Читать книгу Upper Hand - Sherrell Dorsey - Страница 8

“Are there even any Black people in Seattle?”

I've been answering this question over and over again through the decades, especially when I meet Black people who hail from very Black cities and are wondering exactly how Black folks have managed to build their lives, for generations, in some of the whitest places in America.

But that's truly the story of our history, is it not? Whether we had “our folks” in the room or found them missing in action, migration across land and industry—particularly within places that used to be less than welcoming—Black people have not been deterred from finding or building doors to access.

My grandfather, Jerry Dorsey III, had mastered migration and placemaking by the time Seattle's Black population began to swell in the 1960s. Born in 1933 in a colored hospital in Birmingham, Alabama, just like his sister Alberta and brother Willie, he learned early in life that the only difference between his current circumstances and opportunity was a decision to choose the path that had the potential to lead to something more.

Most Black folks left the Jim Crow South in search of better wages, better treatment in racially hostile environments, and upward economic and social mobility between the early 1900s and the 1970s. The Dorsey family was no exception. They made the transition from the bowels of the deep South, landing in Detroit, Michigan, when Grandpa was just shy of 13 years old.

My grandfather's father, “Big Poppy,” found work at a tire factory in the bustling manufacturing industry that defined Detroit's local economy. “Big Mommy” worked as a domestic, like most Black women during the era, cleaning white folks' homes and doing their laundry.

Five years later, just shy of finishing high school, Grandpa was drafted into the Korean War, where he drove tanks and worked on switchboards. Like in the wars that preceded it, millions of Black men were asked to fight along with white men in a country in which they had little to no guarantee of civil rights or expected economic mobility. Grandpa could help serve his country, but he had not been granted the right to vote. Nor was he paid on par with his peers.

During the 1950s, most Black families were making on average just $1,800 annually, compared to $3,400 for white families. The stark economic racial wage gap has persisted up to this day.

By 1954, Grandpa was back living in his family's Detroit home, deciding what he would do next with his life.

One afternoon, as he sat at the family dining table, poring over applications to college and even considering an art program, there was a knock at the door. A salesman from a local trade school program would upend Grandpa's plans to “figure it out” and point him in the direction that would shape his life, and eventually my own. Grandpa only had to say yes and commit to two years of part‐time training at the Detroit Radio Electronics Television School. And so he began a schedule of working during the day and attending classes at night. Around this time he'd settled down with his first wife, Anna, gotten married, and began his journey into fatherhood of two young children (my mom and uncle).

The work paid off. Just before completing his certificate at RETS, Grandpa had two job offers in hand. One was based in Jacksonville, Florida, and the other was from aircraft manufacturer Boeing. At the time, Boeing was in desperate need of workers, managing the boon of commercial and military contracts it had secured following the Korean War. My grandfather was hired as one of many of the company's electronic technician engineers, and one of a growing group of Black workers getting access to what was considered back then a high‐paying job.

Boeing expanded its employee pool of Black workers during a time America was seeing significant changes in its workforce. The company hired its first African American worker, stenographer Florise Spearman, in 1942, and by the following year had employed over 300 Black workers—86 percent of whom were women. By the time my grandfather arrived at the company nearly two decades later, in 1960, that number had surged to over 1,600 Black workers.

It was jobs like these through companies like Boeing, IBM, General Motors, and other big industry players opening their gates through need, and some through affirmative action policy in the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, that helped Black people enter the middle class and chart new trajectories out of low wages and into family‐stabilizing jobs in manufacturing and engineering. Very few of these jobs required any education credential beyond a high school diploma or a certificate.

Prior to the Civil Rights Act, the service sector was overwhelmingly Black and brown. Black Americans, and slowly growing Latinx populations, were likely to hold jobs in janitorial services, secretarial support staff, or in lower‐level machine work that made very little room for promotions or long‐term economic stability.

Boeing's move to hire Black workers in critical roles was thus monumental, particularly as large employers in Seattle like Nordstrom, Safeway, J.C. Penney, and the Bon Marché (before it was purchased by Macy's) refused to hire Black workers at the time.

The wave of corporate America's shifting attitude toward the employment of Black workers spelled change and opportunities for Black communities and became the bedrock on which my grandfather would thrive.

Ultimately, my grandfather chose Seattle for what he believed would be a calm transition. Riots were erupting across Florida as Black residents protested mistreatment and demanded the right to vote. My grandfather elected to skip out on the unrest and get to earning money to send home to his family.

So, in 1960, with his trade certificate in hand, he took off on the three‐day journey to Seattle on the Greyhound bus, with one small suitcase and a few sandwiches he'd stuffed into a brown paper bag.

He arrived in Seattle a year before the iconic Space Needle was constructed, with just $30 in his pocket and no place to stay. He didn't have any “people” or family members to help him get set up. He had no housing, no vehicle, or any idea whether the job in a mystery city would work out long term. But he no longer had a choice. He'd have to make it work.

The Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) on 23rd and East Olive Streets would be the place he'd call home for $10 a day. With limited resources, he ate only french fries, awaiting his first day of work and his first paycheck from Boeing, where he earned $2.38 an hour.

At the time of my grandfather's arrival, Seattle's Black population hovered at just over 16,000 people or just 2.4 percent of the total population, which was overwhelmingly white. A farming and manufacturing class of people ushered in a melting pot of migrants from Mexico, traveling from working in California agriculture, and Southeast Asian communities setting up businesses across the neighborhoods that bordered downtown, and a trickling influx of eastern African immigrants.

My grandfather was an early settler in a slowly changing demographic of the city. His timing was perfect, entering an industry that would have gross implications for progress as the city increasingly became an industry leader in aircraft manufacturing and then eventually software development.

Boeing proved to be the launching pad my grandfather needed to enter into a middle‐class life. With a paycheck or two under his belt, he'd been able to secure long‐term housing and advance within his career. He spent seven years at the company before moving on to operate the cameras at the local television station KING‐TV, where he remained for 25 years until his retirement.

There's no way he could have predicted how much his life, and decision to move to a growing city sight unseen, would impact my world and an environment that would define the world's trajectory by the time I came onto the scene in 1987.