Death of Innocence : The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America (9781588363244)
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There was another special part of Gene’s family I accepted as my own. For some time, I enjoyed a very good rapport with Gene’s daughters, Lillian Gene and Yvonne, and was so happy to have had the chance to attend Lillian’s graduation from grade school the year Gene and I were married. In 1959, Gene’s ex-wife, Dorothy, came to see me. She wanted to ask a favor. It was very important to her. She was moving away from Chicago, farther south in Illinois. But she wanted her daughters to be able to complete the school year in Chicago, where they had started. Of course, they could, and they did. That was the start of what became a very close relationship for so many years to come. It added something quite special to my life at that time. When Lillian Gene and Yvonne came to stay with their daddy and me, just like that, we had a family household. At least for a while.
It hadn’t taken me long to adjust to the routine of college and I was doing quite well. I had close to an A average and had been told by Congressman Dawson’s office early in my second year that I no longer had to bring my grade reports in to qualify for my stipend. They assumed I was a good student and I kept getting that money, which really came in handy.
Even though I was doing well, I never let up on my intensity. In fact, I worked so hard that I wound up graduating cum laude in January 1960. I had done it in only three and a half years.
In no time at all, I had a placement at Carter Elementary. I felt that I was ready. I knew when I started teaching that it was time to step up to the plate or sit on the bench. I had been out of work for nearly four years, and had left a pretty nice paying job before that. I couldn’t afford to sit on the bench. Besides, I was eager for this new experience.
The first thing I had to do was to take charge of the classroom. I made it clear to those kids that they were there to learn and I was there to make sure they did what they were there to do. If they didn’t do as they should, then the wind would begin to blow. I did not tolerate back talk or any kind of rude behavior. I was determined that, by the time those kids left my classroom, they would be better people as well as better students. So, first I had to show who was in charge. The affection would come later.
I developed a technique for getting the kids involved in their own learning, so they wouldn’t just sit there passively while I threw everything at them. I would identify the students who had the greatest skills and have them work with others who might need to strengthen theirs. One of the most important lessons a black child can learn is how to work together with others as a community. We were like a family in my classroom. Everyone knew where they stood, everyone knew what was expected. At the beginning of each day, I would put the objectives up. Before those kids were dismissed in the afternoon, we would review. And they were so excited every day to see exactly what they had learned. They were active participants in the process. We set goals, we met goals, and my kids walked away every day with a sense of accomplishment. I actually had students asking me for homework. That’s how driven they would become under my care. This was about more than lesson plans and grades and passing and failing tests. This was about developing an approach to life. That was important to me. So many of the students I would meet over the years had never been given that kind of guidance. It was my duty to provide it, to show them that they should let nothing stand in the way of their success. I knew how important this would be for them. I knew how important it had been for me.
I will never forget what I found the day I returned to school after being out ill so long. It was when I had the heart condition at twelve, after my father had moved away. I loved school so much and missed the experience while I was out, so I was overjoyed when I returned. Until I saw what I saw in my classroom. What I saw was another pupil in my seat. The first chair. That was the place of honor for the very best student in the class.
From the time I had been in first grade, no one even thought about taking that first chair on the first day of school each year. That seat practically had my name on it. I was always the top student in the class and everyone knew that. But now things were different. The first chair and the second were taken by two students who had just transferred in. And they were very smart. I had to go to the end of the line. And I cried. After school, I asked my teacher how this could happen, and how I could regain my position. She explained that I would have to work my way back up. When she said that, I got an idea. I knew I would work very hard and get top grades. But the other two students were working hard, too. I had to do more to set myself apart. I had to do something special, something to earn extra points.
We had a sand table in our classroom, but nobody ever used it. It was just there for displays. I got the idea to work up a Thanksgiving display on that table, and asked permission to stay after school and come in thirty minutes early every day. I began crafting a scene depicting the first Thanksgiving. I started with a piece of broken mirror I got from my mother. I put that in the sand and banked the sand up around it to make it look like a lake. Then I made some little cutout ducks and geese and put them on the water. I made my benches out of little sticks, and my Pilgrims out of clothespins. I used thimbles for hats and put little black paper around their bodies and added white paper collars. The Indians were made out of clothespins, too, and had the most colorful feather headdresses. All of them had big headgear. Even Pocahontas. Then I made turkeys. White walnuts for the bodies, toothpicks for the legs. I had opened the shells just enough to force the toothpicks in, so the turkeys could stand. I used cardboard and colored paper to make the trees and placed the turkeys among the trees, where they were hiding out. I worked on that display for weeks, taking care to cover it up every day so no one could see it before I was ready for them to see it.
When my display finally was unveiled, the teacher made the announcement to the class, “Well, Mamie Carthan has taken back the first seat, first row.”
For me, there was a compelling lesson in my experience, and what it said about the drive I always had to succeed at everything. It was a lesson that would become so important to share over the years. We should never rest on a single success. Good was not good enough. Better was just another step along the way. I taught my kids to want to be the best, the best they could possibly be. Each child has to figure out what that means on a personal level. I was there to provide the guidance. But the key was to keep working, keep striving, keep pushing on. After all, how will you ever be sure you have achieved your very best if you stop trying? Never be satisfied. Never settle. If you believe that the horizon is the finish line, then you will keep moving forward. Success is perpetual motion. It was a lesson I had learned at home. It was a lesson that echoed in those days in Mississippi during the trial. We can never stop.
