Negroland: A Memoir (10 page)

My South Side felt benign and orderly in my childhood. But there was an undercurrent of drama, excitement. In any city, the “good” and “bad” neighborhoods as your parents define them—who you play with comfortably, who you don’t, the well-designed houses, the slipshod ones, the pleasant greetings, the dirty looks, feeling you’re indulged, feeling you’re resented—are separated by blocks, half blocks, turned corners.

Still, in certain places it felt like we were all Negroes together, holding forth in food shops, bakeries, shoe stores; hanging out on street corners, music bursting and drifting out of record stores and restaurants. Forty-Seventh and South Park: we got our hair done at Stormy’s Beauty Shop. Sixty-Third and Cottage Grove: Jesse Miller, our dentist, had his office there, near the El tracks. It was “My people onstage—sound, color, action!” Negro men in loud clothes and extravagant caps making percussive sounds on street corners,
Wha-ht?
or
Wha-hh? Whoo
(high-pitched).
Ummm Ummnn Ummn
(lightly conveying
“What a shame, but let’s move on”
). Emphatic but more legato
“Un-UNn-nh…”

The laugh
. (Hands clap, feet shuffle or lightly stomp forward and back, body bent over; go into squat and rise; bend knees a few times quickly; return to loose standing position.)

Bliss.

Once in a seizure of excitement at 63rd and Cottage Grove I asked my mother if she felt that way. Yes, she said, she’d always felt that way about 47th and South Park.

—

We were Bronzeville girls until I was three and Denise six; then we moved to Park Manor. Bronzeville was the second biggest Negro city in America, and our grandmother owned two buildings there. We were living comfortably in one of them on a day in 1949 when history records that “the attempt by two black families to move into two houses in the South Side neighborhood of Park Manor produced a mob of 2000 whites chanting ‘We Want Fire, We Want Blood,’ while white policemen watched in silence.”
*
What else would White Policemen do? They were upholding twenty-five years of law and more than one hundred years of custom. They were protecting the property of their fellow officers who owned homes in Park Manor.

One evening several years later, when we have safely settled in Park Manor, a patrol car stops Daddy on his way home.

“What are you doing here?”

“I live here.”

“What’s in that black bag? Drugs?”

“I’m a doctor.”

Which the bag’s contents reveal he is. A pediatrician, luckily, not an anesthesiologist.

But that was not a story told to children. It was not told because:

The question of the child’s future is a serious dilemma for Negro parents.
Awaiting each colored child are cramping limitations and buttressed obstacles in addition to those that must be met by youth in general; and this dilemma approaches suffering in proportion to the parents’ knowledge of and the child’s ignorance of these conditions. Some parents up to the last moment strive to spare the child the bitter knowledge; the child of less sensitive parents is likely to have this knowledge driven in upon him from infancy. And no parent may definitely say which is the wiser course, for either of them may lead to spiritual disaster for the child.

The child, yes. But what about the parents, who must relive their bitter knowledge; who might have buried it till the child’s need moment bears down on them to force it up and out, or back down once more? Either may lead to spiritual disaster for the parent.

We have bought an apartment house. Three of the four floors are ours. We rent the fourth to a divorcée, Mrs. Collins (Negro), who makes hats and who walks through her apartment in bright filmy robes and mules with swansdown trim. She smokes, and slurs her words with husky precision. Like Peggy Lee singing “Black Coffee.”

To our left is round-faced, genial Dr. Hall (Negro), who wears a brown felt fedora in winter and a pale straw one in summer. I would say that his complexion was dark tobacco. Jesse Owens (famous Negro athlete) lives at the end of the block for a time but takes his children to another pediatrician. In the pale stone house on the other side are Mr. and Mrs. Willie Hull. They have lightly Southernized voices. Mr. Hull is a cabdriver. Mrs. Hull is a nurse with full bangs and shoulder-length dark curls. Their daughter Shirley is my age; we often play together in her backyard or mine.

