So how can I say that there was a straightforward way for black parents to nurture their children? Well, ironically, because Birmingham was so segregated, black parents were able, in large part, to control the environment in which they raised their children. They rigorously regulated the messages that we received and shielded us by imposing high expectations and a determined insistence on excellence. It took a lot of energy for our parents to channel us in the right direction, but we became neither dispirited nor bitter.
The extended family, including grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, provided the first layer of support and nurture. The community mentors were not far outside the family circle, and our little neighborhood of Titusville provided a strong network of black professionals who were determined to prepare their kids for productive lives. There were few single parents, and black men were a dominant presence in the community.
The schools too were completely segregated in Birmingham—there were no white teachers, no white students. Education in Alabama was well behind the rest of the country. For a number of years schools did not provide free textbooks to any student, black or white. Although my parents bought mine, some of my classmates were often forced to share one book. Sometimes teachers would pool their money to buy a few extras for their classes. The city put fewer resources into the black schools, so they were substandard in an already poor state system. But the teachers were dedicated and they produced remarkable results. In these circumstances, teachers could demand the best of their students without any racial overtones. Teachers had high expectations and were pretty tough on low performers. “To succeed,” they routinely reminded us, “you will have to be twice as good.” This was declared as a matter of fact, not a point for debate.
School principals were titanic figures, garnering respect and even awe. The most important of these men was R. C. Johnson, principal of Parker High School, the largest black school in the city. Johnson was Alma Johnson Powell’s father and later Colin Powell’s father-in-law. Ullman High, where my father taught, was run by George C. Bell, Alma’s uncle. P. D. Jackson at Western-Olin High and even elementary school principals such as W. W. Whetstone and his successor Parnell D. Jones at Brunetta C. Hill, where I went to school, were household names. I remember well the grand funeral for Mr. Whetstone when he died suddenly of a heart attack. The service was on a scale that today would be accorded to an important political figure.
The churches provided a final pillar of support. There was no question as to where you should be on Sunday morning. There were no atheists and no agnostics in my middle-class community. The two largest churches, Sixth Avenue and Sixteenth Street, were Baptist. The Reverend John Goodgame Jr. at Sixth Avenue and the Reverend John H. Cross Jr. at Sixteenth Street Baptist were treated like celebrities in Birmingham.
The Presbyterian churches were quite a bit smaller, since fewer blacks belonged to that denomination. In fact, even the regional governing body of the Presbyterian Church was segregated. The church had split over slavery prior to the Civil War: the United Presbyterian Church in the USA in the North and south of the Mason-Dixon Line what was commonly called the Southern Presbyterian Church. The southern branch of the church maintained separate black and white presbyteries. When the black presbytery came to meet in Birmingham, Westminster’s members housed the participating ministers in their homes, and the women cooked sumptuous meals for them. There were, after all, few places for the visitors to stay and eat in our segregated city.
Birmingham’s churches were competitive with one another for members and vied for the reputation of having the most compelling services and outstanding music. It also helped to have influential members, particularly those lured away from other congregations. But the churches were more than a place to worship on Sundays. They were also the locus of much of the community’s social life and a safe place for kids. Later, some would also become centers of political mobilization.
All of these elements—extended family, community, schools, and churches—conspired together to convince me and my peers that racism was “their” problem, not ours. Whatever feelings of insecurity or inadequacy black adults felt in the appalling and depressing circumstances of Jim Crow Birmingham, they did not transfer it to us. For the children of our little enclave, Titusville, the message was crystal clear: We love you and will give you everything we can to help you succeed. But there are no excuses and there is no place for victims.
CHAPTER SIX
My Parents Were Teachers
THIS WORLD of family, community, school, and church was the larger environment in which I grew up. But my circumstances were also special because I was an only child. My parents were sensitive to this and strove to make sure that I had plenty of contact with other children. Apparently, I didn’t want siblings. Mother told me that I asked repeatedly whether she intended to have any more kids, making clear that I would not be supportive of that decision. Most likely, my parents just decided that one was enough, since at the time of my birth Mother was already older by the standards of the day.
In lieu of siblings, I enjoyed several close friendships with Vanessa Hunter, Margaret Wright, and Carole Smitherman; Carole was older but would play with us from time to time. I was also close to my cousins Lativia, Yvonne, and Albert. Our grandfather was insistent that the cousins spend time with one another, and even after Uncle Albert and his family moved to take up a congregation in Thomasville, Georgia, our families made certain to pay each other holiday and summer visits.
When I was about to turn five, my parents decided that it would be good to enroll me in kindergarten. My father thought that I needed to engage with other children in a more structured environment. Throughout my childhood, Mother always contended that I was well adjusted and got along well with other kids. My father, though, had a different take. He thought I was not at ease with other kids, and enrolling me in kindergarten became one of his many attempts over the years to make sure that I was competent socially. I struggled at times, exhibiting a bit of a thin skin and a tendency to retaliate when I felt slighted by my friends.
