Читать книгу I Shared the Dream - Georgia Davis Powers - Страница 11
ОглавлениеGEORGIA, WON’T YOU PLEASE SIT DOWN?
“Jimmie, do you see those dark clouds? The world is coming to an end,” I warned my three-year-old brother one day. I was eight.
He looked up, saw the stormy sky, and began to scream, then to run. I was taking care of him and every day when we took our walk, he would dawdle, stopping to pick up glittering rocks, playing in the pudding-like mud, moving at his own slow pace. That day, since I had grown more and more restless, I decided he would move at my pace.
It was the first time, but certainly not the last, that I made such a decision. Of course, I felt ashamed of having scared my little brother, but I never have been a patient person.
Many years later, while seeking election to the Kentucky State Senate, my need to navigate my own course according to my own time table became immediately apparent to friend and foe alike.
I had three big negatives to overcome in my bid for the Senate. Kentucky is largely a rural state and I was from the city of Louisville. I was also Black and no person of color had ever been elected. Finally, Kentucky government was run in the tradition of the Good Ole Boys Club, and I was a woman. However, I was undaunted and plunged ahead.
During my twenty-one years in the Senate, my inability to suffer idle talk was reflected in an admonition very much like the one I had given my little brother: Don’t you see those dark clouds over Kentucky? Why are we wasting so much time when there are so many problems, so much to he done?
I realize now that these are the questions which have dominated and illuminated my life, in and out of politics, from the very beginning.
I was born in a two room wooden shack built by my father in Jimtown, formerly Jim Crow Town, a colored settlement one mile east of Springfield, Kentucky. Poor Black people, mostly sharecropping field hands and by-the-day farm workers, lived in the rural county on small plots of land. Most, like us, had tiny green gardens toward the back of the property where they could raise their own vegetables.
My parents, Ben and Frances Montgomery, had both grown up in rural Kentucky—he in Bloomfield, and she sixteen miles away in Springfield. They were married when he was nineteen and she fifteen; her father had given them the land by dividing his own small plot.
While Pop went out and worked on nearby farms to support us, Mom had babies. First came my brother Joseph Ben, and then me. My parents named me “Georgia Lee,” but the doctor wrote “George” on my birth certificate. This confusion over the male and female versions of my name seems ironic now, an omen of things that were to come. In truth, I never wanted to be a man. I did, however, always want the position, the control, and the power I saw that only men enjoyed. With this mind-set, I was driven by pride and ambition and sometimes tortured by the passions of my heart until, finally, I was validated by a successful career in the White, male-dominated field of politics.
Pop’s mother, Grandma Annie, was married to Joseph Montgomery when Pop was born, but Joseph was not Pop’s father. The truth is, we don’t know for sure who Pop’s father was, but we do know he was a White man. Pop’s Black heritage didn’t show. He had fine, chiseled features and straight, ash-blond hair.
Grandma Annie worked as a cook for Charley Thompson, a prosperous farmer. Some said he was Pop’s father. Others said it was Dr. Ben Gore, a medical doctor for whom Grandma Annie had also worked. Still others said his father was Hal Muir, a wealthy banker who lived in Bloomfield. Grandma Annie never would discuss who actually was Pop’s father, not even with Pop.
Because of the events which followed, I tend to believe that Hal Muir was my grandfather. After Joseph Montgomery died, Grandma Annie couldn’t support her children alone, so she placed them around wherever she could. It tore Grandma Annie apart to give up her children, but poor people, then as now, do what they have to in order to survive.
Pop was seven at the time. He was sent to live with Hal Muir in the Muir’s large, red brick home which sat on acres of land. Pop’s room was in the basement; he lived there until he married my mother.
By the time Pop was twelve, he had learned to fix an automobile and to drive the Muir’s big black sedan. For the next seven years, he drove the Muirs and their four daughters around Bloomfield, where people gossiped that he was Hal Muir’s son.
Though they never lived together as a family again, there was a strong bond of love between Pop and his mother, and he didn’t lose touch with her even though he was living with the Muirs. When I knew Grandma Annie, she was a cook at the old Talbott Tavern Hotel in Bardstown. She wore a white-bibbed apron all the time, at work and on the streets. When we came for a visit, we often found her rocking in her worn mahogany chair on the porch of her little house. Of course, when we went to look for her at the hotel, Pop would go to the back door. Blacks didn’t go through the lobby, and even though other people thought he was White, Pop always knew what he was.
