Arizona

Author’s note: I’ve used the old-fashioned, at-the-time-polite terms “Negro” and “colored” to describe the African Americans who appear in these stories. I hope you will understand I have no intention to offend anyone by my choice of those terms. For integrity’s sake, I’m merely using the vernacular of the time. (From The Newspaper Boy by Chervis Isom, 2013, page xiii)

He pointed to large, raised letters near the end of the dusty eight inch steel pipe. With one swipe, I brushed them clean. “Made in Belgium,” I muttered, as if he needed my translation. Then he stalked away. I studied the dozens of identical pipe stacked in the yard. The electric grinder he had given me, now hanging from my hand, seemed wholly inadequate for the job I had been told to do.

As I dithered, trying to figure out the best way to begin, I noticed the colored guy—they called him Arizona—watching me. His neutral face showed no emotion, but I knew he must have been amused to watch a college boy flounder in ignorance and incompetence.

How do I begin? I wondered. Is there a place to sit? If I sit on the pipe, will it roll? There must be a trick to this somehow. Arizona watched quietly. After a few moments, I looked at him. “You done this before?” (more…)

The whole truth

Mom had a long list of values to instill in us. Probably at the top of the list was: “Always tell the truth.” Just as I entered fifth grade, we moved to Birmingham, where that rule was about to get more nuanced: there was “the truth” and there was “the whole truth.”

Dad moved Mom and us four kids to Birmingham so he could join the civil rights movement. He may have been the only white man in the state whose fulltime job was civil rights. Mom and Dad had cautioned us not to talk about Dad’s work. With our teachers, neighbors, and friends, that piece of the truth could mean trouble. We navigated a fine line, technically never telling a lie but holding back most of what mattered to us. (more…)

A kind of “noblesse oblige” attitude

My family lived in Avondale, Alabama, until we moved to a farm on Lower Rocky Ridge (south Jefferson County) in about 1960. Our mailing address was Route 13, Birmingham, and I always considered myself as being born and raised here. I was just a little girl and was pretty sheltered from anything that was going on in 1963, but I do remember a few things. We had a maid who worked one day a week for my Mama. Her name was Lillie, and I have two distinct memories regarding her. (more…)

The school picture

When the bombing of the church occurred and those girls were killed, I was about 10 years old. Our family lived in what was then called Bluff Park (which is now part of Hoover) on Shades Mountain. I was born there, grew up there, attended Bluff Park Elementary school, was an active member of Bluff Park Baptist Church, and had what I thought was an idyllic life. Little did I know what was bubbling all around me.

Unbeknownst to me, my parents had become somewhat involved in the Civil Rights Movement. (more…)

How isolated we were

I lived over the mountain in Homewood. I never realized until recently how isolated we were back then. The day of the bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, I remember that some of my friends and I had planned to go to the downtown library after church to work on a term paper we had put off. I guess we saw the news on TV and of course our mothers would not let us go downtown.

I recently saw “4 Little Girls” by Spike Lee at our church, Independent Presbyterian Church. There was so much that I never knew. (more…)