Southern Ruby (48 page)

Louisiana law allowed for only two pickets per block. Most of the students worked in pairs, but I noticed one young white man on his own outside a supermarket, holding a sign that read
Don't buy from a store that won't employ you
. He shifted his weight from foot to foot and glanced around nervously. I couldn't blame him for being wary. If he had conservative parents, he could be kicked out of home if they found out; and if he had liberal ones, they could lose their jobs over his actions. To add to his woes, white hecklers had turned up to harass the students. They knew they could do it with impunity. If anything happened, the police and the law would be on their side.

‘Let's go speak to that boy,' said Kitty. ‘He looks like he could do with some encouragement.'

Before we crossed the street, another woman from the Urban League recognised Kitty and stopped to greet her. While they chatted, I noticed a little white girl, no more than three years of age, approach the picketer. She was carrying a pail and a paintbrush.

‘I'm going to paint you black, mister,' she said to the young man, dipping her brush into the black paint and aiming it for his pants.

The student tried to ignore her and dodge her at the same time. Where had she gotten the paint from, I wondered. Had one of the storekeepers given it to her? That was a cheap trick.

‘Excuse me a minute,' I said to Kitty and her companion. I crossed the street and approached the girl. ‘Darling, that's not a very nice thing to be doing, is it?'

The girl stopped mid-action and looked at me with wide eyes. She lowered her head and shook it. ‘No.'

She was a cute girl with clean curly hair tied in a bow and her red shoes looked expensive. ‘Who told you to do such a thing?' I asked her, scanning around for a mischievous older sibling.

‘Don't you tell my daughter what she can and can't do!'

I looked up to see a stout woman in a shirtwaist dress and a mushroom hat rushing towards me. She looked vaguely familiar and I realised it was Jackie Fausey, Clifford's former fiancée. She had obviously gotten married since I'd seen her last and had this little girl, but matrimony had done nothing to improve her looks. With her heavily powdered face and harshly drawn lips, she exuded the same dolled-up frumpiness of Aunt Elva. And the similarities didn't end there.

She pointed at the student. ‘If he wants to be a darkie, then Patty is only trying to help him achieve his aim!'

‘He's not trying to be coloured,' I told her. ‘He's trying to create a fair society.'

‘Well, aren't you a Lalande through and through,' she sneered. ‘I made a lucky escape from that crazy family. I heard Cliff's mother kicked the bucket, so I guess you've decided to take up the mantle.'

For an Uptown girl and a judge's daughter, Jackie was as common as a bowl of grits. I wanted to give her a good shove for insulting my family, but then I remembered the scuffle I'd gotten into with Aunt Elva, and I knew the hecklers would revel in any excuse to break up the otherwise peaceful protest.

At that moment Kitty came up to us and Jackie's face twisted in contempt and her nostrils flared.

‘It's a real pity that my sister-in-law has to teach your little girl about being decent, Jackie,' Kitty said. ‘I'd hoped she might learn those kinds of things from you. But I guess not.'

Jackie glowered at us. ‘You do-gooders don't understand the situation. Coloured people don't want to think for themselves. Without white people telling them what to do, they'd all regress into savages.'

My blood boiled and I wanted to slap Jackie's fat arrogant face, but Kitty pulled me away in time.

‘Don't waste your breath on her,' she said. ‘But you can see why Clifford couldn't marry her! Lord, can you imagine that woman in our family?' She giggled and slipped her arm through mine. ‘I'm glad he made a much better choice with you, Ruby.'

Kitty and I handed out the brown-bag lunches, then prepared to leave. As we passed a store, a woman came out and blocked our path. I braced myself for some verbal abuse, but she pointed to a crate of apples near the door.

‘I noticed you giving food to the young people,' she whispered in a thick European accent. ‘Do you think they'd like some apples as well?'

‘Yes, ma'am,' said Kitty. ‘I'm sure they would appreciate them very much.'

The woman nodded. ‘It's not right the way we treat coloured people. I lost my family in Germany. They treated Jews the same way there.'

As we walked back to Kitty's car, she said to me, ‘People are so frightened, it's hard to tell who's on our side and who's an enemy.' Then she smiled. ‘Clifford said he could tell in an instant that you were one of us.'

‘One of us?' I asked, curious.

‘You're colourblind, metaphorically speaking. You don't speak to a person differently depending on whether they're
coloured or white. It isn't the first thing you notice about a human being.'