Although Grandma’s own life was hard, her sister, Celia Mudd, was prosperous. Aunt Celia had been a slave owned by the Lankester family. When the Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves, Aunt Celia was only twelve years old. She stayed with the Lankesters and worked for them until they all died. The last person in the family she cared for left everything to her, creating quite a stir in the White community. Not long afterward, a distant relative of the Lankesters sued Celia for the property and she lost five hundred of the original one thousand acres in the lawsuit settlement. Even so, with the remaining five hundred acres of farmland, farm equipment, buggies, money in the bank, and a thirteen-room house filled with antiques, she was well off. After she came into her inheritance, Aunt Celia, who had waited on White people all her life, hired others to cook and clean.
As a child, I didn’t understand the price Aunt Celia had paid for her wealth, living twelve years as a slave and many more continually at a White family’s beck and call. I didn’t think much about her past or that she was rich. I only knew she had a big farm where we went in the summer to play in the fields and gather vegetables and fruit to take home.
Growing up, I never thought much about our being poor. Because of Pop’s hard work, we always seemed to have what we needed. My biggest worry as a child was the fear that I would die before anything really important happened to me. As my early childhood passed, I became more preoccupied wondering what I would do and how my life would turn out. I wanted to control my own destiny, but I never seemed to move forward except in response to some outward crisis.
My parents thought I would grow up, get married, and have children. Period. But when they conveyed their image of my future to me, I felt infuriated. I knew there had to be more. I didn’t want to wait for my real life to begin. I wanted to get on with it; but what that “it” was or how and where to search, remained a mystery.
Looking back, I can see that my youth seemed to lurch restlessly forward between intervals of apparent calm. I reacted strongly only when in adverse circumstances.
Even my coming to Louisville was precipitated by a dramatic event, a tornado that hit Jimtown. One afternoon, my brother Jay (our family nickname for Joseph) and I were taking a nap on my bed. Suddenly, a whirling funnel of wind whipped through our house, flipping the bed upside down and blowing my mother and father outside. It was March 18, 1925, and we were directly in the path of the storm—one of twelve that tore through Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Tennessee, and Kentucky that year. They caused record death and destruction, 740 people dead, more than 2,000 injured, and twenty million dollars worth of property damaged.
Jay and I huddled together under the bed, safe in the midst of the destruction around us. I was only seventeen months old and already in the eye of a storm, a forewarning of the tumultuous life that lay ahead of me.
My parents had never expected to leave their rural home in Springfield, but with our house gone, we had to go somewhere. My mother’s oldest sister, Mary Kaufman, lived in Louisville, fifty-seven miles away. She urged us to move there. Aunt Mary found us a small house on West Oak Street in the Limerick area and we moved in.
At that time, Louisville, like the rest of Kentucky, was totally segregated. Poor Blacks lived in an area known as “little Africa,” whose unpaved streets extended south from Virginia Avenue and west from Thirty-sixth Street. These slums circled the downtown area. It was only steps from the business district to the surrounding alleys where Blacks built their homes, raised chickens, and kept hogs in pens. The houses, made mostly of concrete block or wood, were crudely built by the people who lived in them. Professional Blacks lived on more affluent West Chestnut Street and Grand Avenue. North of Broadway, the west end was all White.
As soon as our family was settled, Pop began searching for a job. He went first to the American Radiator and Standard Sanitary Company where a crowd of men gathered each morning, desperately hoping for employment. He wasn’t among the few hired that day, but he was doubly determined the next. Each morning, from then on, he stopped at the site on his rounds. After two weeks, Pop was hired and began the first day of what would become forty-two years of hard labor, years during which he worked enameling bathtubs in the foundry. He pulled the heavy tubs in and out of the forge, working in heat that would rise to 212 degrees.
Despite our living in a Black area, most people were confused by my father’s skin color. “Is your daddy White?” kids at school would ask.
“I don’t know,” I’d shake my head. To me he was just Pop, good to us and good to Mom. I loved him with all my heart, and I didn’t think about his color. People in my family were all different shades. Pop was the lightest. Mom and two of my brothers, Jay and Phil, were darker. My own complexion was somewhere in between the two. At home we never talked about color. I can only remember one time as a child when it was mentioned. My brothers were talking about a new friend they had made.
