Growing up in Prince Edward County, Virginia, in the 50’s and 60’s laid a shaky foundation for my social conscience. In particular, my father was the pastor of the largest church in a clearly racially divided town, Farmville Baptist Church. My Uncle Happy (Heslip Lee) was the director of the Civil Rights Commission in Richmond, VA. When I was in second grade, the local school board decided to close all public schools rather than integrate them. Some of that board created a new board for a private school, Prince Edward Academy. Most of the teachers from the white schools began teaching in the new private school which met in church classrooms, the Women’s Club House and various other institutional buildings. There was no such private school arrangement for the black community. All I knew was that I wasn’t going to be able to go to the “practice teaching site” in the “TEA ROOM” at Longwood College for third grade. Five years later, the NAACP sent several busses of black citizens to demonstrate on the front porch of our church. However, the deacons had gotten wind of the plan and had a ‘midnight’ meeting in which they voted 11-1 to lock the church doors if these people came. The reasoning or excuse given was that the intention was not to worship, but to disrupt. I can still remember the sound of “We Shall Over Come” ringing out over the strains of organ and congregation singing “A Mighty Fortress is Our God”. Church was dismissed early and we exited via the back doors to the parking lot to avoid conflict. This was the summer of 1963. I was 12. I was bewildered.
I had only known one black person up till then: Old Ben. He was the man who walked across the alleys to fill the coal furnaces of some people’s homes in our neighborhood, Buffalo Street. If I happened to be outdoors playing at six years old when he came by, he would tip his hat and say, “Hi there, Little Missy.” I would smile and say “Hi” back. He was like a kind man in a fairy tale, as if he didn’t exist anywhere else. My sister Jane met a black boy riding bikes one day behind the downtown stores. They talked a little bit and rode together a few blocks. That was her only exposure to someone of a different skin color. We didn’t even talk about these encounters until recently. Even when we went to college at a state college, we met few students of any color other than white.
That’s the way it was in the 50’s and 60’s. It’s just the way it was. I would have sworn to you I was not prejudiced. I was a Christian. Jesus loved everyone because God made everyone of equal value. I think I assumed that black people and Asian people and maybe Jewish people wanted to live separately. We didn’t avoid each other (in my mind) and my parents never said anything negative about the races. We just lived in different places.
Call that naive. It was. I was a kid. We never even discussed differences in our home. Not until the Martin Luther King, Jr., led all people to look at racism in the face. Ten years later, I became a teacher and it did not take long for me to see the inequities in education.
More later…Posted byMelody MorrisonPost I don’t know about CRT…but…
Mother Factors 