Prejudice

(The following is another selection from my recently published book "Alabama Stories".

       As a small child growing up in the hills of North Alabama, I didn’t actually meet a Negro face-to-face until I was five years old. Of course, I was aware of their existence from a distance. While shopping in the nearby town of Hamilton, Alabama, with my parents, I had seen black families browsing in the stores, walking the streets and riding around in cars. I had seen black men working in the chain gangs along the county roadways and I had heard my mother speak to my father about “colored town.”
       Also, I was keenly aware of Etta Mae Jackson, the young, talkative black woman who would sometimes come to help my mother in the fall when she was canning fruit. When Etta Mae came to our house, she and my mother always stayed on the back porch and in the kitchen, peeling and paring and packing, so I never actually spoke to the Negro woman on a personal basis. That’s why, when I did meet a Negro on a one-to-one, up-close social basis for the first time, it would be an experience I would always remember.
       One Saturday morning in late May of 1946, I was playing in the front yard at our home when I heard a vehicle on the road and turned to see an old rickety pickup truck pull into our driveway.
       A Negro man, lanky, muscular, blue-black in color and maybe 28 or 29, got out of the truck and walked toward me. I could see the man had black skin like the other “Negroes” I had seen, but this single characteristic held no special significance for my young eyes. In every other way, he seemed to fit the same general specifications of most whites I had known.
       He stopped about ten feet from me.
       “Hi,” I said. “My name is Billy.”
       He examined me for a moment.
       “Are you Mister Robert Johnson’s son?” he asked finally.
       “Yes, sir,” I answered. My father had taught me to always address older men as ‘sir.’
       For a moment, he looked at me inquisitively, almost amused. Then he asked: “Will you go tell yo’ daddy that Calvin Washington is here?”
       I studied him for a moment, then quickly turned and ran into the house.
       In the kitchen, my mother was cleaning up the breakfast dishes while my father was having his last few sips of morning coffee. My father looked up when I burst into the kitchen.          
       “There’s a man outside, daddy,” I said. “His name is Calvin.”
       My father got up from the table, coffee cup in hand, and peered out the window. Then he tossed down the last swallow of coffee, sat the cup on the table and turned to go outside. I ran after him.
       Outside, the black man was still standing in the same spot where he had talked to me. I noticed that my father didn’t shake hands with the man.
       “You Calvin Washington?” my father asked.
       “Yes sir.”
       “Mr. Wiley Gilbert over at the crossroads says you know how to dig a ditch.”
       “Yes sir.”
       “A straight one?”
       The Negro nodded.
       “And I got my own pick and shovels,” he added.
       My father peered over at the pickup. Then he looked at the black man again.
       “See that corner over there,” my father said, pointing toward the corner of the house.
       The black man peered toward the point my father was indicating.
       “I need a ditch for a water line from that corner,” my father said, indicating with his index finger, “to the barn over there. It’s about fifty feet.”
       Interested, the black man walked over and peered along the imaginary line between the corner of the house and the barn.
       “What about the rose bushes?” he asked.
       “Just dig ’em up and put them off to the side,” my father said.
       The black man studied the project for a moment.
       “Looks like about three hours work,” the Negro man said.
       “That’s about right,” my father said. “How much you charge?”
       “I usually get seventy-five cents a hour,” the black man said, almost embarrassed.
       My father looked at the man.
       “I’ll pay fifty,” my father said finally.
       There was a long pause.
       “That the best you can do?” the black man asked. “About everybody I know gets at least sixty cents an hour.”
       “Fifty is the most I’ll pay,” my father reiterated.
       The black man, emotionless, stepped over and sighted the line between the barn and the house again.
       “I’ll replant them rose bushes for you for sixty cents a hour,” the black man offered.
       My father shook his head slowly.
       “I’ll replant ’em wherever you want ’em,” the black man added, almost as an afterthought.
       “I’ll replant the rose bushes,” my father said emphatically. “All I need from you is to dig the ditch. Fifty cents an hour is my best offer.”
       The black man studied for another moment, looked at me, then back at my father. After a long pause, he inhaled resignedly.
       “All right, sir. I’ll get my tools,” he said, turning back to the truck.
       “Have you eat?” my father asked.
       The Negro stopped.
       “No sir.”
       “I’ll get you some breakfast,” my father said.
       “Thank you, Mister Johnson.”
       My father turned to go back into the house. I watched as the Negro man walked back to the truck, then I ran into the house after my father.
       Inside, my mother was still washing dishes.
       “Virginia,” my father called as he walked back into the kitchen. “You got some sausage biscuits and eggs left?”
       “I got some sausage and biscuits, but I’ll have to cook eggs,” she said.
       “Fix something for that boy out here,” my father ordered.
       My mother, wiping her wet hands on her apron, stepped away from the sink and peered out the window at the Negro man.
       “It’ll take a few minutes,” she said.
       My father went into the back room to put on his work clothes. I took a seat at the cleared table and watched as my mother put the cold sausage biscuits into the oven.
       “Mama, that man’s got black skin,” I said.
       “He’s a Negro, Billy,” my mother said matter-of-factly, breaking an egg into the skillet.    “Way back yonder, his people were slaves on the old plantations.”
       “Why is he black like that?” I asked.
       “’Cause God made him that way back in Africa. Just like He give you white skin, He give Negroes black skin.”
       “Oh,” I said, acting as if I understood.
       On the top shelf of the kitchen cabinet, my mother always kept several chipped plates and some old fruit jars for outsiders to eat out of when they came to our house. There was a drifter named Mr. Robertson who passed through our little community from time to time. My mother said he was a ‘no-count’, but my father gave him odd jobs, let him sleep in the barn and fed him from our table. My mother always served Mr. Robertson’s food and drink in the eating utensils on the top shelf.
       I watched as my mother reached down one of the chipped plates and a fruit jar for the Negro’s food and drink. Then I watched as she dumped the eggs into the plate, neatly placed the warm sausage biscuits beside them and filled the fruit jar with steaming, hot coffee.
