Along with many other Americans, I spent much of Martin Luther King week watching documentaries on television about the civil rights leader. The one that had me glued to the set detailed Alabama Governor George Wallace's "Stand in the Schoolhouse Door," which was meant to stop integration at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa in June of 1963. Why such interest? Because during that smoldering hot summer day of 1963, I was there in the crowd, standing right across the street, witnessing the whole thing. To this day, I remember it vividly.
Moreover, just recently I finished Kathryn Stockett's novel, "The Help," about the complex relationships between whites and blacks in Jackson, Miss. in 1962. This book has inspired me to write about my own experiences growing up in the South. Admittedly, I come from a lily-white family, English on both sides. However, as a psychoanalyst who writes about trauma, I believe that a person doesn't have to be black to feel the effects of racism -- a point that Kathryn Stockett makes very well.
I didn't grow up on a tree-lined street in a small town with a nuclear family. In the early 1940's, there were no Howard Johnson's or chain hotels, and as people were beginning to travel more by car, there was a growing need for accommodations. My father and mother, both from the North, decided to build and run a motor court, large restaurant and diner on a highway in the scenic North Carolina mountains. As a result, I was born into a world that seemed very exciting. It was a lively environment full of family, cooks, maids, entertainers and caretakers, as well as guests coming and going -- and sometimes returning. Some of the workers even lived in quarters in the motor court or restaurant, which added to the feeling of extended family.
With all of the activity and excitement, the only shadow was the knowledge that my energetic and charismatic father, who had a massive heart attack when I was six months old, would probably die with his next one. This ongoing sense of foreboding colored my experience, which was why it was important for me to have a best friend -- someone I could talk to about anything.
My first best friend was Elisabeth Darity. I have an old, black and white photograph of the two of us, dated September 1943, when I was six months old. Nestled in Elisabeth's lap, I'm resting my tiny white hand on her large and comforting black one. My memories of Elisabeth begin when my older brother and sister went to school, and I felt left behind and lonely. Elisabeth was chosen to look after me, and I had no idea that I was her job -- I thought she was my friend who came to play. She was the first person who listened to me and took what I said seriously. My brother and sister, being older, would laugh at me, run away from me and call me a "crybaby." Elisabeth empowered me by pointing out that my siblings actually needed me as a third person to play most games. If they ran away from me, then I wouldn't play with them anymore. It worked!
I remember that Elisabeth's and my favorite game was to lie on our backs and gaze up at the clouds, waiting for imaginary pictures to form. Then the best part of all would be the stories we'd make up about what we saw. She encouraged my imagination, and I could make her laugh. However, when I was serious, she would always listen carefully. Elisabeth told the world's best ghost stories -- just vivid enough not to scare me too much. We would entertain ourselves for hours, lying on a grassy knoll surrounded by trees, munching on the delicious green apples from a tree that my father had grafted. When I was five years old, I remember telling Elisabeth my very important secrets. I knew I could trust her to keep them. When I was older and went to school, Elisabeth went back to her old duties, but to me she was always my special person.
I have written about the traumatic impact of my father's death when I was eight years old. Everything in our world changed, seemingly overnight. The restaurant and diner were sold, and my mother could no longer employ many people. Not only was my father gone, but also our extended family went away. I have no clear memory of when they left -- especially Elisabeth. I can only imagine how helpful she could have been to me during this difficult time. I could have talked to her about my sadness and my fear and she would have understood. Instead of the vibrant, exciting life full of people that we had so enjoyed when my father was alive, our lives had come to a standstill; we were living on an isolated highway in the middle of nowhere. Because we had lived too far out of town for the school bus to pick us up, my father had always driven us to school. After he died, we began to ride the Greyhound Bus.
I remember the first day that I saw Elisabeth from the bus window when we stopped at her little town of Brickton, where most of the local black families lived. As we pulled up beside her, I could tell that she saw me, and I felt overjoyed! I hadn't seen her for several years, and I was so excited to show her how tall I was and how long my braids were. I smiled expectantly as she approached my row. There was a seat right by me, and of course she would sit next to me. And then the unimaginable happened: Elisabeth stared right past me as she made her way to the back of the bus. Her gaze was focused straight ahead, and her body language screamed, "Don't touch me." I knew that I shouldn't follow her, but I didn't know why. I felt heartbroken. Didn't she remember me? Didn't she love me anymore?
I saw Elisabeth quite a few times on the bus after that. Eventually, I gave up hoping she would talk to me, but I always suspected that she was sneaking looks at me. I don't think I ever discussed this with my mother, but it was around this time that I began to pay more attention to the bathrooms and drinking fountains "for colored only." This was North Carolina in the early 1950's, and the rules had been made long before I was born. Elisabeth knew those rules, and I'm sure she also knew I was very confused. In our insulated world of the Davey Motor Court, Restaurant and Diner, everyone was safe. My family had never instilled in me the systemic racial prejudice prevalent in the South at that time. However, out here in the larger world, both Elisabeth and I were trapped in a system not of our own making. In "The Help," Stockett's character Skeeter feels devastated by the loss of her best friend -- her Elisabeth -- and reading the novel allowed my memories to come tumbling back.
