A Life With Color – Part 1
Last Monday Shelly and I went to the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee. It was a powerful experience for both of us. It was a time that brought up a lot of feelings in me. There were feelings of guilt, feelings of remorse, and just outright anger at times with the videos and stories of a troubling history. I know that neither of us will easily forget the hours we spent in the museum. With that being said, that night I spent some time reflecting and remembering my younger years in Texas and California.
I grew up in Texas in the late 60’s and 70’s during a chaotic time in our country. I was young so I only really have memories of what was going on in my own life. I was born in October of 1965 in West Texas and when I was 2, we moved to Fort Worth and soon I started school. I went to school and soon made friends that were not only white but also Mexican and African American. At some point we moved a neighborhood over and I started to attend a new school. My second grade year of school would shape the rest of my life.
I was included in the group of kids that were bussed across Fort Worth to Como Elementary School. Como was the elementary school that was in the center of a black neighborhood in Forth Worth. I don’t remember how many kids were on the bus, I just remember that when we walked into school that we quickly became the minority in school. We were in second grade in a school that went through fifth grade if my memory hasn’t slipped about the details. It was a time when I walked into school and wasn’t really scared or worried. I was just going to school with other kids. It was normal. We played together, laughed, and had some fun like we were just, you know, kids all going to school together.
That changed one day when I was waiting with a girl who lived on our block to be picked up after school. A group of older boys (my mind wants to remember 20 or so, but I’m not sure) surrounded us and they were going to take my Road Runner lunch box. They were going to take it or beat me up and then take it. As I stood there, I couldn’t figure out why in the world they wanted that lunch box. Was it because we didn’t get on the bus that day to ride home, or because they just really liked that lunch box? I remember being called quite a few names and many of them in reference to the color of my skin and them not really wanting us to go to school there anymore. The next weeks of school sort of changed for me. Nobody else tried to take my lunch box, maybe because I stood my ground and wouldn’t give up that lunch box. I wasn’t being brave. I just knew that they might hurt me and take that lunch box. But I was more scared of going home and telling my step-father I let someone take my box. I already learned through a whipping to not let someone get over on me.
Soon second grade ended and the crazy thing is that we all went back to our schools and neighborhoods. I still can’t for the life of me understand what bussing us over to another school was supposed to do for any of us. We were put together and then just sent back to our lives of different colors and neighborhoods. It was crazy but yet it taught me that no matter what people are people. There are good people in every crowd just like there can be bad in every crowd. My third grade year of school I looked around my class and there were people of every nationality there. I didn’t choose who to eat lunch with or pick for a team at recess because of the color of their skin. It simply became about who were good, fun kids to hang out with. I’ve never forgotten the lesson I learned those two years in school.
Though I went through those things as a young kid, I have always known that when I went home I was a kid who was in the majority. I spent time as a minority but did not stay there. The things I experienced that year of school were just that an experience, not a daily one but an experience. When we went to Memphis that day and I watched what was done and the things that happened to the people who were marching and standing for equal rights for blacks, I was reminded once again that it was not the same as what I had gone through.
Strange thing is that as I continued in school and later in life, racism was part of my life. I remembered what it felt like to walk into Como Elementary and to be threatened. But, I had made a choice to not see color as much as I could help it. Next week I’ll tell the rest of the stories of growing up in a time and place where race did matter and you were best not to forget it.