My mom hired a couple to do housekeeping and groundskeeping when we lived in
Tulsa, back when I was quite small. They happened to be black, but I don't
remember Mom being anything but polite to them. I know that they took care of
me when the rest of the family went to Vermont to see my paternal grandmother
and the family on that side. I'd been very ill, and couldn't make the trip with
everyone else. How my stepfather felt about the trip I don't know, but knowing
Grandmother Harriet she would have treated him very well--that was just the type
of person she was.
I was five when we moved to Tacoma, where we found a house to rent in the Indian
Addition, a section on the east side of town, just off Portland Avenue. The
neighborhood was mostly lower middle class, and most racially mixed. It was one
third white, one third black, and the last third was pretty evenly split between
Puyallup Indians and people of oriental backgrounds. That Richard was black and
Rick was white while Ricky was mixed Indian and Mexican failed to bother us. I
had a crush on Richard, by the way.
But Mom didn't want to stay in town, and we ended up buying acreage midway
between Tacoma and Puyallup. It was almost completely white in the area, but I
never got the feeling it was due to prejudice but more because it was too far
away from town, friends, and family for the black folks we'd been friends with
in town. We still went to visit Richard's family and the Jacksons--Phyllis
Jackson had been the prettiest girl in our whole class, and was decidedly black.
Her family chose to move to a predominantly black area of town because they
didn't want their daughters to perhaps grow up to marry white men and for their
grandchildren to be the victims of prejudice from both sides as a result. I
didn't understand what they meant at the time. I know that Phyllis's little
sister, who was the same age as my little sister, was invited to Becky's
birthday party, and my stepdad's mother was up in arms at the idea of having
anyone who was black in the house. She was told decidedly by our mother to be
polite to our guests, and she went back home to Arkansas a few days later in
high dudgeon.
A developer built some lovely homes on speculation on the rural side of Pacific
Avenue, and a black couple who worked at Pacific Lutheran wanted to buy a house
there, but the developer kept making up excuses as to why he couldn't show them
any of the houses he'd built. They got a friend who was a lawyer to buy the
house for them, and once he realized that he'd actually sold the house to a
black family there was nothing he could do about it. They had fraternal twins
my age, Phillip and Mavis. Both were tall, Phillip slender and handsome, Mavis
rather plump but with a wonderful, competent personality. We voted for them to
be president and secretary-treasurer of our junior and again for our senior
class, and Phillip was also President of our Associated Student Body. Then for
our senior year we chose Lydia as our choice for Daffodil Princess. She was a
tall, regal girl, possibly of Masai heritage--stunningly beautiful and gifted
intellectually and musically. However, the actual princess was chosen by the
Daffodil Festival Committee, and they wouldn't go for a black girl as a
Princess, so they chose Pam Bartle instead--very white, very sweet and
competent, but with nowhere the personality Lydia displayed.
So, I wasn't brought up to be prejudiced, and none of the black kids I grew up
with saw themselves as inferior to the rest of us.
It wasn't until 1972 when I was student teaching at John Hay Elementary in
Seattle that I found myself faced with racial prejudice, and it was from a group
of black girls about my age or perhaps a bit younger who worked on Queen Anne
Avenue who began accusing me of being prejudiced against them when we were
waiting for the bus to go into town. I'd smiled and said "hi" when I joined
them at the bus stop, and they immediately accused me of patronizing them.
Patronizing them? If I'd said nothing, they'd have been on me for being a
stuck-up white bitch. Fact was that because I was so short they felt they could
take out their resentment towards whites in general by being nasty to me when
I'd just been friendly and polite as I was used to being with everyone.
It was hard getting used to being told that I was the one who was prejudiced
when the ones acting that way were the ones who were black and not from the
neighborhood.
Bonnie L. Sherrell
Teacher at Large
"Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very
wise cannot see all ends." LOTR
"Don't go where I can't follow."
We gave the Goblin King control of our nation!