Now nobody burns crosses, or twists their face into ugly grimaces and shouts. We’re coming, and the neighborhood is going.
Brrring
goes the telephone up and down each block. “Hello, we’re savvy white realtors and you’re angry white homeowners. Let us buy your houses now and sell them to the Negroes at much higher prices than you or any other white person would pay. You’ll be laughing all the way to the bank. Let them pay to ruin the neighborhood if they want it so much.”

—

“Mother, were there ever white families on our block?” I ask twenty years later.

“Oh yes, my child, they were there. There was one right next door before the Hulls came. They had two children. About your age. And they encouraged them to have as little as possible to do with you girls.”

One Summer Day in 1952…

Mrs. Jefferson put Denise and Margo in bed for their afternoon nap, then went downstairs to the breakfast room. She sat at the table and poured herself a cup of coffee. She was planning or daydreaming. The blinds opened onto the backyard. The pansies were in their beds, the roses on their trellis. It was a lark-on-the-wing snail-on-the-thorn moment until she saw the two white children from the house next door open the gate, enter our yard, head for our brightly painted swings, and settle their little fannies onto them.

Another tale from the crypt of Negro childhood. I interrupt to ask what they looked like
.

“Like two white children. Nothing special. Murky blonde hair.”

“Were they both girls?”

(sigh) “I think so.”

Mrs. Jefferson watched as the swings began to move, then she stood and straightened her shoulders. Did her thoughts run along these lines?

The thousand injuries of Caucasians I had borne as I best could, but when they ventured upon insult I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance to a threat…

When she stepped onto the porch there was nothing urgent or harsh in her manner. “Girls,” she said calmly but firmly, “Margo and Denise are taking their naps. They won’t be down to play, so you can go home.”

And they do. But they return the next week. And the week after that. Each time, Mrs. Jefferson steps onto the porch and speaks the same words. Each time, they leave silently. After the third visit, they come no more. And within a year they are gone forever.

A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. A wrong is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make herself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.

—

Now, so many years after, Mrs. Jefferson will look down, lower her voice, and end the tale thus: “I was too intimidated to confront their mother.”

I can’t bear to think of her intimidated. “Of course you were,” I rush in. “Those police homeowners were probably still doing plainclothes duty.”

Silence.

She’s silent, so I try a slavery joke. “You had to watch out for the Park Manor pattyrollers.” It’s corny and gets a dutiful pre-laugh sound. I must do better.

“Mother, all I regret is that those people moved before we got our badminton set. That would have finished them off completely.” She gives me a look that acknowledges my skill, or at least my good intentions. Then she stands up, ending the conversation, still ashamed of herself.

—

Mother looks stylish and confident when she drives us to school each morning. On the first day of kindergarten I fight not to be separated from her and weep with abandon. It takes two adults—Mother and the teacher, Miss Thurston—to dislodge me from the maternal body and haul me into the classroom. Within the week I’ve adapted, with the help of my red dress. I want to wear it each day, for a time at least, because it makes me feel brave. Mother May I? Yes, you may.

The second week I come home in triumph, mimicking a classmate who still sobs each morning. “I wanna go home to Ma-ah-ma!” I get the three-note quiver perfect, to my parents’ delight. The red dress goes back to its normal place in my well-stocked wardrobe.

We’re taught coordination skills. Tumbling, bouncing two balls, one in each hand. Sometimes Miss Thurston puts us in a circle and has us wrestle two by two. Did boys and girls wrestle each other or were the contests strictly boy/boy girl/girl? What I do remember is the nervous excitement of standing in the circle watching fierce little bodies grasp and thrash each other until Miss Thurston ends the round. I know I wrestled vehemently with Judy Winter, which leaves me feeling icky and squeamish. Is this because Judy won the match? Was I embarrassed by the fierceness of my inner gladiator? Was I discomfited because I sensed that our grappling, tumbling bodies emphasized to all that we were two of four Negroes in the class?

First Grade

I play so hard at recess that I often come home with the sash of my dress ripped on one side and hanging down. The jungle gym, tag—I never know what I’ve done too much of to make it happen. I feel that the sash is tattling on me the way I tattle on my older sister when she overpowers me.

