When the pandemic started I began writing letters to two African American children who call me Grandma. Over the summer I spent Thursday afternoons with them engaged in science and art projects. They practiced soccer moves and played with hula hoops. We had fun, though the protests hung over their heads for they were afraid their parents would be harmed. Following is a letter I wrote to explain what happened to African American people when they came to the United States.
#17
Dear Hanan and Mirna,
Over the summer you watched very scary protests that started when George Floyd was killed by police. People were angry and marched in the streets shouting, “Black Lives Matter.” This was not the first time protests occurred in this country. I’ll tell you what happened years ago.
Life Rolls with Hope
Can you guess what this picture is about? The man on the right side walks under a rainstorm of tears. He holds an umbrella to protect his wife from getting rained on by sad and mean things that make them cry. The little girl behind the dog is happy walking in the sun. She carries yellow flowers bringing hope for a better future. That is what protests are about. People coming together in marches to ask the country to be kind and fair to everyone. It started with the Civil War.
When I was in elementary school, I learned that men and women captured in West Africa were sold as slaves to work on cotton plantations and in their owners’ homes. A lot of people were sold into slavery, though not everyone thought it was a good thing to do. Differences in what people thought about slavery brought about a deadly war. A civil war is a war where people in the same country fight with each other. In our country, states in the North fought against eight slave states in the South that wanted to break away to become a new country called the The Confederate States of America. Millions of people died or were hurt by the fighting and the South was left in ruins.
Everyone knows that the North won, the country stayed united, and the constitution was changed to free the slaves and make them citizens. The Civil War ended in 1865, over one hundred years ago, before I was born. But prejudice and privilege do not die easily.
Most people in the South didn’t like what happened and stayed angry at the North. Though they lost the war they let the Confederate flag continue to fly over their buildings. They didn’t want freed slaves voting, competing for jobs, living next door, or going to go to school with their kids. They made laws that sent Black and white children to different schools. They used different bathrooms, drank from different water fountains, and shopped in separate stores. Southerners made it difficult for freed slaves to vote. Many fled the South and went to cities in the North where they thought life would be better.
Seventy years ago, we called people who came from Africa “colored people” or “Negros” not Black, Brown, African American or people of color. I will use the world colored until the country changed again. There was one colored girl in my elementary school class who lived in a segregated (that means separated) part of the city not far from my house. I lived in an all white neighborhood where busses arrived in the morning full of colored women coming to work for white families. They took care of their children, cooked and cleaned their houses.
Our family’s maid was a woman name Ruth who worked for my parents until she was very old. Ruth became a good friend of my mother’s, though they never went out together and Ruth was always considered a servant. The men mostly worked in factories, the post office, and did odd handyman jobs. Ruth’s husband sometimes cut our lawn and painted the house.
My mother didn’t let me to play with colored children. I was friends with a girl who lived a few blocks away and sometimes went to her house to play with dolls. But, when my mother found out, I was stopped from going there. Though I was only eight, I became angry at her and hurt for I knew what she did was not right. My father never said a bad word against the colored people he treated in his medical office. When white people left the neighborhood and only colored people moved in, he stayed, unlike other white doctors who moved away.
By the time I was in my twenties, a man named Martin Luther King organized peaceful protests against “Jim Crow Laws” that started after slavery was abolished. Jim Crow wasn’t a real man. He was invented by a white actor, a minstrel who painted his face black and pretended he was a dumb, clumsy slave who jumped and sang to his master’s commands. His jokes made fun of colored people and the name Jim Crow stuck in people’s mind. They started using it when they talked about laws that were unfair to colored people. Northerners and some southerners did not like the way they were being treated.
Change occurred in 1955 when the Supreme Court told states to integrate their schools. More than half the people in the North thought it was the right thing to do, but only 13 percent in the South, which isn’t many, agreed. Southerners did everything they could to keep schools segregated. Courageous colored students in the South who registered at white schools and universities were met by mobs when they tried to enter. It took a lot more protesting to bring about change.
