Stand Up Straight and Sing! (13 page)

My parents, who were deeply involved in local civil rights efforts and were quite vocal about the inequities that Jim Crow wrought, never shied away from telling us children the truth about segregation. The first of the lessons I remember was delivered near Reid Memorial Presbyterian Church, on the occasions that my family gathered to see President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who worshipped at this church when he came to town to play golf at the Augusta National Golf Club, the exclusive and then-segregated home of the prestigious Masters Tournament. My father would drive to this area of Augusta, called the Hill, on Sunday mornings to give a ride to the superintendent of our Sunday school, Mrs. Paschal. My father was very fond of Mrs. Paschal and she of him. As she was a much older lady and my father had lost his mother at the tender age of six years, I believe Mrs. Paschal held a special place in his spirit.

On occasion when the President was in town, as a family we would drive near the church, and either stand on the sidewalk or, more often, remain in the car to watch him walk into Reid Memorial. There were always people gathered to catch a glimpse of the President,
but nothing like the huge crowds that a head of state would attract today. This was long before Secret Service agents began keeping onlookers at a safe distance, even though three Presidents had been assassinated and another six had survived assassination attempts. In the 1950s these sad events seemed historical, not contemporary concerns. And so it was possible that if you were outside the church at a certain time of day when the President was attending services there, you might expect that he would come close and exchange pleasantries with the children. We would be dressed for church, but my father would not hesitate on some of those occasions to turn these trips into something of a one-car political rally. He might use this time to speak about Eisenhower, about history, segregation, and Jim Crow. He wanted it understood that although it was quite a wonderful thing that in our country one could be allowed such close proximity to the President, none of us would have been allowed inside that church to worship, and any African American Augustan encountering President Eisenhower at a different place, at another hour, would more likely have been responsible for carrying his golf clubs or in some other position of subservience. Invisible. Certainly, we were made to understand that President Eisenhower and all too many other whites were not on our side. In addition, my father was opposed strongly to Vice President Richard Nixon, long before such opposition became fashionable. Many African Americans in the South in those days were Republicans—the party of Lincoln, and the party of opposition to the segregationist southern Democrats. But not us. In those early days of the civil rights movement, my parents and our community supported those who supported us, our needs, our growth, our development, our partnership in this nation—and my father believed that Richard Nixon paid lip service to civil rights but was not sincere.

And so when watching President Eisenhower or listening to social and political discussion, my parents made certain that we understood the laws of the day. Remember, the casting of a vote was not at all a sure thing for African Americans pre-1965. There were poll taxes, and literacy tests that asked ridiculous questions like how many bubbles are in a bar of soap, or how many beans in a large jar. It was not possible to know whether or not such questions would be asked; it depended entirely on the demeanor and humanity of the person working at the voting station. But my parents insisted, too, that we understood—really knew deep in our hearts—that African Americans were as good, as capable, as loved by the Almighty as anyone else on this earth. And while making sure that we understood the reality of the times, they made equally sure that we knew, without any doubt, that we were surrounded by people who cared deeply for us.

We were taught to be proud of our heritage. Our ancestors, like those of a great number of African Americans, were brought to this country mostly from West Africa on slave ships. My great-grandparents were free and owned their land, but my great-great-great-grandparents were likely slaves. (We do not have records; we can infer this from the history of the time.) We were encouraged to find strength in knowing that we came from strong stock—that my ancestors endured things that we could hardly imagine, and yet they survived. I think about this fact when I consider my own work, my profession, my desire to contribute something to this world. Thinking of the strength and faith of my ancestors keeps my backbone straight, because the timber of which my soul and spirit are made is very strong. I owe them my best.

My parents represented that strength and courage to me in many ways that are only now becoming clear. Both were fearless in their involvement in America’s ever-challenging social and political landscape in the American South of the 1950s and ’60s; the city in which they chose to marry and raise their family made this so. Augusta, once the state capital of Georgia, had a burgeoning black middle class, but everyone from the doctors to the maids, the lawyers to the barbers, the teachers to the janitors, was bound by a federally sanctioned set of laws that dictated strict, arbitrary, and incredibly unfair boundaries between the races—boundaries that consistently threatened the ability of African American families to live, earn a decent living, and worship and socialize wherever, whenever, and with whomever they chose. It was only natural, then, that as African American Augustans grew weary of this unfair system, they would look to the movement being forged by civil rights leaders in nearby Birmingham, in Selma, in Mississippi, and in Atlanta, and pledge to right the wrongs waged against them in the community they loved.

My father’s involvement in and commitment to the betterment of our community dates to the time when, as a young family man, he worked as a master mechanic on the Georgia Railroad. This line provided a major passageway from Florida to the north and west.
My father loved trains probably more than any other form of transportation in the world, and he especially loved being able to work on them. As in many other professions, making ends meet was especially challenging for him and his fellow African American mechanics, because they were paid much less than their white counterparts—a distinction that became even more stark after the railroad’s master mechanics unionized, but refused to allow African American mechanics of equal or greater experience and qualifications to join them. These were men who were so attuned to how a train worked, they were able to tell from the sound of it what precisely was in need of repair. Naturally, their being shut out of the union caused a great deal of friction, tension in the workplace, and my father and his colleagues were having none of it. Deciding to find other employment, my father looked to those within our church for support, and was steered toward the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company, then the largest African American–owned business in the country. The company proved a good fit for him, and he discovered that he was a born salesman. He climbed the ranks quickly to become the manager of the Augusta offices, which served the entire central Savannah River area. Members of the families of the founders and top executives of the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company, the Clements, Cheniths, and Spauldings, were often guests in our home, and we took great pride in having them there—in having this connection with these true pioneering families. And while being a leader in our church and president of the PTA at the local C. T. Walker Elementary School, my father was also president of the YMCA. These positions solidified his place in helping the community to fight for rightful treatment, rightful recognition of work, and for the recognition of our humanity. He loved being involved, called upon, and needed beyond his own household. It was easy to see the pleasure that he derived from it all.

