Mamalicious!

In the year 1933, Prohibition ended, the Depression began, and I was born in a little house in a little suburb of Chicago. Times were hard and the aging White doctor for whom my father did handy work substituted a week’s wages for his free services when he brought into the world the first Black baby he’d ever delivered. This was the beginning of a checkered life for me, the granddaughter of a freed slave who, along with his kinsmen, had once taken up arms and scared off a party of Ku Klux Klan raiders.

The town I was born and bred in and where I still reside has been integrated since its founding in 1870. So at a time when southern Blacks were shackled by the chains of Jim Crowism, I sat next to White children in school. What also made this little village noteworthy was that is was also determined to have been a way station for the Underground Railroad. Down through the years American icons aviator Charles Lindberg and poet Carl Sandburg once called it home. So did the distinguished black chemist, Dr. Percy L. Julian, slain Black Panther hero Fred Hampton, and NBA hoopster “Doc” Rivers, now coach of the Boston Celtics.

Typical of the quaintness of my childhood was how as a 5-year-old, all the screen idols of the1930s were my babysitters. My mother was employed as a powder room attendant at the local theater and she took me to work with her every day, seating me where she could keep an eye on me while I was keeping an eye on movies featuring the likes of a jovial Hattie McDaniel and a tap-dancing Bill “Bojangles” Robinson.

In 1941 with the start of World War II, I waved “good bye” to a big brother who joined the Navy and subsequently qualified to be among those selected to serve aboard the USS Mason, the only American ship to have ever been manned by an all-black crew. Fifty years later this brother was among those President Clinton belatedly honored with medals in recognition for the valor he and his shipmates had displayed under fire in the North Atlantic battle zone.

In 1951 instead of going off to Fisk University (where I would’ve boarded with my aunt whose late mother-in-law was Ella Sheppard Moore, was an original member of the famous Fisk Jubilee Singers) I chose the University of Illinois where with a student body of 30,000, only about 300 were Black. I lived at the Alpha Kappa Alpha residence, which was the only Black sorority house on a campus anywhere in America. It was also here that I was thrilled when my Big Sisters ran their soror Clarice Davis for homecoming queen. And when the votes were counted, this statuesque chocolate beauty miraculously emerged the winner, making her the first and only Black female to have ever achieved this honor at a Big10 college. The following semester I moved into one of the newly-integrated women’s dormitories where, two years before Rosa Parks was arrested in Alabama for refusing to give up her bus seat to a White passenger, we Black coeds were among the diners who sat a tables waited on by the White hired-help.

As times changed, I was there to see events that precipitated change, there passing by a coffin containing the disfigured body of Chicagoan Emmett Till whose “lynching” would give rise to a movement that would anoint as its messiah the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. One day I would watch this beloved martyr as he delivered his “I have a dream” speech.

In the late 60s after taking the postal exam, I was called to work by my local facility where the staff was waiting with open arms, ready to proudly show me off as their first female letter carrier who, as a bonus, was also Black! However, with visions of me trudging along along carrying a sack on my back, I refused this “job” and opted for a “position” as a Mail Clerk.

As time marched through the70s, still mourning the loss of MLK and Malcolm X, wearing a huge Afro, I along with Jane Fonda, marched down the main street of my home town in a protest against the Vietnam War, which was taking a disproportionate number of Black sons away from their grieving mothers.

With each ensuing decade, I was there to see Harold Washington elected the first Black mayor of Chicago, there as a citizen of Illinois to cast my vote to elect Carol Moseley Braun the first Black woman senator, and there later to do the same for a Black man named Barack Obama.

For 75 years, I have been there in body and spirit to experience pioneering examples of the struggle and triumphs of Black Americans. I have lived through 11 different presidents, starting with Franklin Delano Roosevelt and ending with George W. Bush. Now as a new century moves ahead, I am a witness to a contest where a Black man is vying against a White women for the honor of running for the highest office in the land. History is waiting to be made.

And come November, I’ll be there in a voting booth, ready to help make it!

For a free copy of Connie’s novel about a Black American family dynasty, write to: Lantern Publishers, PO Box 453, Maywood, IL., 60153-0453. Supply is limited.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 6th, 2008 at 7:46 am and is filed under 32 Days of Black History, Books and Writers, Cool Stuff, Friends, Race Matters. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.