My father’s players all remembered him as pretty tough—he’d call the boys “dirty dogs” when he was angry with them. Yet he was also caring. One young man who’d sustained a concussion remembers that Daddy sat at the hospital all night with him to make sure he was okay. Another of Daddy’s charges, who had fainted during practice, remembered that my father stayed with him during a series of hospital tests. The results revealed an enlarged heart, which meant that he could no longer play football. Nonetheless, he said, Daddy treated him like a member of the team and made him feel “all right” about his infirmity. The school did not provide health insurance, so if the parents couldn’t afford to pay, Daddy would.
He obviously loved to coach, but he once told me that he didn’t have the nerves for it. Explaining why, he described a basketball game during which his team was leading by eleven points with one minute to go. A series of mishaps led to a comeback by the other team, and Fairfield lost. Daddy said that he woke up with his pillow soaked from crying in his sleep. “I decided that night,” he said, “that my career success was not going to be based on what seventeen-year-olds did in a game.” Eventually he would leave the coaching profession for good.
After school, my father and mother often went to the Rays’ house for dinner. My grandparents adored him, particularly my grandmother, who loved that he was a preacher. Grandmother prepared great meals, but once in a while my mother would try to prove that she too could cook. One night my father was at the Rays’ for a quick dinner between school and a game that he had to coach that night. Mother, it seems, took forever to prepare the meal, only to emerge from the kitchen holding a plate of hot dogs. It turned out that frankfurters were one of only two things she could cook. The other was banana pudding, and after being presented with banana pudding for several weeks in a row, my father finally graciously declined, citing his expanding waistline, not his exhausted taste buds.
The young couple also enjoyed an expansive social life outside of school. Birmingham was so segregated that most middle-class social activities were private, taking place in private homes and private social clubs. The few public spaces for blacks weren’t very desirable and were located in rough neighborhoods such as Fourth Avenue in downtown Birmingham. The area was known for drinking, knife fights, and “loose” women. Though my father seems to have gone to the movie theater in that part of town once in a while, my mother stayed away. In those days, there was a very clear distinction between “nice girls” and “bad girls,” and one had to be very careful about one’s reputation.
Fortunately, there seem to have been many private functions. Daddy was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, the oldest black fraternity, and the brothers would sponsor dances and parties. Thankfully, Daddy was a Presbyterian minister, not a Southern Baptist, and dancing and even a little light drinking by the minister were quite acceptable to the congregation. To the end of his life, Daddy’s eyes would fill with tears when a band played “Stars Fell on Alabama,” which was always the last dance of the night.
My parents’ lives, before and after they were married, were also taken up with my mother’s younger siblings. Alto and Gee were high school students at Fairfield when Mother and Daddy were teaching there. Because of the age difference, my parents helped raise them. Gee, sandy-haired, pretty, and spirited, was a handful and challenged her parents, particularly her mother, about everything from what dress to wear to what party to attend. Daddy was often a shoulder to cry on and a wise counselor whom both my aunt and her parents trusted.
This was especially important when Gee abruptly left Spelman College in Atlanta without informing her parents. (They eventually learned of her departure from the school.) Gee, it seems, had decided to go to New York, where she planned to marry an Irish boy named Andy she’d met there. Granddaddy Ray boarded a train and, as he had done earlier with Albert, brought her back to Birmingham. My father, sensing that Gee could not at that moment live at home, arranged for her to go to Norfolk, Virginia, and live with his sister and mother. Gee says that she had never heard of Norfolk until she was told it would be her new home. She attended and graduated from Norfolk State University, where Aunt Theresa was a faculty member. Gee became a teacher and later principal at a school for children with special needs.
Daddy was also very close to Mother’s brother Alto. He was unable to convince Alto to play football; Alto said that being hit once was enough for him. But the two became like brothers. Alto was incredibly handsome, with dark, wavy hair and an athletic build. As Gee would later do, he started college but soon quit. He joined the army, where he used his extraordinary talents as a trumpeter to play in the band throughout Europe and admittedly avoid the hard work of infantry duty.
That wasn’t good enough for my grandfather, who was determined to see every one of his children get a college education. After selling insurance for a while, Alto was shipped off to Southern University in Baton Rouge, where Daddy’s sister, Theresa, had been a faculty member before moving to Norfolk. Alto finished college and, like most of the Rays, became a teacher.
Thus, like most of their middle-class peers in segregated Birmingham, John and Angelena managed to live full and productive lives. Segregation provided in some ways a kind of buffer in which they could, for the most part, control their environment. Like their friends and neighbors, my parents kept their distance from the white world and created a relatively placid cocoon of family, church, community, and school.
But when my parents did have to venture outside of their narrow world, shocking things happened. My uncle tells the story of the night that my father drove him back to college in Louisiana after a holiday at home. Their car broke down on a dark back road. That was in the days when a sign at the Louisiana border was said to have read, “Run, nigger, run! If you don’t know how to read, run anyway.” A highway patrolman came upon them and asked why they were there. They explained that their car had broken down. “All right,” he said. “But you boys had better have your black asses out of here before I come back.” Alto was a master auto mechanic and somehow, working in the light from matches that my father had with him, found a way to get the car started. The two young black men were grateful to be gone before the officer returned.
