After that first day, I walked to school from my house almost every day. I would meet my friends on the street corner or walk down the hill one block to meet others before we crossed a little bridge, then climbed up another hill through a wooded lot until we reached the baseball field on the edge of Burton Elementary. We climbed a long set of stairs until we reached the main schoolyard. This took five minutes on the way to school (if you ran) or an hour on the way home, as we often would chat, play, and chase one another, especially when we got to the wooded lot full of places to explore and hide.
Ms. Ollie was also a reliable babysitter for my brother and me. She lived on the same street as Burton School, so I would walk with a different group of friends to her house on the days she watched us. Her house bordered the wooded area and playground in the neighborhood. There was also the neighborhood recreation center next door to Burton that offered afterschool activities, summer camps, dances, and sports competitions. Everything that I needed in my young world those days was within walking distance of my house.
My sheltered existence at Burton belied the turmoil that was bubbling throughout the Durham public school system. While I worked hard for good grades, played with friends, joined the safety patrol, and enjoyed the freedom to walk to and from schools, the corner store and library, angry voices were insisting on equal access for colored children to the schools beyond the confines of our neighborhoods.
One year before I began elementary school, the Wheeler v. Board of Education lawsuit outlined the general characteristics and challenges of our de facto segregated school system. It concluded that the practices of the Durham School Board were discriminatory, forcing children to attend same-race schools when better schools with more resources were closer to their homes.
As a result of the court decision resulting from these lawsuits in 1961, a couple of Negro children were allowed to attend their neighborhood schools. This debate never affected me because Burton was so close—I could see the school grounds from my front porch, so my parents would never have considered my going to a school in a white neighborhood just to integrate or even to benefit from a supposedly better school. Life was good. Besides, I was a star student at Burton, and I had excellent teachers who encouraged me. I didn’t realize or care that we didn’t have the resources of the white schools. We seemed to have what we needed. If the teachers or parents thought differently, we didn’t know about it.
Even though some Negro children were allowed to attend white schools, the Durham public school system did little to encourage racial integration on a large scale. During these early elementary school years, nothing changed for me. I never saw any white students. One of the ways that the Durham school system sought to keep the status quo of separate but equal was to build more schools in the rapidly growing Negro parts of the city.
So in 1968, a new elementary school was built in my neighborhood, named for R.N. Harris, the first black member of the Durham City Council and the first black man on the Durham City School Board (6). The letter I received in the summer of 1970 mandating that I move from one junior high school to another to achieve integration was really my second such letter from the Durham public school system. I received the first in 1968. I was not allowed to finish my sixth-grade and final year at Burton, but was ordered to move to R.N. Harris, the new elementary school for Negro children, located two blocks from Durham Technical Community College. Now I had to walk three times as far to school every day, but still there were no white students.
* * *
Going to church was a big part of my weekly family life, and it was not unusual to find me at church two to three times a week. My parents were dedicated churchgoers, and there was never a conversation about NOT going to church. It was the norm, the rule, just as natural as drinking sweet iced tea on a hot day.
We had Bible study on Wednesday nights. Thursday night was youth choir night, and Sundays were devoted to Sunday school and worship service. Many Sunday afternoons, we would also have singing programs and observances to mark special occasions. We attended Mount Zion Baptist Church on Fayetteville Street, down one block from North Carolina Central University’s present-day student union. It was a joyful place to be, with lots of families from surrounding areas and McDougald Terrace. My parents were very active in the church through choir, ushering, deacon duties, and seasonal activities—Easter egg hunt, Christmas recital. My brother and I were always busy at church.
Once church was over, we would return home to Sunday dinner, with family and friends stopping by to chat, visit, and rejuvenate before the new week. Mr. Smith (husband of my godmother) and Mr. Alston (the vice principal at Hillside High School and not related to my nursery school teacher) were two regular Sunday visitors. They never ate dinner, but they would sit around the table laughing and talking with the family.
Each summer, my mother would find out about all the Vacation Bible schools for churches in our area, and we would attend all of them. Classes were usually brief, divided by the ages of the children, and there was lots of socializing and outdoor playtime, along with a snack. My parents also sent me to Sunday school conferences, where I learned to memorize and recite Bible verses, pray, and sing glory to God.
I never resented attending church regularly, because in addition to pleasing my parents, it was also a great place to meet boys. The lack of reliable telephone communication, especially the cost for calling outside our exchange area, inhibited any budding romance, but it was fun in the moment. Besides, church proved to be a fertile place to feed my needs on so many levels, spiritually and physically. I spent much time building friendships, socializing and flirting with boys, sharing and fellowshipping with neighbors over plates of Southern fried chicken and other home-cooked favorites. I honed my oral skills, reciting Bible verses, memorizing my lines for the Christmas or Easter programs, and participating in regular Bible study discussion groups. I served on the youth usher board. I sang in the choir, and so did my parents and brother. Not a single talent was wasted or opportunity overlooked to praise the Lord in my household. To this day, I cannot understand anyone who ever claims to be bored. I’ve never had a boring day in my life.
