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75 pages

English

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Description

A series of short stories describing childhood experiences in segregated Little Rock, Arkansas during the 1940's & 50's.

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USA

Informations

Publié par	First Edition Design Publishing
Date de parution	15 février 2016
Nombre de lectures	2
EAN13	9781506901237
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0000€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

What It Was Like…short stories of childhood memories of segregation in America

By
Lois Watkins
What It Was Like…short stories of childhood
memories of segregation in America
Copyright ©2016 Lois Watkins

ISBN 978-1506-901-22-0 PRINT
ISBN 978-1506-901-23-7 EBOOK

LCCN 2016930222

February 2016

Published and Distributed by
First Edition Design Publishing, Inc.
P.O. Box 20217, Sarasota, FL 34276-3217
www.firsteditiondesignpublishing.com

ALL R I G H T S R E S E R V E D. No p a r t o f t h i s b oo k pub li ca t i o n m a y b e r e p r o du ce d, s t o r e d i n a r e t r i e v a l s y s t e m , o r t r a n s mit t e d i n a ny f o r m o r by a ny m e a ns ─ e l e c t r o n i c , m e c h a n i c a l , p h o t o - c o p y , r ec o r d i n g, or a ny o t h e r ─ e x ce pt b r i e f qu ot a t i o n i n r e v i e w s , w i t h o ut t h e p r i o r p e r mi ss i on o f t h e a u t h o r or publisher .
Acknowledgements

No one does it alone, ever.

To the inquisitive minds of the children of the Seattle School District, including those incarcerated in the Seattle & King County Juvenile Detention Center, the genesis of this project. Without you, this book would not exist.

To my coach, Eric Horsting. Oh, and his patience, perceptive mind and very deep well of knowledge.

My Aunt Margaret Tatum-Potter. Even at this stage in life nothing beats a good hand holding with love and encouragement, seeing more in me than I see in myself.

My “sun” Tony. My greatest gift, more than life itself!

Amun. Unconditional love.
Author’s Note

This book is in no way meant to stand in the light of our heroes of the Civil Rights Movement.
The purpose of this book is to share my personal day-to-day experiences and impressions, through a series of short stories, of what is was like as a child growing up in a segregated America.
Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION ... 1

1 Race-What It Was All About . 6
Hair- The Ritual -The black woman’s untold ordeal that freed hair for everyone 6
What it meant to be called colored or Negro .. 14
Blacks and other races – How we were portrayed during the ’40s and ’50s in America 17
Attitudes – Blacks toward whites and whites toward blacks . 19

2 Public Perceptions . 27
Public Transportation .. 27
Bus riding etiquette . 27
Cabs . 29
Cars . 29
Media and Entertainment . 30
Blacks and Other Minorities – The American media of the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s 30
The TV Phone Tree . 33
Minorities and the movies . 35
Print Media . 37
Black Theatre . 38

3 Changing the Story--Revisionism ... 39
Hyde Park .. 43
Flags of Our Fathers . 44

4 Segregation Aberrations – Things that weren’t supposed to happen .. 46
Annette . 46
My Father--The Black “Student Prince” . 47
Gran Gran .. 51

5 Education .. 55
The Black classroom – Teacher clearly in charge . 55
School amenities . 60
The school pyre in Blytheville . 61
The one-room schoolhouse . 63

6 Our Community – What It Was Like . 65
The Black family .. 65
Black Communities . 70
Ninth Street . 70
The Black Wall Street – Greenwood & Pine, Tulsa, Oklahoma – June 1, 1921 72
Rosewood Massacre, January 1, 1923 .. 74
Ocoee massacre, 1920 .. 75
The segregated Black communities – Urban Renewal 75
Black Churches . 78
Restaurants . 83
The Lido Inn .. 83
Fisher’s Barbeque . 85
The Charmaine Hotel 86
Restaurant Etiquette . 88

7 Out of Place . 91
Revelations . 91
Emmett Till 96
WATERMELON and other self-imposed restrictions . 99
Black people steal 101

Epilogue . 103
My first real education .. 103
Horace Mann Junior High School 105
Education in an integrated school 107
Continuing My Education--Hildegard and the Jewish revenge . 109
Whites against whites . 109
Integration, California style--unwitting blockbusters . 113
How it all got started .. 115
The Little Rock Nine . 117
Afterward .. 119
INTRODUCTION