Another oft-told family story relates to my father’s decision to become a Republican. Daddy and Mother went to register to vote one day in 1952. Mother sailed through the poll test after the clerk said to the pretty, light-skinned Angelena, “You surely know who the first President of the United States was, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Mother answered, “George Washington.”
But when my dark-skinned father stepped forward, the clerk pointed to a container filled with hundreds of beans. “How many beans are in this jar?” he asked my father. They were obviously impossible to count.
Daddy was devastated and related his experience to an elder in his church, Mr. Frank Hunter. The old man told him not to worry; he knew how to get him registered. In those days, Alabama was Democrat country. The term “yellow dog Democrat,” as in “I’d rather vote for a yellow dog than for a Republican,” was often used during this era. “There’s one clerk down there who is Republican and is trying to build the party,” Mr. Hunter told my father. “She’ll register anybody who’ll say they’re Republican.” Daddy went down, found the woman, and successfully registered. He never forgot that and for the rest of his life was a faithful member of the Republican Party.
FINALLY, AFTER almost three years, my parents were married on February 12, 1954. Daddy was thirty and Mother twenty-nine, relatively old to be tying the knot in those days. Whenever I asked what had taken them so long, neither had a really good answer. I did not know until after my mother died in 1985 that my father had been married before. The woman had apparently told my father that she was pregnant when she was not. The resulting divorce or annulment—I am not sure which—was likely a chastening experience that prevented my father from wanting to quickly jump back into marriage.
At the time that Daddy marrie
d Mother, he was fully immersed in his pastoral responsibilities at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Birmingham. Granddaddy had chartered the church in 1944, but by 1952 he had resigned and moved to Mississippi with my grandmother, trying to revive a troubled congregation there. Westminster’s new sanctuary had been completed and the church formally accepted into the presbytery by the beginning of my father’s leadership. Maybe he just decided then that it was time to settle down.
So with both approving sets of parents present and Granddaddy Rice officiating, John and Angelena married in her parents’ music room on February 12. Theresa, Alto, and Gee were the only others present. Mother wore a gray suit and spectacular smoke-gray shoes with rhinestones on them. There wasn’t much time—the wedding had to be squeezed in between Daddy’s basketball game and an oratorical contest awards ceremony at which Gee was receiving a scholarship. After the awards ceremony, Daddy returned home to the church and Mother spent the night at her parents’. She moved into the back of the church with her new husband the next day.
Life wasn’t so easy for the young bride, who became the church congregation’s new center of attention. Being a preacher’s wife ensures one of great scrutiny. And to be fair, Mother didn’t always exhibit much warmth with people outside of her family. There was also some jealousy, particularly from the mothers of marriageable-aged daughters in the congregation who’d hoped the young preacher might become their son-in-law.
It probably didn’t help that the young couple lived literally in the back of the church. The little apartment consisted of a bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom connected by a small hallway to a living room next to the pastor’s office. Privacy was at a premium. The church members had treated the living room as common space before my mother moved in. They loved to gather after the service, particularly when inclement weather drove them inside.
When my mother moved in and furnished the place with very nice mahogany pieces, bought on time at Sokol’s furniture store, she put an end to the Sunday gatherings—or tried to, at least. When members refused to honor her decision, Mother covered her nice sofa in plastic and bought cheap chairs for the living room. A minor scandal erupted in the church as members excoriated Angelena for “not wanting them to sit on her furniture.” In retrospect I’m glad she was so protective of her possessions because I am now fortunate enough to own those beautifully maintained pieces.
In time, the congregation and Angelena began to make their peace. She stopped playing for Baptist churches and became the choir director at Westminster, which had been in dire need of one. Mother insisted that the church purchase an organ, which they did with the help of the Forbeses, a white family who owned the music store downtown and who adored my father. She formed a children’s choir and started to direct holiday programs, endearing herself to parents with school-age kids. And soon my parents announced that Mother was pregnant and that the child was due in November. It is a good thing that I was not born early. The arithmetic worked well enough—nine months and two days—to prevent wagging tongues among nosy church elders.
My parents’ marriage created one other complication. The school system had a nepotism rule that barred spouses from teaching at the same place. Daddy left the Fairfield system and got a job as a guidance counselor at Ullman High School in the Birmingham school district. Mother stayed at Fairfield. I once asked Daddy how they had made that decision at a time when the woman would have been expected to give up her job, not the man. He simply said that Mother had been there longer and it was only fair that he move. I still think that it was a very enlightened decision for that era.
BY ALL accounts my parents approached the time of my birth with great anticipation. My father was certain that I’d be a boy and had worked out a deal with my mother. If the baby was a girl, she would name her, but a boy would be named John.