Each winter morning we go into the cloakroom to take off our coats, jackets, boots, and leggings. One day when we girls were already in the classroom, we heard a great stir from back there—moving feet, boys’ voices, urgent
shhhhhhhhhhh
s. Our teacher, Miss Polkinghorne, a benign little round woman with white braids wrapped around her head and granny glasses, must have hurried into the cloakroom. Or sent an assistant there. For the noise stopped, and the boys were ushered into the classroom in silence. At recess one of the girls, who must have heard it from one of the boys, told us sotto voce that T. had pulled his pants down in the cloakroom. Why did he do it? Had an alpha boy like S. challenged him? T. is lively but not one of the mischievous ones I’d have picked to pull his pants down. In my mind now, though, it’s he who totes the biggest boy’s lunch pail to school each day. A large black-domed structure with a V in the middle, ridges on either side, and two mighty aluminum buckles.

Second Grade

I’m placed in a small advanced reading group. It’s done quietly; we children understand that we are not to boast about it. Then a first-grade girl joins the group. Soon it becomes clear, though she never says so, that she hasn’t just been placed in our reading group, she’s been skipped to second grade. Is she smarter than the rest of us? The community learning spirit of Lab includes constant assessment of yourself and your competition.

In the fall of 1955 an important mayoral race is in progress. Who are your parents voting for, Merriam or Daley? the teacher asks one day as we sit tailor-legged in our discussion circle. Merriam Merriam Merriam, Merriam, Merriam Merriam Merriam, said classmate after classmate. Many of their parents are University of Chicago professors. Merriam is the son of a University of Chicago professor and dean. Merriam is the liberal, intellectual candidate who has criticized the relentless workings of the Democratic Party machine.

My grandmother had once been a Democratic Party precinct captain, as had Democratic Party candidate Richard J. Daley. Daley and his Negro ally, Congressman William L. Dawson, have strong opponents in Negroland, but I’ve heard adult debates: Dawson is one of only two Negroes in the United States Congress, and Daley behaved well when Emmett Till was murdered. I know my parents are almost certainly voting for Daley.

The teacher gets to me. “Merriam,” I say without pausing. No one else has paused. I’m sure I use my prim, obliging voice; I may even have widened my eyes slightly, and given a little smile to suggest that I knew how predictable it was. I know that a badly told lie is as bad as no lie at all.

Third Grade

Miss Randolph, who becomes Mrs. Boverman midyear, is dark-haired with a sprightly June Allyson haircut. (The ends curl up just below her ears; the bangs are side-swept.) She is lively, she is enthusiastic, and she casts me as the daughter in a play our class writes about a Hopi Indian family. I believe we showed their traditional reservation ways first, followed by their excited visit to a large midwestern city. Were we documenting cultural difference and adaptation? All that mattered to me was that I had a leading role.

Our music teacher, Miss Schoff, has curly dark hair, which she ties with a black velvet ribbon. She wears a red Chanel-style suit. We sing folk songs (what house didn’t have
The Fireside Book of Folk Songs
on its piano stand?); we sing folkloric popular songs like “Jambalaya” and “Shrimp Boats Are a-Comin’ ”; we sing Stephen Foster songs like “Swanee River” and “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair”; we sing spirituals. We sing “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” slowly and softly; we let loose on “Rock-a My Soul in the Bosom of Abraham.” After that Miss Schoff has us dance to it, and after watching she singles me out for a solo in front of the class. I fling my arms out and whirl round and round in triumph.

Those of us who have siblings in the sixth grade keep close watch on their doings. Word comes down one afternoon that Denise has beaten the star boy, B., in the fifty-yard dash. Bobby says his brother Steve said that B., not Denise, won the race. Hotly, I tell him he’s wrong. The boys back Steve; the girls back me. We start shouting. And suddenly Bobby and Daphne throw themselves at each other and fall to the floor punching, flailing, and scuffling. Miss Randolph has to step in before it becomes a gender riot. Denise tells me later that B. made her race three times. “Let’s do it again, Denise.” She kept on winning. One two three.