As a teacher, I knew my kids would have to have a sense of determination, the will to succeed. Many had natural ability. That was obvious. But some needed a little help. Some needed a little more. My mother had always been there to help me. She pushed me. She pushed so hard, in fact, that she got me to do the pushing myself. That’s what I wanted for my kids. They had good parents to do all the things parents are supposed to do. But some still were in need. That’s how I saw my job, my mission: to serve that need. I would become a parent as well as a teacher. I taught as a mother might. I nurtured, I disciplined, I cared. My class, in effect, was my extended family.
And I would learn so much about helping myself through the help I would provide to others.
Over the years, there would be so many difficult questions I would confront concerning the loss of my son, my only child. Of course, there were the questions about the murder and the social and legal issues that were raised. But there were deep personal things that also would take a long time for me to resolve. One was the sense that so much was cut off with Emmett’s tragic death. After all, it is through our children that we achieve a certain immortality. Through our children and our children’s children, we leave something of ourselves that lives on forever. So I’ve had to adjust to a life without promise of future generations. It has been a terribly diffic
ult thing to consider, and I would get reminders all the time. But in getting the reminders, I have been blessed to have had the chance to consider just how my promise really has been fulfilled. And that answer has come from something much greater than me. I prayed so long for guidance, and my prayers were answered. God told me, “I have taken one from you, but I will give you thousands.” The words just came to me, quietly. Words of great comfort to me. A revelation can be like that. Not always like the thunder we hear in movie versions of the Bible. But more quietly, like a whisper. It’s just there in your awareness, as if it had been there all along, waiting for just the right circumstances for you to notice.
So, I came to know what was revealed to me, to experience it, to live it, for so many years to come. I have left something of myself in all the children I have touched.
In a way, it was hard at times even to think about having a normal life. In a way, it was important to try.
In 1960, the same year I started teaching, Mama and Papa Spearman were planning to move into a new home. Mama had been involved from the ground up. First she had picked out the lot. There were three choices together on a South Wabash Avenue block, and they were building pretty fast, so Mama had to make the selection without delay. I went with her, of course. One lot was next to a lady who didn’t want to have any children nearby. Well, Mama always had children nearby. There was a long line of kids coming through Mama’s place, so that wasn’t going to work. Another lot was next to a lady who came right out to greet us. “Hi, neighbor,” she said. She had heard that Mama was going to buy in that block. As it turns out, she was a member of Mama’s church and was so friendly that she basically made the choice for my mother. That lot would need some work, though. Mama insisted that the builder remove the seven cottonwood trees from the backyard. She wanted a garden and needed that space. After a whole lot of to-and-fro, they worked it all out. By the time the house was built, though, something had happened. There was an urgent call. Mama was in tears asking me if I could help her out with some money. Papa Spearman had changed his mind. After talking it over with his nephew, Rayfield, he decided that the new house would not be a wise move, so now Mama had to figure out how to keep from losing her down payment. That’s when we stepped in. Whenever Gene found out Mama needed something, he would always be there for her. He had no reservations whatsoever. So we wound up taking over everything. We worked with Mama to sell our two-flat apartment building to Elder George Liggins from her church, and we bought the house that Mama built. The one that would have such a nice neighbor, such a nice garden. The one she had wanted so much for her own.
Not long after that, Gene decided he was going to open up his own barbershop. Now, I was a little concerned, because I had only started teaching, we had a new house note to pay, and we also were buying a new car. But Gene wanted that barbershop. He wanted it very much. So I got behind him. I promised I would help. Besides, I figured, at least he still had his job at the Ford plant. Of course, I didn’t figure on Gene taking a leave of absence from that job. I thought he could have managed the shop after three in the afternoon, just like he had worked it out at Polk’s for years. But he saw it differently and, like I said, I got behind him. I only hoped we would not get behind in the process.
Gene found the perfect spot just around the corner from our new home. We called on quite a few relatives to come in and help with the remodeling, to customize the place. And Gene wanted a top-rate customized shop. Somebody came in to lay the tile. We went to the place that sells barber supplies and I started heading over to the section with the reconditioned chairs and things and I turned around and saw Gene talking to somebody in the brand-new, brand-name, up-to-the-minute, top-of-the-line section. He picked the very best of everything for his new shop. Chairs that were second to none. They were called “the Cadillac of barber chairs.” That was all Gene needed to hear. He didn’t drive a Cadillac, but I could kind of see the wheels turning on that one, too. He paid fifteen hundred dollars for a back bar and bought the best face bowls—one for each station he planned to set up. Oh, my God, the man was killing me. Our first note on the house was coming due in April. That was $142.10. The rent on the shop would come due at the same time. That was one hundred and fifteen dollars. I didn’t know what the new car note was going to be yet, and Gene had taken a leave of absence. An unpaid leave. I just swallowed hard and kept smiling. I was behind him all the way.