“He’s lighter than John Albert,” one of them said. We all laughed.
“If he’s lighter than John Albert, he must be White!” another brother said, and we laughed again.
However, not everyone viewed color the same way. Once, a trip we all took downtown in the car caused an ugly stir at Pop’s work. One of his co-workers at American Standard saw him with us and went to work and reported that Ben Montgomery had a Black family. The workers created a furor, talking angrily among themselves. Pop knew something was wrong, but he didn’t know what. Finally the president of the company, who had heard the gossip, called all the workers together.
“I understand some of you don’t want to work with Ben Montgomery any longer,” he said. “Those who don’t want to work with Ben stand on the left and the others on the right. Those who go to the left can pick up their checks and keep on going.”
The men went back to work and, at the time, no more was said. What happened that day illustrated to me the importance of leadership. When a leader takes a stand for justice, whether he or she is the head of a company or an elected official, people will usually follow. It was a lesson I never forgot.
Some of the workers continued to call our neighbors and ask, “Is Ben Montgomery White or Black?” When the neighbors, in turn, asked Mom, she would answer, “You’ll have to ask him.” Of course, they didn’t have the nerve to do that.
Did it make any difference if my daddy was White? In my childish innocence, I didn’t believe it did. But looking back now, I know differently. By the time I was ten, I remember wondering why he didn’t take us places. I thought he might be ashamed to be seen with us. Where did that idea come from? How had racism slipped into my young head, and from where, to hint to me that a man who looked White would be ashamed of his wife and children who looked Black?
We didn’t go many places as a family. Later I understood that Pop was trying to protect us from racist treatment, but it was also because when I was a small child we didn’t have extra money for entertainment. I never ate in a restaurant until Pop took us to the World’s Fair in 1939. On that trip my eyes were wide with excitement because of all the wondrous sights. We stopped at a small cafe on the South side of Chicago for dinner. After everyone finished eating, my parents sat talking. Anxious to get on to the next thing, I jumped up, cleared off the table, and started carrying the dirty dishes into the kitchen.
Pop looked up amazed. “Georgia,” he called out to me. “Won’t you please sit down?”
My brothers still tease me about that meal.
While my father labored at the plant, my mother worked equally as hard, or harder, at home. Mom was an immaculate housekeeper and a talented cook. She could never rest for more than ten minutes at a time; she always found something else that needed to be done. People tell me now that I look like her. Her skin was darker than mine, warmer, almost the shade of rich, brown gravy. She was good looking, tall and graceful, with soft, shoulder length brown hair which she curled at the bottom. Her voluptuous figure was still attractive even after she put on weight from carrying children.
She provided for all our physical needs, and I always knew I could depend on her, but we never spoke of the intimate things that I, as a young girl, pondered. Neither was she a demonstrative person. Mom showed her love by working day and night to take care of us—not with hugs, kisses, or even words. As she lay dying, I said, “I love you, Mom.”
“I love you too,” she softly replied. That was the only time those words ever passed between us.
Though neither Mom nor Pop had much formal education, he had finished third and she eighth, both read and wrote well. The eighth grade was about as far as a Black child could go in Washington County. In 1904 the Kentucky legislature had passed The Day Law (named for Carl Day, the bill’s sponsor) which made it illegal for Blacks and Whites to attend school together. Consequently, there were far fewer places for Black children to continue their education. In George Wright’s History of Blacks In Kentucky, he cites a 1924 survey of public education that reported only eight fully accredited Black high schools in the state.
My parents were determined that their children would go to school, but if they were bitter about the educational opportunities denied to them because of their race, they didn’t talk about it, at least not in my presence. They were too busy earning a living—trying to survive—to complain about the past. Despite the fact that they had little education and no wealth, my parents were able to leave me a rich legacy—a tradition of hard work and determination.
Within the closeness and warmth of our family life, I was sheltered from some of the painful realities of growing up Black in Louisville. Since we seldom ventured far from the familiar and safe environment of our family, I, as a young girl, never directly had to confront the antagonism toward Blacks or our lack of opportunity compared to Whites. I felt secure within my family, attending Virginia Avenue Elementary School and playing with my older brother, Jay.
Religion played a large part in our lives, as it did in the lives of many of our neighbors. Faced everyday with hard work and oppression, religion offered the thing most despaired of—hope. Never mind that relief would be in a life beyond this one—it was still something to cling to, a beautiful promise to await. Religion also brought drama and diversion into, what for most Blacks, was an otherwise hard and dull existence.