One such incident occurred when I was about seven. My neighborhood friends decided not to invite me to play with them for a couple of days in a row. I always had the latest dolls, and I loved to line them up and “teach” them, especially my favorite one, Baby Dear, who was a very good student.
So on the third day I gathered up all of my dolls and took them out to the front lawn, where, in view of my little friends, I began to play. When my friends came over, I informed them that I really didn’t have time to spend with them, that they were at my house and these were my dolls and they should go home. My father said that he watched with pride but also with a bit of horror. On one hand, I proved able to stand up for myself in a pretty clever way. On the other, he didn’t quite like the retaliatory impulse that came so naturally to me. He told me that it wasn’t always good to try to get back at people, though he understood why I was hurt by what they had done. My friends and I eventually made up, of course, and years later my parents and I laughed about the incident. I told my father that I had received his message—but I also noted that my friends didn’t ever do that to me again.
In any event, with an eye toward reining in my less sociable tendencies, my parents began in 1959 to look for a good kindergarten in which to enroll me. The school system didn’t have kindergarten classes, but there were a few private alternatives, including at a local Catholic school. In fact, my father’s church had sponsored a kindergarten a couple of years earlier. One of its students was Denise McNair, who was later killed in the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in 1963. But when that class went on to first grade, the kindergarten was disbanded.
Daddy decided to restart the program and recruited a retired teacher, Mrs. Evelyn Hunter, to teach the children. Mrs. Hunter was a member of Westminster and the widow of Frank Hunter, who’d helped my father register to vote in 1952. Several families signed their kids up for the program, which accepted children
ages four to six.
The kindergarten program was largely academic, emphasizing reading, writing, and arithmetic. But there were also lots of fun activities as well, including stickball and singing. I loved kindergarten and eagerly went every day. I was a chubby little kid and sometimes bore the brunt of teasing about it. My head was kind of big, and some little kid started calling me “watermelon head.” I retaliated with a comeback that I can’t remember now, but in general, I got along better than expected with my classmates.
Florissa Lewis was my best friend in kindergarten. She remained so even after an incident of overstepping on my part that could have ended our friendship early. At the Easter program at church we were each assigned a speech to deliver. Mine was “Ring, Easter bells. Ring, ring, ring. Tell the glad tidings of Christ the risen King.” Florissa was supposed to follow with her own part. I don’t remember the words now. But I did on that day. When Florissa hesitated, I started delivering her speech too. My parents and hers were thoroughly embarrassed. My father explained that it would have been better to let Florissa have the time to see if she could remember her speech. “But Daddy, she wasn’t going to remember it,” I said. I thought I was just helping out.
After a year, we “graduated” from kindergarten in a ceremony complete with white robes and diplomas held in the church sanctuary. All of the other kids were on their way to first grade, but I wasn’t. I was very sensitive about this and didn’t want the other children to know. The problem was that I would not turn six until November, too late to meet the October 31 cutoff set by the school system.
My parents were determined to see that I not miss an entire year of school so that I would not fall behind in my education. They tried to get the school system to count my time in kindergarten and let me “test” into first grade. The Board of Education would not budge, so they came up with another idea. Perhaps I could “test” into second grade the following year. Having received permission for this unusual maneuver, they set about making certain that I would pass the test.
My mother decided to take a year’s leave from teaching to coach me in preparation for the exam. Years later when the home-schooling movement became more visible, I belatedly realized that I had been a part of it, if only in an ad hoc way. Mother was very systematic about my school day. We’d get up and see Daddy off to work and then start “school.” She ordered the first- and second-grade texts in math, science, and reading and took me through them in a very rigorous fashion. I’d take tests every week to chart our progress. This flexible schedule also allowed time to practice piano, and as a result, I advanced significantly during this time.
Occasionally, if I did well in my schoolwork, we would knock off a little early and go shopping in downtown Birmingham. One such trip yielded my first Barbie doll, dressed in the iconic black zebra-striped bathing suit. But for the most part, my mother was all business and very demanding.
I didn’t mind having my mother teach me at home, except for one thing: I wanted to be like the other kids who would go to school every morning and come home at the end of the day. I felt so different and I hated it. So I invented a story that I was going to another school outside the community. Each morning as the kids were leaving, I’d get my books and go outside, pretending to wait for a ride to school. When they returned, I’d “come home.” This subterfuge didn’t last long because the other kids began to ask too many questions about my other school. My parents didn’t particularly like this deception, including my desire to fit in, and convinced me that I had to tell the truth. So I admitted to my friends that I was studying at home. “Next year,” I proclaimed, “I will be in second grade!” I was very proud when I passed the test, scoring at a third-grade level of competency in arithmetic and at a fifth-grade level in reading. I entered Lane Elementary School as a six-year-old second grader.