Meanwhile, my family struggled to adjust to life without my father. I went to an all-white school, with no occasion to meet people of other races and cultures. After one year at a girl's college in South Carolina, I chose to follow my sister to the University of Alabama. It was the fall of 1962. I didn't comprehend at the time that I had landed right in the heart of the deep South just before its racial issues were to explode on the national scene. The next year's headlines were full of stories about "Bull" Connor, the Birmingham police commissioner rumored to belong to the Ku Klux Klan, who saw to it that civil rights marchers were turned back with police attack dogs and fire hoses. The atmosphere in Alabama was heating up and it was palpable. Despite that, I decided to attend summer school in Tuscaloosa in the summer of 1963.
What I remember most clearly about June 11, 1963, was the blazing hot Alabama sun beating down on those of us who gathered midday at Foster Auditorium on the University campus in Tuscaloosa. Governor Wallace had made a campaign promise vowing, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever." His intention was to physically place himself between the schoolhouse door and any attempt to integrate Alabama's all-white public schools.
That day the campus was crawling with media and federalized Alabama National Guard troops who had been called in by President Kennedy. The atmosphere felt extremely menacing and foreboding, like nothing I had ever experienced before. Ultimately, Wallace stepped aside from the doorway and two black students were registered. However, rumors were rampant about how active the Ku Klux Klan was in Tuscaloosa. As if to prove the point, the next day, June 12, Medgar Evers was murdered in Jackson, Miss. by a member of the KKK. Things were getting seriously scary.
Vivian Malone, the lone female black student who was battling segregation at the University, lived in my dorm that summer, which became like an armed camp. Alabama National Guard Troops were all around. It was a summer filled with death threats, and all of us students entering the dorm were checked for guns or bombs. Most disturbing of all to me was when members of the National Guard would whisper, "I hope you have a gun," or, "I hope you have a bomb."
Vivian was given an entire floor all by herself. Knowing how creepy those dorms can seem with nobody in them, I worried about how she would feel having that huge, silent space all to herself. I never liked being in those empty bathrooms by myself in the middle of the night, where every sound reverberated -- like they do in horror films. Vivian was on my mind the entire summer, but I had no classes with her, and never passed her coming and going at the dorm. I often wondered how she could possibly tolerate the pressure; the black male student who had also enrolled dropped out because he said he wanted to avoid "a complete mental and physical breakdown."
Several years ago, I decided to get in touch with Vivian, just to let her know how much I had admired her courage. As with Elisabeth, I wanted to reach out to this woman, but felt confused and helpless at the time as to how to do that. To my sad surprise, I read that she had died a few years before. I was too late, as I had also been with Elisabeth -- who died many years ago. But I was happy to read about her life, which seemed very successful and full. Apparently, she married a man from Stillman College who had chauffeured her during her time in Tuscaloosa. I love this part of the story. He later became a doctor, and Vivian went on to have a successful career working for the Justice Department in its civil rights division and with the Environmental Protection Agency. Her brother-in-law is our current Attorney General, Eric Holder. And in 1996, George Wallace presented Vivian with the Lurleen B. Wallace Award for Courage, named for his late wife, admitting that he made a mistake 33 years earlier and that he admired her. I wonder how she felt about that.
As I made my way out into the world after college and became a Pan Am stewardess, both Elisabeth and Vivian would occasionally come into my mind, especially when I began flying Africa trips in the late 1960s. At our last Pan Am station before we flew into Johannesburg, all the black passengers had to move to the back and all the whites to the front. I felt I was once again back in the segregated south, witnessing anew the humiliation and division that results from racial discrimination. On the airplane, I would look around, wishing there would be a Vivian Malone to take a stand, but it never happened.
In my travels, I saw magnificent cloud formations all over the world. I would stare out of airplane windows, mesmerized. Elisabeth had taught me to appreciate their beauty, and I wished that she could see them too. I would feel once again like that little girl who held hands with her best friend, looking at the sky, telling her my stories. I like to think that I saw it for both of us.
Janet Langhart Cohen: America's History
African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955–1968) - Wikipedia ...
Civil rights movement - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
We Shall Overcome; Historic Places of the Civil Rights Movement ...
civil rights movement (United States history) -- Britannica Online ...
I am 66 now, and in the 50s, I lived in Montgomery, during the time that Rosa Parks did the bus boycott. From a military family, with liberal parents, I didn't understand the problem.
My own experience was a ride on the public bus. In those days, children did things like that, by themselves (no fear of kidnappers). As children enjoy the bumpiness of the back, I went to the back and sat in the seat behind the back door, by the window. When a Negro (term at the time) woman came back, and there were no other seats, except by me, I said, "here", with a smile, politely, gesturing to the seat beside me. She leaned down, and whispered, "little girl, you need to go up front." She was an adult, so of course I obeyed her, -- but my lips were quivering, tears in my eyes, because I knew I had done something wrong. It was only when I got home, and asked my Daddy, that he had to explain about segregation. That cemented it for me. Being a Christian, I knew right from wrong. I never looked back, and have fought for civil rights for ALL people, from then forward.
