I always liked black folk as they were referred to, during my childhood years growing up in Memphis. I mean. whats not to like? The only lines I can recite from The Little Rascals are Buckwheat’s, “The greatest adventures often start with a little bit of mischief.” I liked a little bit of mischief and so did Shirley Temple. She loved her friend Bojangles. He was important to Shirley. So, he was important to me too.
And although I will never forgive Walt Disney for selling that crap story about the prince coming along on a white horse, I do thank him for Uncle Remus. No kinder character on the screen. Then there was the very brave Little Black Sambo. I just don’t think I could have handled those tigers as well as he. So, as a child I only knew black people to be kind, brave, funny and beloved. It was in my storybooks and on the screen. So to me, a small child, it was reality. And still is in fact. Maybe children should be running the world? But I digress…
I didn’t know any black people personally back then, until I met Lettie. I was probably about 5. I bet she was no more than a teenager when she came to iron for my mama. In those days they paid black ladies about a buck a day to clean and iron. Now what on earth was my mama affording such a luxury when we lived in a house like this?
But I didn’t understand the economy of things much less the balance of power back then but I knew Lettie was sweet and I liked to be around her.
Every May Memphis celebrated Cotton Carnival to honor cotton as the king and economic heart of Memphis. While ignoring the back breaking contribution of the cotton pickers, the week long extravaganza heralded fancy society white people with their kings and queens on floats in the parades. Black people had one parade called the Jubilee. Sometimes in other parades they marched after the white parades but always at the tail end. White people left before they came down the street. But I heard their music and their drums. I always wanted to stay. But never got to. But during Cotton Carnival I did get to march with other drums as a little twirler in the children’s parade on Wednesdays.
Afterwards, Mama would take me out of my costume, put me in a dress and off we went to Britling’s for lunch. It was a big beautiful room. You picked up a tray and slid it down as you gazed upon the southern indulgencies. I always got fried chicken, fried okra and candied sweet potatoes. And of course pecan pie. But sometimes that lemon meringue all puffed up on top got my attention. And don’t forget the ice tea. Then we slid the tray to the end and a black lady would pick it up and take it to our table. Me, a mere child was leading a grown woman to where I wanted to sit. I liked it upstairs. I bet she did not. She would place everything appropriately on the table and off she went with the tray. My mama instructed me to always leave a nickle on the tray for the nice lady.
Do note. These white women were behind the counters serving. No black women pitty patting around little white girls photographed.
In summers we headed south across the Mississippi/Arkansas bridge to visit my Nanny Bess in Newport, Arkansas. We drove past cotton fields right and left. And all those pickers hanging out the bus windows trying to catch a breeze as they were hauled from one patch to another. Then those little black chillins in the dust. I hated to see that. They didn’t have grass to tickle their toes. Their shacks were smack dab in the dirt without a tree in site and damn they would be kickin’ up some serious toe jam.
Nanny Bess was my mama’s mama and I loved the summer visits. Nanny always had kittens, and mint growing that you could smell a mile away, a garden and chickens and a lake close by where she fished! She always walked back from the lake before we woke up to make sure we had scratch biscuits to slather with sorghum and butter. Now, that’s a trip to heaven. Dinners were feasts of fried chicken, the chicken’s neck personally wrung by Bessie and plucked before frying, the daily catch of perch and catfish, collards, beans and cobbler. As much as I loved the visits I hated the trips. Daddy always had a lemon of a car and we were always breaking down.
If lovin on my nanny wasn’t enough I had the Scotts. After my welcoming hug and a trip outback to see if she had kittens, I would run to the phone. No dials or need to know numbers. All I had to say was “I need to speak to the Scotts”. The tiny town operator knew who to put on the line and the Scotts, Mrs. Scott and her two grown daughters Katheryn Ann and Doris the old maid, promised to be right over.
On Sundays all dressed up I would go to Mrs. Scotts kindergarten class, from the time I was too little for the chairs until I was too big for the same chairs. But Mrs Scott playing those sweet Jesus songs on her upright piano nurtured me.
🎼Jesus loves the little children All the children of the world Red and yellow, black and white They are precious in his sight Jesus love the little children of the world🎼
I took it all to heart and agreed. And I left knowing Jesus loved me too.
I grew up and began to recognize prejudice and thought somebody didn’t go to Sunday school and learn Mrs. Scott’s song. When I arrived at my dorm in Denton, Texas in 1966 I found half the students were white, a quarter Mexican and the balance black. Didn’t seem to bother me. I always liked new experiences. And like Buckwheat said “The greatest adventures often start with a little bit of mischief”. So, I used my mischievous side and made friends, black, brown and white. But then it became complicated. I discovered the white people hated the brown people more than the black people. That seemed to be the pecking order in Texas.
Got kicked out of that school, Texas Woman’s University. Don’t ask! Home I went and ended up at Memphis State University. Lord the black and white thing was blatant. No more mixing at the cafeteria tables or at the dorm at TWU. Black kids on one side of the student center, white on the other. But the white side had their pecking order too, the Greeks and the Freaks. The Greeks were the fraternity and sorority kids. They were probably destined to be the future royal court of the Cotton Carnival. But guess what? They didn’t have it anymore because integration was the law of the land and God forbid you integrate Cotton Carnival. Not sure the student center segregation was by choice but hell. You just don’t flip a switch that fast in Memphis.
Then there were the freaks. About this time, the Northern boys had the nerve to show up on campus with HAIR. These NCAA basketball loving yankees had chosen to come south for school and were bonafide tuition paying students. But who were these long haired hippy types, the establishment cried? Seems people decided to dislike them too. Lord, this was getting exhausting.
On April 4, 1968 while attempting to study in the campus library I looked up to find the librarian shaking. “Students you need to go to your home or dorm immediately. Martin Luther King has been shot and killed.
BLACK GARBAGE WORKERS LIVES MATTERED and making 65 Cents an hour to pick up garbage was unacceptable. So, Martin Luther King organized. He showed up and he was murdered. All part of the story, the history of the Memphis Garbage Strike. Memphis, my home town where I had grown up so naively to how much hate permeated. I asked the last surviving Scott in recent years , “why were we not raised prejudice?” And she said, “honey, we were all so poor during the depression, we had no reason to look down on anybody. So, that’s how you kids were raised.”
Now sing along. And imagine old Mrs. Scott banging away at her upright piano in Newport, Arkansas!
Can’t we just fuckin’ get along? I know, I just used a four letter word. Don’t tell Jesus or Mrs. Scott…R.I.P. But I learned a long time ago. Words don’t kill, hate does. I will only support a candidate of a kind nature who nurtures the good in all of us and respects all humans as equals.
Another good read here, Miss Martha! I feel the same as Janice when it comes to being there with you! One can hope that articles like this will remind folks to live from the heart…and vote from it, too. Too much is at stake here. Thank you!
I didn’t grow up in Memphis. I grew up in Philadelphia, PA. But whenever I read
Martha…I’m right there beside her. I can see, hear and taste it all!