Summer, 1955

Racism is on everyone’s mind right now, mine included. I have lived all my life in a racial monoculture. Except for the childhood experience in the story below, my personal contact with Black people has been casual and minimal. 

So, while I’d like to say I’m free of racism and all the other “isms” that lead us to privilege some people over others, I know that’s untrue. I have never lived outside the bubble of privilege—with the exception of male privilege—and like most of us, I need to work on narrowing the gap between what I believe about the many ways of being human and how I respond instinctively and emotionally to those differences. 

I’m sharing here a somewhat shortened version of a story originally published in La Presa and included in my upcoming collection of personal essays. I struggled with the language and have chosen to maintain the use of the word Negro, which was in fact the respectful way to refer to African-Americans in the 1950s. 

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It is the summer of 1955. We are driving south along the eastern seaboard in a pale green Fraser sedan. There are four of us. Rod is six and I am nine. We are sitting in the back seat. Frisky, our cocker spaniel, is in the trunk in a special crate Dad built for him. Mom rolls down her window to let the warm southern air blow through her long brown hair and begins to sing. 

“I’ve been workin’on the railroad…” We all join in.

We are on our way from central Pennsylvania to South Carolina, where Mom and Dad are going to be directing an American Friends Service Committee work camp in a town called Frogmore on St. Helena Island. Rod and I laugh at the weird name. 

“More frogs!” 

“Frogs some more!”

Everybody who lives on the island is a Negro. Everybody.

I guess that’s why Grammy is all upset. I’m not supposed to be listening, but I heard her talking to Aunt Lynn when we visited them last week.

“I just can’t believe Mae and Warren are doing this,” Grammy was saying. “They don’t even know where they’ll be living. And with people like that! And taking the kids!” She was shaking her head and it sounded like she was going to cry.

That’s when Aunt Lynn noticed me and shushed Grammy up. But it made me kind of wonder and a little bit worried.

I don’t know any Negroes, but Mom and Dad say that they really are just like us inside, only a different colour on the outside. So that’s okay.

We drive for two days, and when we finally get there we move into the downstairs of a very large old house with a big front porch. Upstairs in the bedrooms there will be twelve teenagers. During the day, they will be painting and repairing some buildings that used to be a school for Negro children. Mom and Dad will be in charge. Rod and I will be…well…we’ll find all kinds of interesting things to do, Mom is sure of that.

It turns out to be true. I don’t actually know what Rod does, but I make friends with a lady who is a school teacher. I didn’t know! Negroes can be school teachers! She lives in a little house filled with books, lots of them for kids, and she lets me visit and borrow books whenever I want. I also make friends with an old man who walks with a cane and wears a big straw hat over his curly black hair. He has a huge garden filled with flowers and bushes that are all labelled. I’m a very good reader, but I can’t read his labels. He says it’s because they’re in Latin, which nobody speaks anymore — but I guess maybe he does. He has cleared paths that go in among the plants and built little wooden benches. I’m allowed to go there whenever I want and sit on the benches to read my borrowed books.

My best friend on St. Helena Island, Leon, is ten. Leon’s mom is the cook. We all eat in a building that’s a kitchen and a big room filled with picnic tables, with some rooms in the back where she and Leon live.

Leon and his mom are Negros too. I know I’m not supposed to care. And I don’t care, really, but I am curious about how it feels to be a Negro. Maybe I shouldn’t even notice that most of the people I see are black or brown, but I can’t help noticing and I wonder if that makes me prejudiced, which is what Mom and Dad say we are not. And even though we’re best friends, I don’t think I can ask Leon about these things. I have touched his skin, though, and it feels just like mine.

One day, Leon and his mom have to go across the long bridge to the city of Beaufort to buy food and go to the doctor. I want to go along, and I beg to be allowed. Mom and his mom huddle and whisper and shake their heads and finally say yes, but I can tell Mom is worried. I don’t know what’s the big deal.

The three of us arrive in the city, and his mom parks the car on a side street. We all get out and walk toward the grocery store. People are staring, and his mom won’t let me hold his hand even though we are best friends. In the grocery store, more people stare. Then Leon decides he wants a drink of water, so we skip together to the drinking fountain in the back corner of the store. Drinking fountains. Two. A rust-stained white enamel fountain like the ones at school and a stainless steel water cooler. Leon points to the signs. Negros. Whites. He bends over to drink from his fountain; I stretch up to drink from mine. 

After the groceries are in the car, we walk to the doctor’s office, which is the downstairs of a two-story house. Inside, there’s a waiting room with nice furniture and a nurse sitting at a desk. Leon’s mom tells me to sit there and wait. She and Leon go through a doorway into another room. I stand up and follow them, but the nurse says, “No, you wait here” in a kind of grumpy voice. The other people in the waiting room are staring at me. Some of them are shaking their heads. Before I turn back, I look into the other room. Everyone there is a Negro, and they are sitting on metal folding chairs.

When we get back to the island, Mom asks me how the day was. I say okay, but it isn’t really fair the way Leon and his mom are treated. She gives me a hug and says “No, it’s not fair. And that’s why we’re here. To help make the world more fair.”

It was 1955. I was nine. It made sense that a dozen teenage children of liberal northerners could make the world more fair by painting porches and repairing window shutters.