Freedom in the Family

by Tananarive Due

  Through none of my own doing—I was too dazed to make a trip to my newspaper’s editorial board offices, nor would I have considered it proper—the Herald did run an editorial chastising the county for its treatment of my father. “Florida’s and Dade County’s history record Mr. Due as a courageous and selfless champion in the struggle for equality. He risked everything—life, family, and future—to secure rights enjoyed today by so many.”1

  In some ways, Johnita is the most emotional person in our family, and she also has the most clearheaded ability to jump into the fray with both her mind and her claws sharp. From New York, she immediately dashed off letters to Mayor Penelas and every county commissioner to plead my father’s case, squeezing in the time to do it while she worked sixty-hour weeks at a Wall Street law firm. She also sent copies of her letters to a black-owned radio station, WMBM–AM, owned by New Birth Baptist Church in Miami. Miami activist Bishop Victor T. Curry, pastor of that church, read Johnita’s letter over the airwaves. Dad did his part, too. He took copies of his pink slip to the Miami Times and to Miami’s black radio stations.

  I hoped the situation would take care of itself right away, that someone at the county would slap his forehead like Homer Simpson and restore Dad’s job with a letter of apology and a gift certificate for dinner for two to compensate for the stress to my parents. That did not happen.

  This was also about the time I’d begun to notice that my parents were getting older. The first shock had come at my college graduation in 1987, when they’d both come out to Evanston. Mom’s hair had gone completely silver since the last time I’d seen her. Dad, too, had much more gray than usual, and his posture was slightly stooped, his gait much less spry than it once had been. In every year thereafter, I’d witnessed their continued aging: Mom needing more and more prescriptions for growing problems with high blood pressure and diabetes, which runs in our family, and Dad having less and less energy for the sit-ups and morning jogs through the neighborhood he had once enjoyed. They weren’t old to me, not by a long shot, but I was beginning to imagine with disturbing clarity what they would be like once they were. The older people get, the more tired they become. Even fighters get tired of fighting.

  I wondered if Dad might fall victim to the biggest irony of all: that after he and Mom had spent their entire adult lives fighting for others, they would not have the energy left to fight for themselves. That scenario began to seem more and more like harsh reality in that October.

  As hard as it is to accept that strangers do not know and appreciate us, it’s harder to accept that often our own people do not know us either. It must be human nature to forget, a biological function of the brain that encourages old information to fade, enabling us to absorb new information more readily. Perhaps our forgetfulness is just a human tendency that enables us to avoid pain at every opportunity. Memories hurt sometimes. Dad told me that when he stopped in Meridian, Mississippi, in 1994 to commemorate his civil rights work with Michael Schwerner and James Chaney, he met a group of black ministers for breakfast. After he introduced himself and stated his purpose, they collectively told him, “There’s nothing to remember. It’s time to move on,” a form of community amnesia. Bearing in mind that forgetful tendency, my deepest fear during the 1997 upheaval in Dade County’s government was that even blacks in Miami would have forgotten my father, and that the people he had fought for would not be willing to fight for him.

  I did not know what to expect when Mom, Dad, Mother, and I drove to a community meeting at the Joseph Caleb Center, the arts and meeting complex on Northwest 54th Street in Miami. I have seen plays and music concerts at the center, which is named for black labor leader Joseph Caleb. I once had the honor of introducing actress Alfre Woodard when she made an appearance there. The center also has a library, and it is a satellite government center. I had attended meetings there, mostly as a reporter. I’m sure my parents could not calculate how many meetings they had attended at the center and places like it. Sometimes meetings bear great fruit, and sometimes they’re a waste of time and gasoline. That night, as we drove, none of us knew what kind of meeting this one would be.

  Mother was not traveling nearly as much as she once did. She’d had surgery to remove two of her toes, and learning to walk again had been a struggle for her. She also grew fatigued much more easily. If I’d been watching Mom and Dad slowly grow older, I’d been watching my grandmother simply falling apart, and not nearly so slowly. Toward the end of her life, Mother was in almost constant discomfort, but that night she was with us. She was worried about Dad, but I’m sure she was even more worried about Mom. After her daughter had been forced to grapple with so many family and community emergencies over the years, I’m sure Mother was worried Mom might be at her breaking point. The future financial insecurity was bad enough, but the added disrespect made the situation that much harder to accept.

  Dad didn’t want Mom to speak at the meeting. He knew how emotional she’d been over the last few weeks, and he feared the worst if she stood in front of an audience that would probably include the mayor. Mayor Penelas, after all, held my father’s future in his hands, and diplomacy might not be on Mom’s mind, given her anger. “Patricia, this is a meeting about the county’s budget cuts, not about me,” he reminded her.

  “I won’t speak,” Mom said. “I’m just there to show my support.”

  I’ve heard stories about the mass meetings of the 1960s that filled black churches throughout the South, but the closest I’d come to seeing one for myself was the night of October 27, 1997, at the Caleb Center. The meeting room was packed. Scanning the crowd, it seemed to me that every seat was filled. The newspaper estimated that 400 people were there, but in my mind there might as well have been a thousand. People were crowded in the back, hugging the walls. There was standing room only.

