Alice Taylor was a wonderful friend to our family when I was young boy, but I don't know how she felt toward us. She was our maid and she was Black.
I loved her as much as anyone in my family. She saved our family pet from a German Shepherd by beating it with a broom to keep it from hurting my sister or me, even though she was terrified of dogs.
I was probably not even in elementary school when Alice started to work for us. I guess I hadn't developed in any prejudices...at least, I don't think I had. Before Alice, Bernadine worked for us. As I can recall, she would sometimes bring her daughter or niece to the house. I got along with her niece as well as any friend in the neighborhood.
However, besides Alice and Bernadine, I don't recall much interaction with Blacks as a young boy. You have to remember the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were enacted after I was born in 1962. Even when those laws were enacted, the State of Louisiana (and many other Southern States) resisted integration until the last 1960s.
My first grade class at Claiborne Elementary in West Monroe, Louisiana was all-White. In fact, so was my second grade class, even though I recall Claiborne became integrated when I was in the second grade. I was not worried or anxious about integration. I don't even remember it being a big deal, but my mother did talk to me about Black kids coming to the school. My parents didn't seem to be bothered about it so I wasn't either.
I don't know why, but my parents were not prejudice or racist. At least that's what I remember. Perhaps they were just not blatantly prejudice like many White Southerners were. I never heard the "N" word spoken in my house, even though I heard it in the neighborhood and from some of my cousins. My parents didn't join the "white-flight" to "Christian" schools (isnt' it odd that many private Christian schools had no Blacks in attendance?) I remained in public school all my life and never felt any superiority toward Blacks.
But I wonder if there was some remnant of racism in my blood? I wonder what I would have been like as a teenager in the 1960s? Would I have been courageously opposed to racism or would I have kept my mouth shut for the sake of "status quo?" Would I have been an angry, stupid bigot?
Movies like "Remember the Titans" inspire me. Were there such courageous people in north Louisiana? After seeing the movie, "The Help", I am curious about how my parents felt with the social changes developing in the South in the 1960s and WHY they were not bigoted. I am curious if there were any White people in Louisiana who promoted integration or if most of the Whites in the South were simply living life -- neither for or against any cause.
To better understand the mindset of the era, I am reading "There Goes my Everything" by Jason Sokol. The book is about White Southerners in the age of the Civil Rights between 1945 and 1975. In my research, I am ashamed to learn that Ouachita Parish, where I grew up, and Caddo Parish, where I live now, were among the top three parishes where Blacks were lynched during this era.
What were the "average" Whites doing during this time? What was it like as Black man or woman in North Louisiana during this time? To get an inkling of that I am also reading "Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights (1919-1950)" by Glenda Gilmore and "The Deacons for Defense" by Lance Hill, which is about groups of Blacks arming themselves in north Louisiana in self-defense and to protect civil rights workers from vigilante and police violence.
All of this is outside of my circle of understanding. My family was not liberal, by any means -- well, at least not until the 1970s. I don't recall anyone talking about the rights of Blacks or Whites. There was a lot more banter (arguments) about the rights of women, but all-in-all, we just lived life: no major highs, no major lows, nothing courageous and nothing fearful.
Perhaps we were not racist nor prejudice because my parents were both very poor growing up. In some ways, they may have experienced some form of prejudice by being ridiculed or sneered at for being poor. My Dad's parents were share-croppers for several years, until my grandfather got a job at the paper mill in Bastrop, Louisiana. My mother and grandmother were abandoned by my grandfather when Mom was about eight or nine years old, so Mema (my grandmother) had to take of my mother and earn a living on her own at nearly fifty years old. I suppose being raised by a single parent in the 1940s raised some eyebrows among the social elite of Monroe, Louisiana.
For whatever reason, I just don't recall any bigoted or racial remarks in my house.
When I was in the second grade, I recall meeting a Black boy on the playground. He was nice and I was nice to him and that was about all there was to it. I don't recall his name and I don't recall much about it. We just played.
The first time I heard any racist remarks was in junior high when a stupid redneck threatened that he would have the KKK burn a cross in my yard. I don't know why he acted that way toward me. I was not particularly vocal against racism or prejudice (I wish I had been). I generally avoided controversy, but I did mouth off to this bully because of bigoted remarks he made about our art teacher, a Black man.
When I was in high school, I befriended Lavelle Hendricks, a Black teenager (who I believe later became Dean of Students at a university in East Texas). Lavelle was a year older than me, but we were both involved in speech and drama. We were coached by Ms. Shirley Fields, who was relentlessly demanding and set the highest standards on everyone regarldess of gender, race or creed. She was as tough on me, as she was on Lavelle. She demanded excellence from everyone. Her only prejudice was against mediocrity.
I enjoyed hanging around LaVelle and invited him to come to church with me. Somehow the youth minister found out about the invitation and "suggested" that it might not be a good idea. Although the youth minister said he wasn't prejudice, he thought it might be "uncomfortable" for Lavelle.
I'll never know what it was like to be Black in the segregated Deep South, but I am grateful than I never knew what it was like to be a bigot in the Deep South.