My little story -- one more page in our country's history.
I was brought and immigrated here to the U.S (Utah) as a child from Europe. Racism was not a problem for me but other forms discrimination were (not speaking english yet). It always made me feel different from those who were born locals. Some people can be damn mean, ignorant and thoughtless when it comes to just plain human rights....
I keep thinking about a white conservative republican co-worker of mine who claims our president is illegal. His world views are very narrow, despite his growing up with missionary parents in central America. Or his views are narrow because of his parents being missionaries; either way I do not know why. He claims that he knows exactly what Barak thinks and feels, and claims that Barak is a fraud intent on destroying America and ......yadda yadda yadda. I told that I doubt if he can understand at all Barak's experience growing up mixed race in America. I can almost feel what it is like being a mixed raced white and black man in America, my being of indigenous heritage, and white ancestry, but I will never truly know because I am not mixed race black man, and can never know the experience fully.
Dr Davey, you seem like a very nice, caring person.
However, you also seem to view life , instead of participating in it.
You had many chances to be that same ""Vivian Malone".
To take a stand which would not have been popular, but would have been right.
Every time, however, you chose to stand back and view reality instead of taking a stand and living life.
It takes courage to right wrongs.
Vivian Malone was the same age as you then.
What gave her the strength to stand up to a wrong while you comfortably viewed the wrong from across the street.
Write another column and tell us about your thoughts on that question.
Just sayin'
My parents didn't want me to , but I needed to do something.
That was the beginning of my positive activism.
Want more ?
GIVE ME A BREAK! get over yourself.
Your post is simply offensive!
The most surprising thing in the article is the last part where Pan Am, an international corporation, would bow to the horrendous laws of South Africa.
Such a strange, schizophrenic country this is. As great as it once was, imagine how much more stellar it could have been had it been smart enough to utilize (and reward) the gifts, talents, historical and cultural perspective as well as mental and physical abilities of it's greatest natural resource--it's people. And of course, had it not participated in the God-dishonoring, unchristian inhumane activity of slavery in perpetuity--a practice that has inflicted a metastatic cancer in perpetuity.
Yes, the arch-segregationists of the South were largely Democrats, but they always fought for control with the likes of FDR, Harry Truman and Hubert Humphrey. Starting in the mid-60s, a complete shift occurred, and within a few years, the Richard Shelbys and Trent Lotts of the world were arch-Republicans, and folks like Haley Barbour have re-written history, to the point that they don't remember the awful conditions under which they were raised.
Meanwhile, the New England Republican has become an endangered species, because of what the party of Lincoln has become.
This is a little known point among most Republicans (especially younger ones) who often and erroneously refer to themselves as "the party of Lincoln" with smugness they don't deserve.
Keep reminding them that they are mistaken and that as VP Biden said, this isn't your Daddy's Republican Party.
Then I went away to college and missed the desegregation of the local schools and other accommodations. I never returned to live in the town, but when I visited, the differences amazed me. I'd love to have grown up in the town I saw in those days.
I agree with the writer about the scars that racism leaves in its wake not being confined to the obvious victims. Being a child, I didn't have a hand in creating this awful situation, but I grew up terribly guilty that I was on the "white" side of the barrier and benefitting from the inequality, even as my humanity was being diminished by it. If my textbooks were newer and my teachers more qualified, I was helped and hurt at the same time. If I was being inspired to achieve rather than being taught that the world would conspire to keep me from some professions and opportunities, or from living wherever was best for my family within our means, I was diminished by that. Not being taught that I had to accept my lot in life without showing any sign of discontent, much less the rage that would be justified, just because of accident of birth, I thrived and prospered. That I did so, in even any small part because others were being denied their rights, well to me that's just not American, even as, deep down inside, I know it's as American as can be.
When I lived in Montgomery in the 50s, I remember how a black man would slide to the side on the sidewalk, so that he wouldn't accidentally touch a white girl. Later, when segregation was explained to me, by my Daddy (we lived there because of the Air Force), I wondered in sadness and regret, how that same man would explain to his son, to be careful around white people, because it could cost you big time.
The waste, the waste, of so many lives. And why? insecurity? fear? such a waste of talent.
I posted above, a comment, of my life during the bus boycott of Rosa Parks, if you're interested in more history.
Our church, filled with people who considered themselves good Christians, made no effort to integrate, and though I believe to this day that our pastors and assistants knew better, they chose not to risk alienating their members. Our denomination had formed a Southern synod apart from the national organization, rather then admit black worshipers, even though that reason was never spoken about.
The town was too small for a bus system, so the "back of the bus" model was only familiar to me from the news. There were separate schools though, and when I got old enough to confront my parents about what I was seeing around us, they assured me those schools were just as good and had good teachers and equal resources. It was just because the black residents lived "on that side of town." They didn't ever go so far as to offer to send me to the "colored" junior high or high school so I could see for myself.