  The crowd was in a bad mood, stirring restlessly. Bishop Victor T. Curry, serving as moderator, set the tone from the start. “We are in trouble in Metropolitan Dade County,” the clergyman said, and the crowd uhm hmmmed with recognition. “We are in trouble. This is not the same old Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow trouble. This thing has taken on a whole new scenario.”

  “That’s right. It sure has,” Mother said quietly beside me. Because her eyes troubled her, she often allowed them to fall shut when she was in public, but she was listening.

  “It’s deeper than you and I can ever imagine,” Bishop Curry continued. “This thing is so deep, it’s not even black and white anymore. It has crossed all color lines. It has crossed all ethnicities. Now we have to make those persons who have been elected to public office accountable. They must be.”

  The crowd rippled with amens and applause.

  The mayor was tardy for the meeting, and much was made of that. When Mayor Penelas arrived, he contended that he hadn’t heard about the meeting, and a small debate ensued, claims and counterclaims. After that, the business of budget overruns and the mayor’s proposed staff layoffs came to the fore.

  Mrs. Eufaula Frazier, a Democratic committeewoman from Dade County with whom my parents have worked since I was very young, was one of the people who stood up to speak. She spoke up for Dad and the others whose jobs had been threatened. When she finished, the audience cheered her. Marlene Bastiene, president of the Haitian Women of Dade County, also spoke passionately on Dad’s behalf. Black Miami was in a bad mood.

  The community had also been in a bad mood in 1990, when a different set of mayors throughout the region denounced Nelson Mandela on the event of his first visit to the city after his release from prison. In that situation, the county’s leadership clearly had embraced the feelings of the Cuban-American community toward Mandela, rendering the black community’s feelings wholly inconsequential. The ensuing economic black boycott, spearheaded by black Miami lawyer H. T. Smith and others, ended after Dade County had lost millions in tourism dollars. The word “boycott” was being uttered at that meeting again.

  Dade County’s new mayor, feeling defensive after bei
ng booed soon after his arrival, was doing little to soothe hurt feelings. His answers were polite, but he captured none of the “I feel your pain” sincerity it takes to win over an angry audience, which Bill Clinton, for example, had mastered so well. There were times the freshman mayor seemed on the verge of losing his patience. His youthfulness only made matters worse, since several people at that meeting were many years his senior and there were moments when he sounded condescending.

  When my mother stood up to speak, my heart froze with dread. What would she say?

  After the ritual of welcoming the honored guests—who included the mayor, County Commissioners Barbara Carey and James Burke, and State Rep. James Bush—her voice trembled with barely suppressed emotion. “I want to get to the meat of some things,” Mom said, and the crowd knew she was about to preach. She began slowly, asking some general questions about the mayor’s proposed changes as it related to her appointed position on the Black Affairs Advisory Board, but then her voice swept into the same rhythms I imagine had inspired students in Tallahassee to go to jail. “I have several interests here tonight. I should say that I have a personal interest, and I have a personal interest. My husband is John Due, and this is my community.”

  The audience was hypnotized. Applause rained on my mother.

  “And you know, Mayor Penelas, you may not understand where I’m coming from. You may feel, and some other people may feel, that I have audacity to be up here because my husband is involved. But this is my community. I am concerned about him personally and about this community. Because this is a man whose children sometimes felt that the community was his family.” Again, her voice trembled. Listening, I had to fight tears. Yes, the truth hurts.

  “That’s right, that’s right,” Mother said beside me, patting my knee.

  “I respect him,” Mom went on. “He’s my husband, and we are very different. He’ll say, ‘You’re talking tonight. You said you weren’t going to say anything.’ But I have to.” There was laughter and applause.

  My mother told the story of Dr. Tee S. Greer, the Dade County Public Schools administrator who’d recently passed away after being continually overlooked for a permanent position as school superintendent even though he’d been designated several times to serve as an interim superintendent. (There had not been a black school superintendent in the Dade County school system since the removal of Dr. Johnny Jones in the 1980s.) “You know, Dr. Greer died recently,” Mom said. “Some of us said over Dr. Greer’s tenure that he was too conservative, that Dr. Greer always wanted to work within the system. And what happened? That system rooted him out—and, I feel, killed him prematurely. Why is this important? This is important because we tell our children that you must work within the system, and this is what we have to say happens to people who work within the system.”

  The audience applauded loudly. Then they waited to see how the mayor would respond.

  Mayor Penelas addressed Mom’s more general concerns in great detail, explaining how he wanted to organize the advisory boards dedicated to black, Hispanic, Asian, and women’s affairs as subcommittees of the Community Relations Board, so members could sit at the table together. Then he addressed the question of Dad.

  “As it relates to your husband.… We’re working with him, and he’s working with members of my staff, and we’re doing everything we can to help him, but I don’t think this should become a meeting about particular people, because—” At that point, the mayor was nearly drowned out by the restless, irritated stirring of the crowd. They did not boo him again, but they wanted to.

  At that, Bishop Curry spoke up. His voice, too, was soaked with emotion.