* * *
My father worked two jobs at a time for most of my formative years, as did most of the black men I knew. In addition to his weekday job, he also had a job cleaning or cooking on the weekend, or helping to move the white doctors at the hospital into their new residences. If he did not have a second job to go to on a Saturday, he could be found in the garden in our backyard, a holdover from his youth growing up in rural Caswell County, N.C., where his family owned hundreds of acres and raised tobacco, chickens, pigs and cattle. Dad was always growing something or coming home with something that somebody else had grown, fished, hunted or slaughtered. My dad’s brothers had kept the family place in Pelham and made a good living from the bounty of their expansive farmland. Every visit to my uncles resulted in a return trip with a trunk full of seasonal vegetables, pecans and, of course, meat from a fresh hog kill or their fully stocked freezer.
Even though Dad moved away from Pelham and the family farm as soon as he finished high school, the hard-learned habits of his childhood never left him. As soon as warm weather appeared, Dad would start preparing, tilling the soil, and planning his garden. Living on that corner house in Durham, he made the backyard his canvas, plotting where to plant the tomatoes, string beans, and cucumbers. He eventually outgrew our quarter-acre backyard and started renting small plots to grow fresh vegetables, which he and my mother would can and pickle for the winter months. I learned to love fresh tomato and cucumber sandwiches, to shuck corn, and to snap green beans—although it would take many years before I acquired a taste for his beets and summer squash.
My parents tried to figure out where Rudy’s strengths were by enrolling him in one activity, then another. They bought him a saxophone, which stayed locked in the case. He seemed uninterested in academics or athletics. But eventually he found God’s gift to him—his beautifu
l baritone singing voice—which he has used to delight church audiences in and around Durham and neighboring states as a member of the “New Generation” singers. Under the leadership of Oren Marsh, one of the most talented pianists in the area, they offered a spiritually uplifting performance. They were young black men and women who booked Sunday afternoon gospel singing assignments, and all of them were as talented as the groups who were more nationally recognized. Everyone thought they would hit it big one day. Although they always seemed to be on the verge, it never happened, and the group disbanded after five years.
Today, Rudy has a beautiful daughter, who has married and has a son. He has maintained a strong relationship with his biological brothers and sisters, my cousins, and despite the nontraditional family arrangement, our relationship has always been a source of pride for all of us. My female cousins, Ella and Machael, Rudy’s sisters, are still my closest confidants.
My large and extended family included my maternal grandmother, aunts, uncles, and cousins who grounded me in love and tradition. Since I was blessed and cursed to have both of my parents come from farming families, I was destined to learn something about gardening despite my protests that I was a city girl.
My mother, now a city girl too, still felt it her duty to help out the family farming during the summers. Using her vacation days, she would take my brother and me to the country for harvest time. My grandma Mozella (short for Moses Ella); my aunts, Ruth, Frances, and Hazel; uncle Berry Lee, and cousins Larry and Little Joe would “pick ’bacca” for white landowners all over Granville and Vance counties in central North Carolina.
And you were never too young to be out in the fields—even if you couldn’t pick the tobacco. The older kids who got tired (usually after about 20 minutes) had to look after the younger ones who were too little. We would get up early before it got too hot and work through the morning, then take a break and work through early afternoon until somebody—usually my grandma—decided that we had worked long enough for that day. Homemade biscuits and a piece of smoked meat or tablespoon of sorghum molasses, packed in brown paper bags, made a hearty lunch. After a long morning working out in the sun, those sandwiches were the best food in the world. My mama’s sisters were fast workers, too. Wearing large-brimmed straw hats, they labored rapidly through the tobacco fields, filling up the wooden bins. We children often ran down the path to the edge of the property to fill pails and bring back the coldest drinking water you ever want to drink for the adults to let run down their parched throats. Outhouses near the fields provided relief when we needed to go. We always traveled in pairs to the outhouses—to make sure no one accidentally fell in.
Even if we were too little to take the leaves off the stalk, we found all kinds of other ways to amuse ourselves. We picked bugs and caterpillars off the tobacco, and when we had collected enough of them, we would hold a grand funeral—complete with memorized Bible verses, hymns, and eulogies for the dearly departed. To top off the day—if we had been good—Grandma would allow us to jump on top of the horse-drawn sleds headed back to the barn while the men would climb the rafters to string up the tobacco for drying. For the trip back to the house, we put towels on the car seats to protect them from our clothes, sticky with the sweet-smelling tar from the tobacco mingled with the sweat from the day’s activities. Bucket baths, dinner, and cold watermelon capped off a full day of summer fun.
My family, neighborhood, school, and church were all important pieces of my evolving identity, and there was a tight network of other people in whom my parents entrusted the care of my brother and me when they were not around. Adjoining our backyard was the house of Mr. and Mrs. Conaway. Mr. Conaway was a big, burly, guy with a broad smile and deep voice that shook the room every time he spoke.
