I am about 1/3 of the way through the book, The Help. It has stirred up lots of memories, sad, happy, confusing. I grew up in an all white community, a suburb of Columbus, OH. My mother and I would take the bus from Grandview Heights to downtown Columbus to go shopping. Shopping malls had not yet developed. We would drive past an area of town where I only saw colored people (the phrase we used in the early 50's). I would ask mommy who they were, why they lived there, why white people didn't live there. I have no memory of what my mom answered. I probably knew it was a lame platitude.
My dad was different. If I talked to him about colored people, he would explain that all people were loved by God, but not all people were loved by other people. He would say things like, "Some people hate things they don't understand because they feel afraid, but don't want to show their fear.
We attended an all white Methodist church. We had a colored janitor. He worked at the church from 4PM until 10pm. I heard it was his 2nd job and wondered when he had time to sleep or spend time with his family. On Thursday nights, my parents attended choir practice. If my older sister was not at home, I would have to go to church with them. There was library at the church that had a big chalk board. My parents would leave me in there and I would draw on the chalk board. I felt like a big kid who goes to school. I loved playing "school".
Tommy, our black janitor, would come in to polish the wood chairs and the big table. He would draw letters on the board and I would copy them. He was very kind, and sometimes would tell me colored stories. I wish I had known how to write back then so that I could write the stories down.
My dad would bring his old clothes to Tommy and tell him to give them to whoever he thought they would fit. Sometimes I would see Tommy wearing a shirt that daddy gave him several weeks later. He told daddy thank you for the suit onr time. Tommy said he wore it to church every Sunday. That night I asked Tommy why he didn't come to our church since he was there so much. He said he attended a church close to where he lived.
My house was on the main street through Grandview. There was a bus stop in front of our next door neighbor's home. There was a small incline from the sidewalk to my neighbor's yard. I was a talkative child (big surprise. In the afternoon, shortly after my nap a group of 3-4 colored women would wait on the corner for their bus so they could go home. I would come and sit on the incline and talk with these ladies. Some were very friendly and talked and smiled. Others were more stern looking or quiet. One woman brought me a cooky she had baked that day. I knew her name was Mabel and that she cleaned house and cooked dinner at my friends house down the street.
When my mommy and I would go shopping downtown, we would walk on big sidewalks, wide enough for two or three people to walk side by side going one direction and 2-3 people walking the other direction with room to pass each other. My favorite store was Lazarus. It was a one block walk from the bus stop to Lazarus. One sunny day we were enjoying the walk, and I noticed an old, bent colored man walking toward us on the sidewalk. When he was within a few steps of us, he step down to the street and walked past us, and then stepped back up on the sidewalk after he passed us. I turned around to watch the man. I asked mommy why he went in the street. She said thatere used to be laws that said he HAD to do that, but the laws had been changed. She said she thought he may still follow the custom since he had lived most of his life with these laws and it was ingrained in his behavior now. I thought it was really stupid to make anyone step down into the dirt and garbage often in the gutter below the sidewalk.
When I turned 12, in 1962, there were stories on the news about people trying to integrate schools and buses in the south, and picketting and marching for equal waged in the north. I began to understand the significance of all the experiences in my earlier childhood.
I still ache for the pain caused by ignorance and hate. My parents were not activists in the civil rights movement, but they taught a clear message that all people need to be judged by their own behavior, not because of the race or religion or their culture. I am grateful that they didn't instill hate in me.
Lazarus had beautiful annimated displays in the windows during December, showing Santa's Workshop or scenes from The Nutcracker. It was always an enchanted place to visit. There were 3 large widows facing High Street leading to the corner, and then 2 more large windows around the corner on Rich Street. The windows on Rich Street were located higher up the wall because the side walk leaned down the hill of Rich Street. There were two water fountains along the wall. Closest to the corner, the fountain had a brass plate that said "Whites Only". Further down the hill there was a second fountain that had a white sign that said, "Colored only". I never paid much attention until I learned to read. When I sounded out the words on each sign, I was so surprised! When I asked mommy about it she said that some people believed that colored people carried disseases and needed to drink at a separate fountain so that white people wouldn't get sick. She said that science has proven this is not true, but some people still believe it.
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