  “Mr. Mayor, I think you miss the point of why it’s personalized. This man, Mr. Due—” He stopped, frustrated, and began again. “See, this is part of the problem with many of our Hispanic brothers and sisters. You all don’t know the history. You all don’t know the history of the black community.” Applause, a few shouts.

  “You don’t know and you don’t care,” Bishop Curry went on. “This man is on record as the attorney to help desegregate the school system. Sir, in our opinion, this man is a hero.”

  At that, the crowd erupted with applause and hooting.

  “And if this is how your government treats our heroes, if you can do it to John Due, the rest of us will catch much hell. If you do it to him, the rest of us don’t have a chance. And Mr. Mayor, that’s what’s missing. That’s what many of our wonderful Cuban brothers and sisters are missing. You have no respect. You’ve got to respect us, Mr. Mayor. That’s disrespect right there. This man shouldn’t have to be working with anybody in your office. Leave that man alone. It’s wrong, Mr. Mayor. And that’s what you’re hearing today. People are upset because we’re not being respected as a people.”

  The roar of the crowd sounded to me like a powerful creature stirring to wakefulness. Their shouts were a combination of love and rage. The people were on their feet, venting decades of frustration. I think Dad and Mom were too tense that night to savor the community’s love, as speaker after speaker stood up on Dad’s behalf, but I’ll never forget that meeting. I’ll never forget the sound of that love. That night, I knew exactly where my father had been all those years my sisters and I were growing up, what he had been doing with those papers in his garage. I saw my father’s other family.

  Little more than a week later, Dad got a new job assignment within the county, as an executive with the Miami-Dade Community Action Agency, to help coordinate anti-poverty programs. He would no longer enjoy the freedom of running his own office, but he would have a job at the same salary. Sometimes communities are heard, if only they speak up.

  Sometimes people don’t forget.

  Twenty-Nine

  PATRICIA STEPHENS DUE

  “A man who won’t die for something is not fit to live.”

  —Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

  I was pregnant again by the spring of 1969, and John and I had made the decision to move from Quincy to Miami. This was my fifth pregnancy in five years, and I was exhausted. As usual, I was uncomfortable and sick all of the time. I loved my two daughters, and I wanted to have another healthy baby, but I knew this would have to be our last child.

  In many ways, life had been going very well for us in Quincy as a married couple and growing family. I have always loved the relaxing, country feel of Quincy, and it reminded me of my childhood. There’s no place like home, as they say. We had a house we loved, and we had a steady income from John’s private practice and his work as a union organizer with AFSCME, so our friends kept asking us why we wanted to leave.

  We wanted the best for our children, as all parents do. Tananarive was three years old, and we thought it was time she started school. We wanted her to have more exposure. From the time she’d started talking, my relatives and neighbors had come over just to hear the way Tananarive spoke, believing her diction was remarkable for such a young child. Tananarive was too young to register for kindergarten in Quincy, and the waiting list for what was called a “laboratory school” at one of the Tallahassee universities was simply too long, taking years. As parents, you have to make decisions where your children come first, so John and I had decided to move to a bigger city to find schools that would accept Tananarive.

  We would soon have cause to wonder if we had made the right decision, but that was what we wanted at the time.

  Mother was also living in Miami, which was a very comforting idea to me. Mother had a job at a land deal company on Biscayne Boulevard that required a long daily commute, so I knew she could not help me by babysitting, but I longed to see her more often. John was constantly traveling through the state because of his job, which meant I was still spending much of my time alone with the children. I was alone so much, we later learned that someone who was informing on John’s activities to the FBI told agents that he thought John was living in St. Petersburg and that we had divorced.1 Mother wanted to give me extra moral support. It’s hard for any mother to feel
that her daughter is spending too much time on her own, and Mother was no exception. I know she really wanted me to come to Miami.

  At first, since we didn’t have a home lined up in Miami, Mother gave us much more than moral support. For a few months, we lived with her, sleeping on a sofa bed in her living room while we searched for our own place. A few months before the baby was due, we found a duplex in Liberty City. The house would be small for three children, but it was our own, so we were glad to have it. Our home in Quincy sat empty with our remaining furniture, and I still missed being in Quincy, but Miami was our home now.

  It was very difficult adjusting to a new place. I was very disappointed by my early attempts to find a Montessori school for Tananarive. Dade County is the biggest county in the state, but it had some of the same problems as Gadsden County. Even in 1969, as I drove from school to school with Tananarive and Johnita because I did not have a babysitter, the schools told me very flatly that they could not accept Tananarive because the schools were for “whites only.” “We don’t accept colored children,” they said.

  Tananarive was present to hear these conversations, unfortunately. When we got home one day, she covered herself with white talcum powder and said, “Mommy, can I go to school now?” The sight of my daughter covered in powder like that brought tears to my eyes. That really, really hurt me. I had hoped Tananarive was too young to really understand what was happening during those school visits, but she had understood enough. Children know much more than we realize. Racism has always cut me like a knife, but never so much as when I observed how my daughter’s feelings of self-worth were already being damaged, and she was only three-and-a-half!