The America I grew up in from the 1940s to the late 1950s consisted primarily of black and white people. Black people were by far the largest minority group. It is now commonplace to see Asians and Hispanics in all areas throughout America, but they were practically nonexistent when I was growing up, with the exception of a few who lived in concentrated communities commonly referred to as barrios and Chinatown, usually located in America’s coastal cities and our Southwestern border.
Imagine what it must have been like to have been a clearly visible minority surrounded by whites who restricted every part of your life. Black people were easily identified by their hair and skin color, so we stood out whenever we were out of place in a segregated America, which included all of America. Even though the South lawfully restricted lives of black Americans, the practice of discrimination in America was nationwide. We were allowed to live only in areas designated for us by whites, to attend all-black schools, and to sit only in areas set aside for us on public transportation, in movie theaters, restaurants, waiting rooms, and even public facilities such as restrooms. Segregation laws were so finely tuned to keep us in our place that we couldn’t share even the same water fountains as whites. To violate the laws of segregation invited a violent response, and potentially death. Even as young children we were fully aware, and always knew to stay in our place.
While reading about my experiences living in a geographic area where segregation was the law (the South), please do not make the mistake of thinking the rest of America was as integrated as it is today, and that you could live and eat anywhere or go to any school that you either wanted or could afford. Segregation was not limited to the South; it was nationwide. Blacks could attend schools and access most public facilities without segregated seating and services in most areas other than the South, but blacks were still restricted to designated black neighborhoods as well as being limited to employment in service jobs in all of America. We were treated, at best, as though we were invisible, and depicted as low and degraded human beings at worst.
There were almost never images of anyone other than whites in movies, TV, magazines, children’s textbooks, and billboards, which included all forms of advertisement. If you lived in a foreign country and these were your only sources of information about America, blacks would have been perceived as almost nonexistent. The rare exception when blacks were included consisted of scenes which included either black musicians, servants, or as lazy buffoons in movies who shuffled along, all of low intelligence. The same was true, but not to the extent of blacks, for the extremely rare portrayal of an Asian that you saw in the both very popular King Kong or Charlie Chan movies. Chan, the lead character who was played by a white actor and made up to appear Chinese, showed great intelligence and was very wise. All others who were Asian spoke broken English with one or two sentences.
We knew about Mexicans through Western movies. Their roles never went beyond being the leading man’s sidekick or performing as an entertainer, with one or two token Latin Lovers thrown in. Mexicans held an advantage over blacks because actors like Cesar Romero and Anthony Quinn, who were Mexican actors, got integrated roles interacting with whites in an almost equal role. When I grew up in Los Angeles, California in the ’50s, it was considered derogatory to refer to Mexicans as Mexican, which was akin to what we now refer to as the “N” word. They preferred being called Spanish. This was in spite of the fact that there were towns in the Southwest that prohibited Mexicans from accessing facilities, the same as with segregated blacks.
The majority of neighborhoods in America, like the South, were places where most racial minority groups lived in segregated communities. Asians lived primarily on the West Coast and in some areas of the North Atlantic. Most Asians, particularly Chinese, came to America to build its railroads and work in mines during the mid-18 th Century. They suffered discrimination and abuse and were referred to as the “yellow peril” by whites in America. Hispanics lived mainly in the Southwest as well as the Pacific Coast and the North Atlantic, with Mexico bordering our southern border. There were some communities of both groups scattered in smaller numbers throughout the Midwest. If blacks who lived in areas other than the South where there were no segregation laws chose to move into an all-white neighborhood, it would create open and very violent hostilities toward them. Often blacks who moved into these neighborhoods were threatened by the Ku Klux Klan with cross burnings on their lawns, and even bombings. If the black person chose to stay and someone else sold a home to a black person, the entire neighborhood of whites would leave the area, most moving to the suburbs and leaving the inner cities to blacks and other minorities.
Malcom X’s family, which lived in both Wisconsin and Michigan in his early years, received the same treatment as a black family in the South who actively rebelled against racism, leading to death and destruction with impunity. In concentrated areas of America, other minorities experienced racial segregation and discrimination as well, particularly Chinese, Japanese, and Mexicans, but never the same magnitude and length of time as blacks. Blacks experienced segregation as the next step up from enslavement for over two hundred fifty years in America.
Some Hispanics were able to cross the racial divide while still maintaining their identity with dignity. Cesar Romero is an example. Even though he was stereotyped as a Latin Lover, unlike black men he was allowed to be appealing to white women, and even touch them on screen. Contrast that with the 1957 movie Island in the Sun , directed by Robert Rossen, starr