“Hi, Mr. Bill!” I would call whenever I visited, which was often, since his wife, “Ms. Thelma,” was a frequent caretaker for my brother and me on the weekends. Both the Conaways worked for the tobacco factory, putting in long, hard days. Most of Mr. Bill’s second jobs were in the restaurant business, and he was a great soul-food cook—collard greens in fatback, pigs’ feet, black-eyed peas, cornbread—all cooked the right way—with lots of grease. He also owned dogs that he kept in a fence between his property and ours. My mother always complained about those barking dogs, but it was just accepted as one of his quirky ways, with nothing you could do about it. Many evenings I heard him at the fence, throwing scraps of food into the dog pen, encouraging them to bark at any trespassers, thieves, and unwanted visitors.
Ms. Thelma was always beautifully coifed, with her hair pressed and shining with Bergamot hair conditioner. She loved her hats and matching purses and was always buying things via the mail. She’d show me her Sears Roebuck catalog from which she had ordered underwear, stockings or a dress. I never understood the appeal of shopping by mail or even today’s modern equivalent of Amazon and e-commerce. But her habit kind of makes sense to me now—first, because she didn’t drive, and second, the use of catalogs reduced her need to interact with unwelcoming white retail establishments. Most of her grocery shopping was done at our corner store, which carried all the items that Mr. Bill loved to cook. Ms. Thelma often sent me to pick up items they needed, with a few pennies to buy something for myself. Ms. Thelma was not much of a cook herself, but she loved sweets and was another lady who indulged my sweet tooth without question.
Two people with the most lasting impact on my life were my godparents, John O. and Mary H. Smith, the same couple whose home had been the site for my parents’ wedding. Mr. Smith, a pipe-smoking, peanut eating, no-nonsense math teacher, taught in the Durham city schools most of his life. He taught at Hillside High many years and then at North Carolina Central University until he retired. Mr. Smith visited our home every week. He and my father would unwind from the previous week and prepare for the new one.
Mrs. Smith had moved from Hawley Middle School to become a highly regarded English teacher at Shepard Junior High many years before being reassigned to Rogers-Herr as part of efforts to integrate the Durham School system in 1970. The Smiths were a steady presence in my early life—and just as determined as my parents were that I would succeed. Both of their children, Nathaniel and Joyce, were proud college graduates. The Smiths showered us with educational gifts and books, usually with Afro-centric themes, for every birthday, Christmas or when I received some special recognition. I once received a set of playing cards with famous authors such as Walt Whitman on the cover so that I could remember them for English lit class—because, as Mrs. Smith said, I needed to be well-rounded and know “their history” as well as “our history.”
I was surprised they could find these books with black images because I never saw them in our library books or textbooks at school. I think Mrs. Smith got tired of my re-reading Heidi, Pippi Longstocking, Tom Sawyer, and Huckleberry Finn, my favorites. By the end of sixth-grade year, the Smiths had saved enough money to purchase a complete encyclopedia for us. It was an amazing collection especially designed for African Americans, with photos of prominent blacks all through. I treasured those books because I knew they cost a lot, and they reinforced the Smiths’ confidence that I would excel in my studies. Under the watchful eyes of my parents, the Smiths, my neighbors, my family, and other adults in my social circle, I was loved, safe, and protected. What else did I need?
LaHoma Smith (back row, second from right)
at College View Nursery.
4— My White World Before Hillside
Four
My White World before Hillside
Cindy
At dusk one evening in November 1966, with all our belongings packed in our new Chevrolet Bel Air, my family drove into Durham, North Carolina, for the first time. I was 11 years old, and my brother Greg was 6. We had driven up from Florida, where we had lived in Bradenton, Sarasota and St. Petersburg for most of my elementary school experience.
We, as a family, had two immediate impressions of Durham.
First, the street layout wa
s completely incomprehensible—particularly after living (most recently) in St. Petersburg, where the whole city was a grid of avenues going one way and streets going another, numbered in ascending and descending order. Our second impression was there were a lot of black people—more than I had ever seen at one time.
The Durham we settled in, however, was white Durham. We quickly learned where we were supposed to live and go to church and school and to shop. There were no Jim Crow signs (please…that was in the ’50s, and this was the ’60s!) to tell us these things, but the color lines were evident enough. We were not looking for them; we were not consciously segregating ourselves; we were just finding our place. Our initial racial disorientation soon wore off, and we did not think about it much because it made little difference in our everyday lives. It took us much longer to figure out the tangle of streets and roads to get us to the places where we needed to go.
* * *
I started elementary school in Bradenton, Florida, in 1961, but before that my family had already moved dozens of times, mostly in the Southeast, but also (briefly) in West Virginia (where I was born), Ohio, Texas, and upstate New York. My father installed telephone equipment in one-story square brick box buildings that no one ever notices, equipment that connected telephone lines across the towns where we lived; moving frequently was part of the job. In the six years I was in elementary school, I went to eight different schools, mostly in Florida and North Carolina. My elementary schools were all white except for one or two in Florida, where a few black children were in my classes. I did not see black children outside of school, but my family was so transient that I rarely saw any classmates, except for those at church or in my neighborhood.
Going to School in Black and White Page 4