The following Sunday when the Galafate family joined us for lunch along with Kitty and Eddie, Kitty told them what we'd seen at the picket protests.

‘I admire this generation of kids,' Christophe said. ‘They have a strong moral sense of what's right and they're prepared to make a stand for it.'

‘It doesn't stop them being arrested, beaten and put in gaol though,' said Clarita. ‘They lose their jobs and so do their parents.'

‘But their courage and their peaceful protests are gaining attention,' offered Clifford in his usual optimistic way. ‘They are disciplined and organised. I've heard they practise by having their fellow students shout at them, slap their faces and punch them, so they learn to conquer their urge to retaliate. Their exemplary behaviour shows their oppressors for the fools they are.'

My gaze wandered to the children, who were playing together on the lawn under the supervision of Philomena and Mae. Adolphe and Dale were flying a toy plane, taking turns at the controls, while Isabelle played with Louise on a rug, brushing her sparse hair gently and holding up different dolls for her to admire. I remembered what Joan Fischer had said at that first meeting of the Urban League that I'd attended: the only way coloured and white people could really know each other was to mix together and for children to grow up alongside each other.

I'd always felt terrible about running away from the Thezan family after Leroy's death. They had been good to me, but Leroy's murder and the abrupt end of my life as Jewel had blown me flat like a house in a hurricane. A couple of months after Dale was born, I'd ventured into Tremé with a letter of gratitude for the Thezans that I'd composed over and over again in my head before committing it to paper. My intention was
to slip it into their mailbox, but when I arrived at the funeral home I found its windows boarded up and a
For Rent
sign on the door. From the condition of the lawn and the dust on the windows, it looked like the house had been empty for some time too.

‘You looking for the Thezan family?' a woman called to me from her porch across the street. I turned and nodded. ‘They all cleared out and went to San Francisco after their son was killed,' she said. ‘They didn't leave no forwarding address.'

I stepped closer and recognised the woman. She returned my gaze with some curious scrutiny of her own. It was the neighbour I'd seen in the Thezans' home after the burning cross had been set on their lawn: the woman who hadn't been too happy about Leroy having a white girlfriend. I didn't want to get into conversation with her, so I thanked her and hurried away.

I never returned to Tremé after that, or made any investigations into the Thezan family. I was sorry that they'd had to leave the city they'd lived in all their lives.

I turned back to Dale and Adolphe. If children could see beyond colour, why couldn't adults? I felt I had some role to play in New Orleans, but I had no idea what it was yet.

T
hat year proved a difficult one for the Civil Rights Movement. The NAACP had been banned on a legal technicality in Louisiana, and Clifford and Christophe were now giving pro bono assistance to the students who were arrested for sit-ins or picketing. They spent many hours together working on cases, sometimes through the night.

Kitty and some other women from the Urban League formed an organisation called Save our Schools. The Federal Government was fed up with the State of Louisiana constantly delaying the desegregation of its public schools and finally it ordered the school board to begin desegregation on 14 November 1960. The State hit back by threatening to close public schools altogether.

‘If they close the public schools, the city of New Orleans is going to sink back into the dark ages,' Kitty argued.

Education was a subject close to my heart. After seeing how well our children played with Adolphe and Isabelle, Clifford and I had decided to send Dale to a public school when he turned five.

‘He'll learn to mix with children from all walks of life,' Clifford said enthusiastically. ‘I can't imagine a better way to prepare him for the real world than that.'

So it was with interest that we watched what happened with the first two schools in New Orleans selected to integrate their first grades: McDonagh 19, and the William Frantz School. Four coloured girls who had performed exceptionally well on their test scores had been chosen to integrate: three were going to McDonagh 19 together; and one girl, Ruby Nell Bridges, was going to the William Frantz Elementary School on her own. On the television that night, we saw a tiny coloured girl in a starched dress with a bow in her hair being escorted by US Federal marshals into the school, while a mob consisting mostly of white mothers shouted abuse at her. One woman yelled, ‘Go home, burrhead! You're not wanted here!'

Another screamed that she was going to lynch Ruby Nell and her family.

I stood up. ‘That woman told a child she was going to “lynch” her?'