Though my neighborhood school was Center Street Elementary, I was enrolled in Lane Elementary because it was across the street from Ullman High, where Daddy worked. He would drop me off and then, at the end of the shorter elementary school day, leave work early and pick me up. After that I’d stay with him, doing my homework in his office (he was the guidance counselor) and getting to know the “big kids.”
After launching me academically, Mother returned to work. Each morning she’d carpool to school with other teachers. She had received a credential to teach science and was assigned to Western-Olin High School. Parker High School was the flagship black school, located in mostly middle-class Smithfield. Ullman High School was the other prized place to work, located a few blocks from our house in middle-class Titusville.
Western-Olin was located in Ensley, squarely in the middle of steel-mill country and known as tough territory. The students were mostly from the projects, and knife fights and violence inside and outside school were frequent. Even in those days there were a fair number of single mothers and children being raised by grandparents. Ensley was not considered a desirable place to work. I remember my father’s concern about Mother’s working in such a tough environment.
Western-Olin was one of two schools that had a divided curriculum. Some students attended Western, the academic high school, full-time, while others would complete a half day of academics and spend the balance of the afternoon in vocational programs at Olin. The campuses were collocated, but it was as if the students lived in parallel universes. The vocational school students were seldom encouraged to even think of attending college; they were just expected to acquire minimal competence in reading and arithmetic and then specialize in a skill such as cosmetology or auto mechanics.
Needless to say, this produced some “attitude problems” in the student body. Mother believed that the vocational kids weren’t taken seriously enough and that this, in part, produced the behavior problems that were so prevalent. She went out of her way to serve these kids, making some her “assistants” and giving them tasks such as cleaning the science lab so that they’d feel their contributions were valued. She would then make sure that they received certificates at graduation. These kids likely would have received no honors at graduation but for those that my mother invented. I remember one student in particular, a young woman who was tall and heavyset with dyed flaming red hair, who had built a track record of chronic behavioral issues. Each day she would come to work for Mother, eventually becoming trusted enough to open and close the science lab with her own key. She and my mother cried when she graduated, having beaten the odds that were clearly stacked against her.
Mother also believed that the arts could make a difference for these kids and for this underprivileged community as a whole. In 1962 she decided to produce a full-scale operetta with the students. The kids performed Chenita, a story of a Gypsy family, which used the music of Franz Liszt. The next year they were much more ambitious and performed George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. The lead actress in both productions was a student named Carol Watkins. Carol remembers how my mother stood up for her when some of the teachers thought her skin too dark for the roles. “I don’t care about her color,” Mother said. “She can really sing.”
Rehearsals would start just after Christmas for a performance in the spring. Parents were required to buy the material for the costumes, which were made in sewing classes. If a student couldn’t afford the fabric, the teachers pitched in and purchased it. The scenery was made in the carpentry shop.
These events were always exciting for my family. As the production approached, Mother was at the school almost every evening, and I would often go to the rehearsals. Aunt Connie, who was also a teacher at Western-Olin, assisted my mother. The shows were on Friday and Saturday nights, and I got to take Friday off from school to help Mother with the final preparations. Parents, grandparents, students, and the rest of the community would show up for the performance, dressed in their finest as if they were attending the Metropolitan Opera.
My mother’s productions were more elaborate than most but not unlike what was going on throughout the Birmingham public schools. These s
egregated schools were determined to provide these kinds of opportunities to develop their students’ artistic talents. The centerpiece of these efforts was the role of instrumental music and band. Today everyone marvels at the extraordinary band performances of historically black colleges such as Grambling or Florida A&M. This tradition ultimately traces its roots, however, to the commitment of elementary schools of the segregated South to early band instruction.
Band was an important part of the curriculum. In addition to attending a formal class period during the school day, band members would practice after school during both the marching band season in the fall and the concert season in the spring. As band members, students were required to read music. There is a scene in the recent movie Drumline about a black college band that drives home this point. The instructor learns that his young and exceptionally talented drummer cannot read music, and the teacher insists that he learn to do so. While it’s true that many great musicians play by ear and cannot read music, this was not sufficient for the more structured programs in black Birmingham. Learning to read music well was the most important task.
I joined the Lane Elementary School band. Obviously, there was no place for a pianist in a marching band, but I read music and easily qualified. The lingering question was what instrument to play. I wanted to learn the flute, but my father believed an old wives’ tale that doing so too early in life would distort the shape of one’s lips. My parents suggested the bells (also called the glockenspiel), which had the advantage of being very much like playing the piano using a mallet. I wasn’t convinced until my father told me that the bells could be heard above every other instrument in the band.
Extraordinary, Ordinary People Page 5