Seeing the food was prepared, I wanted to help.
       “I’ll tell him to come in and eat,” I said and started out.
      “William Vernon Johnson!” my mother yelled, raising her voice. “Get back here!”
      I stopped at the back door, not understanding.
       “I’m going to tell him his breakfast is ready,” I ventured.
       “You stay right where you are, young man,” she said firmly. “Yo’ daddy will handle this.”   
       “He’s got to come in to eat,” I said.
       “No, he don’t,” my mother said firmly. “Black folks don’t eat at white folks’ table.”
       “Why?!”
       For a moment, my mother stared at me long and hard, not knowing quite what to say.     Then she regained herself.
       “You just hush up,” she said angrily. “Yo’ daddy will take care of this.”
       I knew better than to talk back to that tone of voice.
       “Robert!” my mother called toward the back room. “Robert! Come out here!”
       My father reappeared in the kitchen.
       “That boy’s food’s ready,” she said, calmer now.
       I watched as my father picked up the plate of food and the fruit jar from the table and started back outside. I followed.
       The black man was standing at the back porch steps. My father offered him the plate of food and the hot coffee.
       “Thanky, Mr. Johnson,” the black man said politely, eyeing the eggs eagerly.
       “You’re welcome, Calvin,” my father replied. “Just give me a good straight ditch.”
“I will, Mister Johnson.”
       With that, my father turned and headed toward the barn. At first I started after him, then I suddenly stopped and turned to the black man.
       He had seated himself on the back porch steps, the plate perched firmly on his closed knees and the fruit jar of coffee planted on a higher step within easy reach.
       I watched as he ate the eggs and sausage biscuits and I wondered why he was not allowed to sit at our table. Even with his black coloring, I wondered what was so radically different about this man that my parents seemed to view him as a species separate from themselves. Even “no-count” Mr. Robertson ate at our table. But he was white.
       As I watched this black man eat, I was somehow filled with a mysterious sadness. Finally, I walked over and took a seat on the steps below him hoping that I could somehow make him feel better after having been treated so differently. I asked him where he lived and if he had any kids and where his mother and father were. I asked him if he liked to dig ditches and how many shovels he had.
       The black man listened patiently and politely to my childish attempts to make conversation, eating all the while. I know he heard my every question, but he didn’t reply to a single one. When he had finished the food, he handed the empty plate and fruit jar to me and politely said I should take it back inside.
       “I gotta work now,” he said, getting up from the porch steps.
       I watched as he picked up the shovel and broke open the fresh, black earth to start the ditch to the barn. After he had thrown aside several shovelfuls, I went back inside with the empty plate and fruit jar.
       In the years that followed, my father tried in every way to school me in the ways of prejudice. He said I should never defer to blacks and they should always call me “sir.” My father said blacks had their own way of life, their own set of values and were destined to forever remain separate from the white man. When my father was around his farmer friends, there was a tacit understanding among them that blacks were lazy, illiterate and inferior to the white man. They had their crude jokes and clichéd stories to support their beliefs.
       During the early sixties, when the civil rights leaders marched through our little town with signs proclaiming “We want our freedom!” my father, who was almost 70, asked me,   
“What do they mean they want their freedom? They have their freedom. Nobody has them in chains.”
       “It’s economic and social freedom they want,” I said cautiously.
       “What does that mean?”
       “It means they want the same economic and social opportunities as white people. They want to get a good education, earn a decent wage and have a sense of social pride.”
       “They’re Negroes,” my father said, indignantly. “They have their own place in the world just like the white man.”
       I tried to explain the meaning of social justice and the equality of all men but my father countered that the Negro is not equal to the white man and that Negroes were destined by God to fulfill a subservient role.
       From there, the discussion would continue--as it had so many times before--from one impasse to the next until I would finally drop the subject. Then my father would very accusingly say I had learned all “that equality stuff” in college. Then, he would bitterly shake his head and say college had turned me against everything he had tried to teach me. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that, throughout all those years, I had always had my own ideas about Negroes and the way they should be treated.  I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that his so-called “teachings” had all been in vain.
       Somehow, I’ve been sitting on those back porch steps with that Negro man all my life. On one hand, knowing that at some level within the human spirit there is a universal frequency at which all men recognize one another’s sameness. Yet, on the other hand, also knowing that human reason always manages to find perceived differences which most men will use to set themselves apart from their fellow man. This is the essential human trait that leads to prejudice. In my heart, I knew that trait would never totally die during my father’s lifetime. Many times, I have wondered if it ever would in mine.

                                                                           ******

Comments

[Jimmy K.]

I have been thinking about your post all day. I remember my first encounter with a black man. I went to the filling station to get an old "inner tube". The man working at the station was black. I asked him if I could have an inner tube and he ask what it was for? I told him it was to make a "nigger shooter", he calmly replied, "wouldn't a sling shot be just as good?"

[American Daughter]

Outstanding writing. I really enjoyed reading it.

I am about the same vintage as the protagonist, and had almost identical experiences with my parent's views. My dad was a railroad executive, and to him Negroes were Pullman porters and other service employees. To him, a good Negro was one who "knew his place."

[Patricia]

I was a senior in 1966 when the first black kid---"duck"---came to George Mason high school, in Falls Church, Virginia....turned out he was in most my classes and had to walk home they way we walked....black town was up above my neighborhood....

great guy, we became good friends and he was the first black I ever spoke to that I remember. It was painless! I like you never understood that racial hatred....it was a generation thing NOT to understand, I think....something about the sixties.....