The images were so disturbing that I had to go into the garden and take gulps of fresh air to calm myself. The mob reminded me of the news reels I'd seen of German citizens cheering for Hitler. I wanted Dale to grow up to be strong and confident and to respect all people regardless of colour. But could I subject him to such abuse for the greater good? Maybe it would be easier if we went to live in Los Angeles, where the schools had desegregated even before the Brown versus Board of Education ruling. But the memory of Ti-Jean being mistreated in the ice cream parlour and how I'd failed even to pass him a napkin flashed before me. Then I thought of Leroy. So few white people were willing to stick their neck out to help coloured people in their fight that they needed every single one of us. Running away wasn't the solution.

‘Momma, why are you crying?'

I looked up to see Dale standing next to me in his striped flannelette pyjamas.

‘It's nothing, sugar,' I said, hugging him tight.

‘Ruby?' Clifford appeared at the back door. When he saw my face, he crouched beside me, concern in his eyes. ‘Are you all right?'

I nodded. ‘Please, take Dale to bed. I'll be up to say his prayers with him in a minute.'

Clifford kissed me and picked up Dale. He glanced at me again, trying to read my hidden thoughts, before going inside.

Later, I went to see him in his study.

‘I can't get the image of Ruby Nell Bridges out of my mind,' I told him. ‘She's not much older than Dale. I can't imagine people screaming at our son for attending an integrated school. Maybe I'm too big a coward for it, but I can't help feeling that I've got to do something about what's happening in those schools.'

Clifford pointed to a sampler hanging on his wall. I recognised it as the one his mother used to prop in front of her when she typed her letters:
Let's have faith that right makes might; and in that faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it. Abraham Lincoln
.

‘All of us are afraid, Ruby,' he said. ‘But all of us are called. If we don't answer, then we will never find the courage that exists deep inside of us. Why don't you telephone Kitty now and see what Save Our Schools are planning to do about the situation? I'm sure they can use as many volunteers as possible.'

‘So you saw the news?' asked Kitty, when she came to the telephone.

‘Those people are so full of hate they can threaten an innocent child!' I told her. ‘What are Save Our Schools planning to do?'

‘There's an emergency meeting tomorrow morning,' she said. ‘I'll pick you up at nine o'clock.'

The meeting was held in the Italianate neoclassical mansion of an Uptown socialite named Grace. Despite the decadent gold-leaf mouldings and ceiling murals in her home, she was wearing a simple woollen dress and her hair was in a page-boy style. She reminded me of Helen: someone so passionately focussed on a cause that she considered any self-embellishment superfluous.

‘This badly organised and token attempt at integration has been a disaster,' she told the women gathered in her parlour. ‘When the coloured girls entered their schools, the white mothers rushed in and took their children out. The three girls at McDonagh are now the only students there, and Ruby Nell Bridges is in a class on her own. If we don't do something, the public system will collapse and the segregationists will have won.'

We all murmured our horror at the idea.

‘The US Federal marshals are guarding the coloured children and escorting them into the schools,' Grace continued, ‘but there is another pressing issue. There are a few white children remaining at William Frantz, the Reverend Foreman's daughter among them, but those families and their children are also being harassed and have received death threats. Some of the fathers have lost their jobs. The only way integration is going to work is to convince white families to continue to send their children to those schools. And believe me, there are willing white families but they have been terrorised by the mob. We, ladies, are in a better position to help because we can't be fired or threatened economically as those children's parents can be. Therefore I propose that we divide into teams to take those children into the schools and any other children who want to join them. We'll need teams of two: one lady to drive and the other to accompany the child.'

Kitty and I were assigned to pick up a young girl in the Lower Ninth Ward named Elsie Matthews. She lived in a simple shotgun house with her parents and five siblings, but was beautifully attired in a yellow pinafore dress.

‘I can't afford to send her to a private school,' Mrs Matthews told us, ‘but she's as bright as a button and has been doing well at William Frantz. I can't see the problem with white children going to school together with coloured ones. They do it in other States.' She bent down and kissed her daughter on the cheek. ‘You study hard today and do everything these nice ladies tell you, all right?'

Elsie nodded, and Mrs Matthews turned to us with concern on her face. ‘I can't take her myself because I've got to be at the factory in fifteen minutes, and her grandmother is too old to walk that far. But we can't send her alone because of those mobs. I sure appreciate what you're doing.'

‘We'll take good care of Elsie,' I assured Mrs Matthews. ‘I've got two small children at home myself. I'll look after her as if she was my own.'

Elsie took my hand and we climbed in the back of Kitty's Cadillac wagon, which had four doors and would allow Elsie and me to get out quickly when we pulled up at the school.

