Integration Did Change What I Saw

My grandparents’ accounting offices were in the Brown Marx Building at 20th Street and 1st Avenue North, Birmingham, Alabama. From a certain age, after school in College Hills, I hopped on the number 6 Pratt City-Ensley bus and went to town. I would check in with my grandparents that I had arrived safely and then I was free to wander around my limited number of downtown streets.

I could go to the Rexall and get one cherry coke per day. They all knew me.

Geez for the life of me, I am feeling the “I can’t remember” senior moment thing. The name of the drug store was… maybe Dewberry’s? I know I am thinking also about Newberry’s. Are they just so close?

Don’t stop. Look it up later. Write fast, otherwise that man will creep in.

The bottom line for this half-witted thought was one year’s Veterans Day parade. I was supposed to stay right in front of our building’s door where I was semi-recognizable. But as I got caught up in the excitement, I saw first one thing and then the other that I wanted to have just another second’s view of, and I inched down 20th Street farther and farther away from 1st Avenue, until I think I must have reached 3rd North.

I was not allowed at that time to go that far. I realized my mistake when I looked up at the man who had taken my right forearm firmly. That look is unmistakable, he was a bad man. Very pale, very blond and a smirk of power. Like the smirk that other man has now. No! Stop! That man may not come in! Away, thoughts of your politics man! No! You may not have me.

I squirmed and looked around fast and I saw a black woman within reach over my right shoulder. I reached with my left hand and grabbed her coat and pulled for my life. She turned to look and of course I was saved. I just squealed, “I don’t know him, I don’t know him.”

The parade stopped for me and her and her friend. I was able to tell her clearly, the S. H. Knight Accounting Company, 2nd floor, Brown-Marx Building and off we went. I hope she was duly thanked. I suppose she would have been. As much as my grandparents were not bigoted in some ways, they still fell short of the glory of G-d if you know what I mean. One was a collaborator to whatever came down the pike and the other was deemed not right in the head because he loved all people. That of course would be Daddy Paw, whom I have written so much about.

And compared to most all the folks we knew, it was true: Paw was flat out different. It was said his mother was the same and so goes the hell of moving into a strange land. The lot of them were from East Tennessee, folks who had stood with the Union.

What? Would the reader think I am joking to bring up the civil war? Why? It did and still does make a difference. Those pieces of families that stood with the Grand Army of the Republic. Little is heard about them anymore – they are in hiding and for good reason. If there is anything a white bigot hates more than a minority group, it is a white traitor. (Traitor according to them. I happen to think it is the right side of humanity to be for all people. But then again, we know there is a long history, herstory of not being right in the head.)

But after integration people looked mad all the time. I was still quite young and did not grow in height until late and so during those years I looked up at everything. I would have been happy to ride and sit with black folks, but in those days there was no waiting to find out if someone was friend or foe – it was, “you are white and I have a right to give you a dirty look.” Instead I sometimes found myself having to go sit by the lecherous old white guy who liked to shift his thigh against the females. Or stand, and I often stood.

In Hong Kong the locals could not stand the smell of white people. Gweilos (that’s what they called white foreigners) ate cheese and other foul-smelling things that made them smelly. I loved cheese and folks did hold noses and moved. Yes, I used stuff (antiperspirant), and hopefully not regrettably, I used the strong stuff day and night though I hear now this was not good for me or anybody. I am sure that to another American I did not smell of anything particularly. But we all knew this about riding the very crowded subways, trams and buses.

I was having trouble with the visas in Hong Kong and eventually as an American I was out on my ear until I met all criteria. But my Indonesian Chinese friend was out on her ear after 60 days without someone to vouch for her in writing. The bigotry or racism or whatever you want to call it was pervasive. The hierarchy of who is on top based on ‘race’ or’ethnicity’ or whatever you want to call it is also well defined throughout Asia, South Asia, the Middle East – everywhere.

There are places where, if you and I looked at the fighting groups, we might say this is brown-on-brown warfare – or bickering, or whatever stage of conflict they might be at. But to the locals, this might be a fight between who is “white” and who is “black.”

I saw the interview Fareed Zakaria of CNN had recently with the white guy who asked Fareed if he knew what white meant. All paraphrased. Are we to understand that what is white in one place in the world is not white in all places in the world?

I was gone from my home country for almost 20 years. I did not know it when I left and I know less returning. The very people who should be united are at each other’s throats. The very people who would have the love to stand together, stand apart.

There is a fight at the top and all eyes are on that fight. All eyes and ears are on him and he is winning.

I wanted to go to Baltimore to stand with the people a while back when it was in the news about the terrible treatment there. But how could I? I am older – with brittle bones, and the people in the street were screaming at each other.

The people at the top are winning, we are divided.

I saw a new world blooming with love and kinship during integration. Since then, there have been these waves of change and now we have today. How could this hate have come out on top again?

I never hear much of folks who are willing to look at the whole world. It is me, here in mine and to suggest anything else seems to upset folks.

I saw this “so-called race” lesson clearly Israel. My Israeli friend talked of his year living in the United States. One of the differences he noted was that in America he was a white man but in Israel he was a black man.

Christmas In Israel 1988

Modern-day slavery. Mass migrations of refugees. The world is always on the move. Can we pick up the pieces of the life of another, more fortunate than ourselves? less?

As soon as the New World opened up, every power country from the Arctic to the Antarctic sent their unwanted peoples to America, north, central, south and the Caribbean. The English sent the fundamentalist zealots, every variety, the Portuguese and Spanish sent everyone not Catholic and their version of white, which included Moors and Jews. Africa had war after war and sent all the losers, with the help of the power brokers, both east and west. Asia pushed and still pushes peoples out and all the while the peoples of these lands become fresh casualties of human evolution. But I digress.

Graymont Elementary. Integrated 1963. Within a few years it became an almost all black school. Today it is a county office, part of the Board of Education. Visiting Birmingham 2005

Integration did change what I saw and began changing, for the better, me.