We’ve all had experiences and instruction that led to our beliefs in regards to certain subjects. For me, the race issue began when I was very young. I’ve decided to share my experiences, considering the current, crazy climate in regards to race.
Please don’t take offence or make a judgment until about Part 3 or 4, depending upon how many parts this turns out to be. I do not consider myself a racist. Years ago I came to the conclusion that I’ve known enough ignorant people to fill a few segregated stadiums with white, black or brown people. So I’ve come to the conclusion that ignorance knows no color. I’ve also realized that God loves color in every area of creation. He could have let the leaves just fall off the trees, but he didn’t. He turned them colors first. He could have made us all green, but we’d clash with bright clothing or have to be boring.
That said, here goes . . .
My parents weren’t hateful people, but they believed you should hang with your own. This isn’t surprising when you consider that they were born in a time when even the law was biased. My father was born in 1917, my mother in 1923. The Civil Rights Act didn’t even pass until 1964. They were 38 and 44 when I was born and my mother swore she had a mixed marriage because she was from the Lithuanian neighborhood and he was from the Irish. Even the white people were segregated in their generation.
I was raised in a white home in a white neighborhood, until the late 1960s. The only people of color I remember were a woman on the bus and the cleaning lady next door.
I was just a kid when the turmoil really heated up. In 1968 I was seven-years-old in the second grade, attending a still all-white Catholic school on the south side of Chicago. The only thing I remember about second grade was one day when the nuns called a tornado drill. We all moved to the halls and crouched with our hands protecting the back of our heads. This was a common training in the spring and fall in Chicago, as the threat of dangerous weather loomed. I didn’t think much of it until I heard screaming and breaking glass. It was April 5th and Dr. Martin Luther King had been assassinated the night before. The black kids from the high school across the street were rioting and attacking the school. I’m not sure how long it went on, I just remember peaking up from the floor to see that the nuns looked very frightened. We stayed in the halls until our parents came to get us. The only thing I remember hearing was that a trouble-maker had died. I had no idea then that years later, after reading this man’s words, he’d become a hero to me.
After that our neighborhood got more and more dangerous. White people had already begun to move out and black people moved in. I remember my dad repeating during that time that “no one was going to chase him out of his home.” My brothers had few of their friends left nearby. My brother’s best friend had been thrown out a third story window at Chicago Vocation School (CVS) where they went to high school, during a riot. He landed in a bush, ran for his life and never went back. It was a harrowing time. He started hanging with two black guys that had moved in on the corner. George and his brother, affectionately known as fungus belly, became good friends.
But then there was fat Kenny, from the other corner. He rode his bike passed our house and always had some nasty threat to aim at one of my siblings. One night when he road by my dad happened to be on the front porch with me. Kenny pointed at my brother and made a gesture of pulling a trigger. I think he said, “I’m going to get you.” Without warning my dad stormed down the stairs and raced down the street. We followed him. My dad had some anger issues, but I’d never seen him like this. He stomped down to the other end of the block and up the sidewalk where Kenny had turned in. We stood in the street watching as he hammered his fist on the storm door. The door opened slowly. A very nice looking, fit black man cautiously stepped up. My father began to scream and threaten. The man raised a hand, pushed the door partially open and asked him to wait as he called his son. Fat Kenny walked to the door. All his attitude had faded and he looked afraid. His father asked him if he had threatened this man’s son. Kenny nodded. His father stepped outside and extended a hand to my dad. “It won’t happen again.” There seemed to be a moment of hesitation before my dad’s anger subsided and he shook the man’s hand. It never happened again. When Kenny rode passed our house he actually waved. I also remember being in the back of our station wagon as we drove passed Kenny’s house once when his dad was outside. He looked up and our father’s exchanged waves.
The whole thing was confusing to me. Kenny was a scary jerk, but George and fungus belly were nice guys. The black people were the bad guys, taking over our neighborhood, but Kenny’s dad seemed to be a good man.
By 1969 we were probably the only white family left for blocks, but my father wasn’t moving. My sister was almost robbed at school. Our garage was broken into and our bicycles were stolen. It wasn’t safe to be outside, but my father wasn’t moving. Finally that fall, in Jeffrey Park on the way home from school, two young black men approached my two brothers and my sister. One had a shot gun and put it to my oldest brother’s head. The shooter was trembling and terrified. The other guy kept yelling, “Shoot him! Shoot him!” But the shot gun wielding boy was petrified. My brother started trying to talk to him, telling him he’d be throwing his life away. The other guy continued to yell, “Shut up! Shoot him!” After a few short minutes a teacher from the school saw them in the park and began to holler across the park. The two guys ran. My brothers took off for home, but my sister in her panic ran with the bad guys for a while. I remember her being passed out in a chair when she came home.
Later that night my dad came in from work. My mother said, “You can stay here. Me and my kids are moving.”
That was it. The house sold quickly, and we moved farther south to white suburbia. Life went back to normal, I guess. I was in the middle of third grade and knew no one. I walked to school alone and scared. Things go better in time, but there was always turmoil and fighting at school and sometimes in the neighborhood. Violence and fear escalated when I went to high school. The new controversy was bussing and I landed in the same riot we had left behind. I made a few black friends in school, two to be exact, and the race thing remained a quandary to me for many years to come.
To be continued . . .