As we approached, I could see that Ruby Nell Bridges had arrived with the US Federal marshals and I felt terrified for her. There were even more people outside the school than there had been on the first day. The police had set up barricades, but people ducked under them. A group of high-school boys were holding up a Confederate flag and singing, ‘Glory, glory, segregation, the South will rise again!'

Ruby Nell was taken into the school through its front doors, but the Save Our Schools organisers had arranged to drive the white children to the back of the school so they could enter through a rear door. These children had no protection apart from us and a handful of half-hearted New Orleans policemen.

‘It's amazing,' said Kitty, holding up a pass we'd been issued by the Federal Government for a policeman to see, and inching the car towards the rear of the school. ‘Clifford is defending
college kids who've been sent to gaol for peacefully picketing and yet these people are able to act like this with impunity.'

‘I heard that those housewives call themselves “The Cheerleaders”,' I said. ‘Ugliest bunch of cheerleaders I've ever seen!'

‘Good Lord!' moaned Kitty. ‘Look at that woman!'

As Ruby Nell passed the crowd, the woman Kitty was referring to held up a baby's funeral casket with a black doll inside it. A shiver passed down my spine, not only because of the horrible implication but because I recognised the woman. It was Aunt Elva. I no longer had to wonder what she might be doing now Uncle Rex was dead and Eugenie had moved away. She was engaged with nasty business, like she'd always been.

To our horror, a mob was waiting at the rear of the school too.

‘Traitors!' they shouted at us, pelting the car with tomatoes and eggs and spitting at the windows. ‘Uptown bitches! We're going to kill you along with the niggers you love so much!'

They rocked the car violently and I feared for Elsie. I had promised to take care of her and was tempted to tell Kitty we'd better reverse and drive her home.

But then Elsie looked at me with her big blue eyes. ‘I hope those angry ladies don't make me late for class. I've missed out on going to school for two days already and I want to say hello to the little coloured girl.'

After I'd told Clifford about Jackie Fausey's behaviour with her daughter on Dryades Street, he'd commented that racism was a disease that adults passed on to their children. Now, little Elsie passed on her courage to me. I took her hand.

‘You ready?' I asked her as a policeman opened the door for us. ‘You hold on tight to my hand and don't let go!'

The noise as we stepped out of the car was deafening. I shielded Elsie with my arm as people spat at us and threatened to do obscene things to us. It seemed to take forever to reach the
school door while the policemen pushed back the crowd that was jostling and trying to grab us.

When we finally got inside, we found the principal of the school waiting for us. I breathed a sigh of relief to be on friendly ground. But if I'd expected her to be pleased by our heroic effort, I was soon set straight.

She pursed her lips and scowled. ‘Well, I hope you're satisfied with yourself, you uppity do-gooder. Look at all the trouble you've caused!'

I gripped Elsie's hand tighter. Was I really going to leave her with this hard-lipped poor excuse for an educator?

‘We weren't given enough time to prepare for this,' the principal continued.

For one tense moment, I thought she was going to send me and Elsie back out to face the mob. But then I had a sense that I was standing at a significant point in history: a time when some things were going to unravel and fall apart, while other things were going to crystallise. This school principal stood for the past, and Elsie stood for the future. I thought of Leroy and his family and steeled myself. Things were going to change whether the old guard liked it or not.

‘You've had plenty of time to prepare,' I told the principal. ‘You just didn't want to. Now tell me where Elsie's classroom is and I'll take her there myself.'

Once Elsie was safely in her classroom, I went to leave the building through the rear entrance. But through the glass doors I saw that the crowd had grown larger and more volatile. The women were shouting obscenities worse than I'd heard the most uncouth prostitutes on Bourbon Street use. I spotted Kitty's car. Policemen on motorcycles had surrounded it, but it was covered in smashed eggs and the back window was shattered.

I moved to the building's front entrance, but the crowd was even worse out there. How was I going to make it the short distance from the door to Kitty's car? When I'd entered the
school, I'd been focussed on Elsie's safety. Now I had to worry about my own. I could see the principal watching me from her office, a spiteful smile on her lips.

Then, by the grace of the good Lord himself, one of the marshals who had accompanied Ruby Nell Bridges into the building saw my dilemma. He took my arm and told me, ‘Look straight ahead. Whatever you do, don't meet anyone's eye. Act as if they aren't there.'

He opened the door and touched the gun in his holster.
Please don't let it come to that
, I thought.

At the sight of the marshal and me emerging from the building, the crowd erupted.