Of course, Jay and I didn’t understand the oppression of Blacks and how religion helped them endure. We only knew that going to church was fun. Looking at everyone dressed up, listening to the infectious shouting and singing, watching the drama as people proclaimed themselves “Saved,” it was a thrill to bear witness to the excitement. We’d stare wide-eyed, until finally we’d grow too tired to keep up with what was going on around us. Then we’d curl up under Pop’s big, brown, flannel coat and go to sleep.
For five years we attended a Holiness Church, Triumph the Church and Kingdom of God in Christ. Our congregation was composed only of Blacks and the building itself was a stripped “shotgun” house. The term “shotgun” meant that the rooms were built one directly behind the other on the theory that if someone were chasing you, you could run right through and out the back.
It was Vernice Hunter, a tall, plump member of my church, with smooth, pretty brown skin and a commanding presence, who first demonstrated to me the power of social action. After failing repeatedly to convince city officials to put a traffic light at the corner near her house, a busy intersection where one child had been killed and several more had been hurt, she hobbled into the street on her crutches. She stood there, absolutely still, stopping traffic and refusing to move until the officials agreed to put in a traffic light. Hers was an act of courage which has remained with me ever since.
Vernice attributed her courage to faith. My aunt Mary Kaufman also possessed a deep faith. Petite and vocal, with a shock of graying hair and a young-looking face, she was an activist herself. She was, in fact, a preacher. However, her church was the street corner, her congregation anyone who passed by. Each Saturday, she would take her place on the corner, shaking her tambourine and singing a hymn. After a crowd gathered, she would begin her sermon.
“Come to Jesus, come to Jesus,” she implored. As children, we had no doubt that Aunt Mary was a woman of God. When we had any aches or pains, we went to her. She laid hands on us and prayed for our recovery. When she finished, we would run off to play, convinced we’d been healed.
Church services at Triumph were held on Friday night and all day Sunday. They would start with a member of the congregation who, in a deep, emotionally charged voice, would sing hymns like “Glory, Glory, Hallelujah, Since I Laid My Burdens Down,” or “Come By Here, Lord, Come By Here.” The pianist would hit several keys until she found the right one, the drummer would beat his drum, and all the others would clap their hands or shake tambourines. Then the real singing, shouting, and praying would begin. Another church member would read the scripture. Accompanied by the spirited affirmations of the congregation, the preacher would pray a simple but profound prayer, such as “The Country Preacher’s Folk Prayer,” written by former Kentucky State University Professor Leonard A. Slade, Jr.:
Eternal God,
We come this mornin’
With bowed heads and humble hearts.
Uh hum.
We thank you for sparing us another day
by letting your angels watch over our
bedside while we slumbered and slept.
Uh hum.
We come to you without any form or fashion:
just as we are without one plea.
Uh hum.
You blessed us when we didn’t deserve it.
When we traveled down the road of sin,
You snatched us and made us taste of the
blood of Thy Lamb.
Yes, Lord!
This mornin’, touch every human heart.
Transform tears into Heavenly showers
for the salvation of sinful souls.
Yassir.
Remember the sick, the afflicted,
the heavy laden.
Open the windows of Thy Heavenly home.
Let perpetual light shine on them in the
midnight hour.
Yes, Lord.
When we have done all that we can do down here,
take us into Thy Kingdom, where the sun never sets,
where there’s no more bigotry, hypocrisy, backbiting;
no more weeping and wailing, before Thy throne, where
You will wipe away our tears, where we can see our
mothers;
Ma ma!
where, in that city, where the streets are paved with gold
and adorned with every jewel,
where we can see Jesus, sitting on the throne
of glory.
Ummmm mmmmmm a, hummmmmmm
When we get home, when we get home,
when we get home,
We’ll rest in Thy bosom
and praise You forever.
Amen.
Though the complex meaning religion held for my parents and other Blacks in the South couldn’t be fathomed by a child, going to church became as natural to me as getting up in the morning and going to school. The emotion and feeling reflected in the singing, shouting, and praying became a part of me. Though there have been periods of my life when I didn’t go to church, those early experiences of going to services, hearing my parents read the Bible and pray for and with us, instilled in me a strong belief in God and the values expressed in the Bible—a belief that has had a strong influence on the rest of my life.
