. I saw her a couple of times while there, including once when she invited me to her apartment to meet Langston Hughes and his nephew, who was helping her with her memoir. I also got together occasionally with Ernie and Terry, who were working in New York for the summer in the garment district. We were all hoping to save money for college. When I told Ernie how much I was spending to rent the apartment in the Village, he helped arrange for me to rent a room from the mother of a friend of his, who lived in Jamaica, New York. By then, my friend Brucie was gone. The move helped me save enough money to buy a heavier winter coat and thicker sweaters than the ones I owned and to return to Michigan State with a few extra dollars.

  While in New York, I visited Aunt Juanita and Uncle Freddie again and for the first time had a conversation with him about race. He wanted to know how I was doing and how I had endured all that happened to me at Central. Uncle Freddie also revealed his own astonishing story. His parents never talked to him about race, he said, and he would be an adult before he realized the significance assigned to skin color in this country. Both of his parents had immigrated to the United States and raised Uncle Freddie in a Rhode Island community full of other immigrants, mostly from Italy, Portugal, Ireland, and the Caribbean islands. As far as Uncle Freddie knew, everyone got along, and his childhood was happy. He was aware of his African heritage, but it seemed that everyone around him was a racial mixture of some kind, so skin color mattered little. He didn’t have a clue about the Jim Crow South and how people of color were treated there. He accepted himself as the equal of everyone and was treated that way by those around him.

  When World War II broke out, he joined the navy right after high school and left for boot camp. His father drove him to the train station. While waiting for his son to board, Mr. Andrade stood there silently with a pained expression in his eyes, Uncle Freddie recalled. It seemed as though Mr. Andrade wanted to say something to his son. Mr. Andrade stammered a bit as he tried to speak. But all he could manage to say to his son was: “Take care of yourself.”

  At first, Uncle Freddie said he thought his father just got caught up in the emotion of the moment—his son leaving home for the first time, headed to war. But as the train rolled south, the porter kept moving Uncle Freddie to railcars farther back. Finally, Uncle Freddie spoke up.

  “I want to stay here. Why do you keep moving me?” he asked innocently.

  Uncle Freddie recalled the sting of the porter’s words: “You are a Negro, and Negroes aren’t allowed to sit here.”

  Uncle Freddie was shocked and confused. He didn’t know what to make of it all. He was disappointed that his parents, particularly his father, had allowed him to be caught so off guard by the dynamics of race and skin color. But the more he thought about it, Uncle Freddie said, the more he came to understand his father’s pained expression at the train station. He believed his father wanted to issue a warning about what lay ahead but just didn’t know what to say. Soon afterward in the navy, Uncle Freddie met my uncle J.W., the one who later introduced him to Aunt Juanita. Both worked as cooks, serving officers on the submarine. Uncle J.W., ever the smooth talker, had led the entire family to believe for many years that he was the head cook in charge of the kitchen on the submarine. As it turned out, though, Uncle Freddie was the head cook. But gracious Uncle Freddie never blew his friend’s cover. He said he was always grateful to Uncle J.W., not just for introducing him to Aunt Juanita, but for helping him to maneuver his way through the racist South.

  Uncle Freddie’s story stayed with me long after I left New York.

  Before heading back to Michigan State, though, I took a detour to Denver to visit my uncle Byron Johnson and his family. Uncle Byron was a distant relative on the Cullins side, but as family tradition and courtesy dictate the family elders are called “Uncle” or “Aunt” no matter the relation. He was always one of my favorite family members and earned the title through many stages of my life. He played professional baseball in the Negro Leagues as part of the famed Kansas City Monarchs from 1937 to 1940. That included a stint barnstorming the country alongside Satchel Paige as a member of the team’s All-Star players in 1939 and 1940. Before being asked to join the Monarchs, Uncle Byron, who graduated from Wiley College, taught biology at Dunbar High School.

  My earliest memory of him is when I was five years old and he was Little Rock’s director of playgrounds for black neighborhoods. Mother had dropped me off to spend a few hours with him at the playground next to Stephens Elementary School near our home. A bunch of boys were shooting rocks with slingshots, and ever curious, I begged to give the slingshot a try. When the boys finally gave in, I put the rock in place and pulled the slingshot backward. I shot myself in the mouth, knocking out my front teeth. Blood gushed from my mouth as I fell to the ground. The first face I saw was Uncle Byron’s. I’ll never forget the look in his eyes, so kind and gentle, as he picked me up to take me to the hospital and assured me that I would be okay. He was one of the kindest, most easygoing men I’ve ever known.

  During my first year at Central, Uncle Byron helped me with biology projects and offered constant encouragement. The next year, he and his wife, Christine, who had been childhood sweethearts, relocated to Denver with his job at the U.S. Postal Service. They invited me to spend a few days during my first summer break from college with them and their two children—Jackie, who was fourteen; and their son, Joseph Byron, then seven.

  The first thing I noticed and loved about Denver was its cleanliness. The entire city just seemed to glisten, and the air was fresh. My mind seemed at ease when I spent a few moments gazing at the white-capped mountains. People were polite, and the color of my skin seemed not to matter. I enjoyed spending time with my aunt and uncle and even got a chance to meet Satchel Paige, who was driving through, headed to the West Coast with his wife. The former teammates had stayed in touch, and Mr. Paige came over to the house for dinner one night. I sat at t
he dinner table and hung on their every word as they regaled me with stories about barnstorming together through the United States and Canada with fellow players from the Negro Leagues. Uncle Byron had played shortstop, watching close up as Mr. Paige repeatedly struck out the league’s best hitters. To highlight his showmanship, Mr. Paige would even send his outfielders to the dugout before striking out a well-known slugger. The crowds would go mad. The two men howled at the memory. As a child, I had watched Mr. Paige in awe and could hardly believe I was fortunate enough to be sitting across the table from him.

  I spent less than a week in Denver, but the city stayed on my mind. I think Uncle Byron and Aunt Christine could tell that I didn’t seem happy because they made what seemed to me a generous and enticing offer: If things didn’t work out for me in Michigan, I was welcome to move to Denver with them, to work and go to school there.

  When I returned to Michigan State for the fall quarter, I couldn’t get Denver out of my head. I was disappointed in how my post-Central life was progressing. I continued to struggle in math and science and realized that maybe the counselor had been right: I wasn’t prepared for the tough, premed curriculum. The lost year at Central had hurt in irreparable ways. Not only had I missed out on essential coursework, I was having trouble focusing mentally on my studies. I just couldn’t find the motivation. This was unfamiliar territory for someone who always had been a stellar student. Maybe the admissions office at Antioch College had understood something that I had not a year earlier when I applied there and received the advice that had been so disappointing at the time. Maybe I should have taken some time off. But it was too late for second-guessing. I was tired of struggling and ready to let go of my dream. I changed my major to nursing. I figured I still might find some satisfaction if I stayed in the medical field. But it didn’t take long for me to figure out that nursing wasn’t for me. I couldn’t get over the feeling that nursing seemed second best, close to the action but not really what I wanted to do. I just wasn’t interested. In the winter quarter of 1962, I dropped nursing and left my major undeclared. I decided to focus just on taking my core courses. My life seemed at a serious crossroads.