By the time Gene finished, that shop was sparkling. I mean, it was beautiful. Word spread very quickly that Gene Mobley had opened a new shop. Well, when he got home at the end of that first night, he laid out a stack of money that was almost too big to count. But I managed.
There came a day when Gene had to go in to Ford to talk about his leave. I told him before he left for the meeting to hold on to that job no matter what. But we didn’t get a chance to go into all the details. Later he told me that he had left Ford. I couldn’t believe it. I knew things were going well at the barbershop, but Ford had such great benefits. With just another couple of years, we would have been able to retire with a wonderful health plan that would carry us for the rest of our lives.
I just looked at him. “Gene,” I said, “next time you want to do something like that, think ‘Mamie.’ What would I want? Just think ‘Mamie.’ ”
He explained that he couldn’t extend his leave and he couldn’t go back. He was happy at the shop and wanted to devote all his time to that. I accepted it. I could have never stood between Gene and his dream. That would have been the worst thing I could do. And I wanted only the best for him. I took a long, hard look at my husband, and I saw something I really admired. I saw what Emmett might have been, if only he had been given the chance. Gene was strong, he was resourceful and industrious. He would have made a good father for Emmett. I saw so much of Emmett in Gene. But, then, I was seeing Emmett everywhere. I was looking everywhere for him.
Gene and I settled into our life together. Family was so important. In fact, it was vital. Gene’s brother Wealthy and his new wife, Euthenia, or Lou, as we called her, became such wonderful companions. And, even though we would spend time at the homes of all of Gene’s brothers and would go to the family events hosted by his ex-wife, Dorothy, we felt a special kinship with Wealthy and Lou. Just as Wealthy had become a brother to me, Lou would be like a sister after they married in 1962. She never hesitated to help me with everything, including all that schoolwork I seemed to be doing all the time back then. Evenings, weekends, all the time. She seemed to actually enjoy helping me get through it, partly because we just got along so well, partly because I know she was in a hurry to get to those Uno games. I do believe Lou is the only person who ever beat me at anything.
One night, we were all sitting around talking. Wealthy always was a good conversationalist. I turned to him at one point and said I thought he should become a preacher. He just kind of looked at me at first. And I kept going. Wealthy could become a minister, Gene could become the deacon, Lou could be the usher, and I could become the secretary. Everybody had a good laugh over that one. But I guess that was the way I thought about our close-knit little group. For me, family time was a spiritual experience.
Nothing was more enjoyable to us all than fishing. Now, Emmett had been an avid fisherman and loved going out with Mama and with Wheeler Parker. But the first time I did it was in 1963. I must have spent a hundred dollars on equipment so that I would have everything I needed. Lou taught me how to bait the hook and cast my line. And that was it. I was ready. Caught my first fish and I was so excited. Over the years, Gene, Wealthy, Lou, and I would spend days up on rivers and lakes in Illinois and Wisconsin, talking, cooking out, and catching so much fish: bluegill, big-mouth bass, silver bass, catfish, walleye. Oh, we could catch some fish. So much, in fact, that sometimes we’d bring back enough to give to the church. It was always a great time. It gave me a chance to collect myself. And talk. Lou had not lived through our loss and she always seemed as ready to listen as I was to talk. There was no end to my
talking about Emmett and all that had happened. Sometimes, Lou would convince me to let it go for a moment, to get into the peace of the environment all around us. And I would.
Fishing for me would become a great need, one that I don’t think I fully understood right away. There is something so refreshing—spiritually refreshing—about the experience. Being with family. Being so close to nature. I would cast my line and feel connected. A ripple that would go on forever. You could feel the rhythm of the riverbank, the pulse of the ages. It was natural, it was easy. Oh, it was perfection in slow motion. It was at times like those when you could feel your place in the scheme of things, and know that there is so much in the world beside you, and ultimately, that it all is the way it is supposed to be. God doesn’t make mistakes. You come to realize all that when you cast your line and make the connection. Of course, it’s also nice to catch a fish or two.
Every now and then, Gene would kind of give me that look and sigh. We agreed that Bo would have really enjoyed the experience, fishing with us.
We know Mama enjoyed it. Eventually, she would join us on some of those fishing trips. And she was serious about her fishing. So serious, in fact, that it was hard to tear her away from it. Once, we were fishing on the Rock River in Wisconsin and Mama was bringing in a nice catch. As she grabbed at the fish, got it off the line, the hook somehow swung back and caught her arm, tore into a vein. She looked up at Wealthy and asked him to take it out. He didn’t want to mess with it. Much too dangerous. Mama just calmly wrapped a towel around her arm, we asked directions to the nearest hospital, and we got moving, not because Mama was concerned about her bleeding arm, but because she said she wanted to hurry up and get back to catch some more fish. And we did. What amazed everybody that day was that Mama and I were so calm about the whole thing. We never got excited during that crisis. Others have noticed that sort of thing over the years. People have said that Mama and I had ice water in our veins. I think really it was that we had God in our hearts. It is what we have learned, what we have held deep inside us: “Be still, and know that I am God.”