Mother started thinking about names for her daughter. She wanted a name that would be unique and musical. Looking to Italian musical terms for inspiration, she at first settled on Andantino. But realizing that it translated as “moving slowly,” she decided that she didn’t like the implications of that name. Allegro was worse because it translated as “fast,” and no mother in 1954 wanted her daughter to be thought of as “fast.” Finally she found the musical terms con dolce and con dolcezza, meaning “with sweetness.” Deciding that an English-speaker would never recognize the hard c, saying “dolci” instead of “dolche,” my mother doctored the term. She settled on Condoleezza.
Meanwhile, my father prepared for John’s birth. He bought a football and several other pieces of sports equipment. John was going to be an all-American running back or perhaps a linebacker.
My parents planned to stay in the back of the church because there wasn’t enough money to move. But Daddy convinced the congregation to paint the bedroom and bath, and Mother bought stuffed animals and a baby book to record every important event.
Tragically, these happy preparations were interrupted by the sudden death of Granddaddy Rice. Daddy and Alto had just made one of their periodic visits to my grandparents’ in Mississippi, and right when they returned home, Daddy received a phone call from his mother. Granddaddy Rice had suffered a heart attack. They got back in the car and raced to Mississippi.
When they arrived, Granddaddy Rice was already dead, but my grandmother had been too shocked to do anything with the body, which was still lying on the floor. My father and uncle arranged to have Granddaddy’s body brought back to Birmingham. A grand funeral was held for this exceptional man at Westminster Presbyterian, the last congregation that he had founded. My mother, seven months pregnant, played the organ, and my father officiated. The church was packed with people who had come from as far away as Louisiana.
My grandfather had been a giant in so many people’s lives and in our family lore. He managed to get his college education and to educate his own children and many others as well. He never let anything get in the way of providing an intellectual environment for his family or pursuing the development of his own mind.
My father told me a story that seemed to sum up my grandfather’s passion for learning. One day Granddaddy Rice came home very excited about a new purchase. It was during the Great Depression, and my grandmother was trying hard to manage expenses on their meager resources. My father remembered many days of eating bread sandwiches—bread with mayonnaise and nothing else. On Sundays Grandmother prepared “Sunday surprise,” but there was no mystery since it was always red beans and rice with whatever creature Granddaddy and my father could fish from the creek.
Yet there was Granddaddy with nine leather-bound, gold-embossed books: the works of Hugo, Shakespeare, Balzac, and others. Each book began with a summary essay about the author and his work. My grandmother asked how much they had cost. Granddaddy Rice admitted they cost ninety dollars but told her not to worry because he had purchased them on time. They would only have to pay three dollars a month for the next three years. Grandmother was furious, but Granddaddy held his ground and refused to return the books. I am so grateful that he did not give in. One of the proudest days of my life was when my father gave me the surviving five volumes as I left for the ceremony to receive my PhD.
Granddaddy Rice died on September 14, precisely two months before I was born. I am told that he was thrilled when my mother became pregnant, saying that it would be really nice to have a child around the house. I deeply regret that I never knew him in the flesh, but I’ve always felt that I do know him in spirit. He has been a powerful guiding presence throughout my life. And I have those books: my bond with him. It is as if through them he has passed on to me the gift of transformation through education that he himself earned in the hardest of times and against very long odds.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Johnny, It’s a Girl!”
MY MOTHER thought that she felt labor pains on Friday night, November 12, and was rushed to the doctor. Dr. Plump, the black pediatrician who delivered most of the black babies in town, explained that it was probably just an
xiety. He decided nonetheless to put Mother in the hospital, where she could rest comfortably.
The public hospitals were completely segregated in Birmingham, with the Negro wards—no private rooms were available—in the basement. There wasn’t much effort to separate maternity cases from patients with any other kind of illnesses, and by all accounts the accommodations were pretty grim.
As a result, mothers who could get in preferred to birth their babies at Holy Family, the Catholic hospital that segregated white and Negro patients but at least had something of a maternity floor and private rooms. Mother checked into Holy Family that night.
Nothing happened on Saturday or early Sunday morning. Dr. Plump told my father to go ahead to church and deliver his sermon at the eleven o’clock service. “This baby isn’t going to be born for quite a while,” he said.
He was wrong. When my father came out of the pulpit at noon on November 14, his mother was waiting for him in the church office.
“Johnny, it’s a girl!”
Daddy was floored. “A girl?” he asked. “How could it be a girl?”
He rushed to the hospital to see the new baby. Daddy told me that the first time he saw me in the nursery, the other babies were just lying still, but I was trying to raise myself up. Now, I think it’s doubtful that an hours-old baby was strong enough to do this. But my father insisted this story was true. In any case, he said that his heart melted at the sight of his baby girl. From that day on he was a “feminist”—there was nothing his little girl couldn’t do. I don’t know if it was then or later that he decided that even if I could not be a linebacker, I could certainly learn to love football. Maybe the football he had bought for John wouldn’t go to waste after all.
Extraordinary, Ordinary People Page 3