My mother, in the meantime, was actively involved in registering African Americans to vote, long before the Voting Rights Act of 1965. As a member of the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, she joined many others going door-to-door encouraging neighbors to register—even in the face of all the dangers that such actions could attract. I would sit by her side proudly in the annex of our church as she helped people through the voter-registration process. My job was to place the three- by five-inch index cards in alphabetical order. I recall very clearly times when she would ask me to leave the table. I did as I was told, without understanding why she made this request. Years later, when I was already finished with part of my university studies, I broached the subject. “Mama, why, when I was sitting with you during voter-registration drives, did you sometimes ask me to leave the table?”

“Because some of the people who were registering to vote belonged to our church and had never learned to read and write,” she answered simply. “They would sign their cards with an
X,
and I would have to witness their signatures by writing their names for them. There was no reason for you to see that.” My mother believed deeply in the dignity of people, and she passed this on to us in her humility and kindness to all with whom she came in contact. Everybody loved Mother.

Certainly, in our home there was a lot of prayer for our safety, but not a lot of fear, because of the abiding faith that was held so close. Every evening, the reporting of Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley, and David Brinkley brought news into our homes of the latest events in the civil rights struggle, and the stories and images could be horrifying, but my parents never gave us the impression they were afraid. Concerned? Absolutely. But somehow, they were sure that this nation of ours would come to its senses and recognize the humanity of us all.

It was natural that they and other people in the community were intimately involved in the battle for civil rights to the extent that they were, because the church was our community center—where everyone would go for spiritual fulfillment and updates about what was happening in “the movement” that week, whether it was a collective effort to integrate the University of Georgia or the lunch counters at the local Woolworth’s. Right there in the church pew was where we all received our information—this was where the NAACP meetings took place; we went to these meetings together.

In due time, their involvement inspired us to act. I remember very often sitting in the living room with my father and my mother as they spoke about politics. And when we were old enough, they allowed us to lift our voices on behalf of our people. My brother Silas, then an undergraduate student at Paine College, led the NAACP’s local youth chapter—the same one that, in 1960, lunged headfirst into the movement in Augusta when dozens of the college’s students sat in or near the front seats of the local buses, only to be arrested, jailed, and found guilty of disorderly conduct for defying Jim Crow laws. They staged sit-ins at lunch counters with the same results. The struggle was local.

Honestly, although I accepted what my parents were telling me about having to work twice as hard to overcome others’ preconceived notions about my abilities, I questioned how someone could not like me when they had not even met me. It could be that we could become friends. I was full of the “whys” of the struggle. And so, with a very young child’s understanding of these grown-up societal issues, I set out to make my case—a mistake.

I was almost five and we were embarking on my first big train trip, off to visit relatives who had moved from the South to the Philadelphia area. I was so very excited about this adventure. We would take our lunch and I would wear one of my Sunday dresses, because this was to be a very special train trip.

Little did I know that one of the reasons we were taking a picnic basket along with us on the train was that we would not be welcome in the dining car.

When we made it to the train station, we repaired to the side of the station marked with the large, menacing sign
COLORED ONLY.
It wasn’t a choice, obviously; for me and my family, there would be no sitting on the
WHITES ONLY
side. But what would happen, I thought, if I were to wander over to the seats in the other section? Would the train not take my family and me to Philadelphia? Would we have to go back home? I was intent on knowing these things, but I also wanted to be able to sit wherever I chose. And so I did—I moved over to the
WHITES ONLY
section.

My mother said hurriedly, gently, “No, Jessye, you should come over here and sit.”

“No, I think I’ll stay here—this is fine,” I said, much to my mother’s distress.

And there I remained, swinging on the railing that divided the seating areas and having a grand old time. Soon someone who worked at the train station—I do not remember if this person was African American or not—came in and watched me twisting and turning on the rail. In my mind, I was proving my point. Nothing bad was happening. My innocence remained intact for the moment, and we boarded the train as planned.

Of course, as I grew older, my understanding of the issues became more sophisticated, corresponding with the level of detail my parents shared with us. I was probably around eleven years old or so when one incident in particular rocked our community. “Children, we have to talk,” my father had said to us one evening, shortly after arriving home. I remember our gathering in the living room, and my mother being visibly uncomfortable, knowing what my father was about to tell us. It was a somber time, indeed. An African American man had been charged with raping a white woman, even though everybody knew that he and this woman worked at the same hospital and had been carrying on a relationship that no one seemed to talk about publicly. A policeman had discovered the couple in a car doing what people do when they care about one another and, because of the times in which we lived, rather than tell the police officer the truth, the woman claimed the African American man was holding her against her will and raping her. I did not know what rape was then, but I knew from the sound of my father’s voice and the look in my mother’s eyes that this was an awful thing—and it was. The NAACP, my father informed us, had sent a young lawyer to Augusta to work on the case because, surely, the man was in serious trouble; he faced the death penalty if found guilty. As it turns out, that young lawyer impressed my father. “His name is Vernon Jordan,” my father said. “I don’t know that he’s going to be able to help the man accused of this crime, but I do know that this young man, this Vernon Jordan, is going to make a name for himself. You watch. Write down his name.”