The states were told to get rid of segregated schools when the Supreme Court passed a ruling in 1968. To hurry the process along, the court told the states to bus children from one neighborhood to another to mix the races. By 1988, forty-five percent of African American students in the United States were going to a mostly white school.
An African American friend told me recently, that when he was bused in fifth grade, a white third grade girl swiped her hand over his face to see if his color rubbed off. He pushed her away, causing the girl’s older brother to start a fight that ended in both boys being suspended. That was not a good first day at a new school. My friend and his buddies thought the white boys they met in school were weird because they were always saying bad things to them.
While schools were being desegregated, people started protesting against Jim Crow Laws. In 1968, over 250,000 activists, more than all the people who live in Vancouver, marched on Washington to ask for civil rights. The nation tuned in to hear Martin Luther King Junior speak about his dream for a better America. Though the marches he led were peaceful, there were also riots and shootings like the ones we saw on the news this summer. Some of people were poor and broke into stores to steal, but most people knew that wasn’t a good thing to do.
It took courage to speak out and go to jail for what was you know to be right. Rosa Parks wouldn’t give up her bus seat to a white man and was arrested. She started a bus boycott that went on for over a year. Four college students in North Carolina sat at a white only Woolworth lunch counter waiting to be served, and seven Black and six white Freedom Riders went south to protest segregated bus terminals.
Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, who lead the Nation of Islam and the Organization of Afro-American Unity, were killed fighting for freedom. White and Black people fought side by side for change. The way we spoke about people with dark skin changed. Instead of saying colored and Negro, we started saying Black, Brown, African American and People of color so I’ll change the way I write now.
But, not everyone liked the change. Ruth, the woman who helped raise me, grabbed me one day and pointed to her arm. “Is that black?” she demanded. “I’m not black. My skin is brown. I’m colored. You’re white.” Boy was she angry. She didn’t like being called African American any more than I want to be called English or Lithuanian American. She was American through and through.
My friends went south on Freedom Rides to protest unfair laws. I didn’t go because I had a new baby. When the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was finally passed it said that people couldn’t be turned away from jobs because of race, color, sex, religion or country of origin. I remember having to take a reading test the first time I signed up to vote, but the Civil Rights Voting Act of 1965 put an end to that. Three years later the Fair Housing Act gave everyone an equal right to housing.
See, my grandchildren, good things happen when a lot of people speak up. When people sit back and are silent it is possible to go backwards. Now that busing is not required, children are again sent to neighborhood schools that are not equally good. Since colleges no longer push to diversify, students of different races don’t get to meet and know each other. Public schools are more segregated now than they were 30 years ago. And though many white people didn’t realize how badly people of color were treated by the police until George Floyd’s death was caught on camera, they finally woke up.
You girls should feel proud at witnessing streets filled with all kids of people standing side by side to protest Black lives matter. I wanted to take you to a march so you could see how many people care about making things right. I didn’t because of the Coronavirus pandemic, thinking it better not to be in a crowd. But remember these times. You will benefit because the protests will make the country more fair.
Many police departments are already changing the way they interact with people. Police officers are getting trained in how not to be racist and how to help those who are mentally ill. Organizations and clubs are changing membership requirements so anyone can join. Businesses are looking at ways to hire more people of color. Good things will come as a result of the ugly things you watched on television, and one day you will tell your grandchildren about them.
A great many African Americans came to the United States after slavery was abolished. Your parents are from ancient people with Ethiopian and Somalian ancestors who were never slaves. They lived in families that cared for their children but had to leave when it became hard to earn enough money to live and because of tribal fighting in Somalia.
Though you were born here after slavery, because of the color of your skin, you are lumped together with descendants of slaves. It is important to understand that they grew up with problems that are different from yours. Their great grandparents were often misused and sold so they couldn’t stay together and they saw their children taken away and sold into slavery. They don’t know what country their ancestors came from and they were told that because they were captured, became slaves, and weren’t allowed to get educated, that they weren’t smart. That is very mean and also not true.
Prejudice is wrong, so don’t pay attention to people who bully and say bad things because of the color of your skin. Hold your head high and be proud of who you are and where you came from. Think about where you are heading. It is up to you to become what you want to be. Your future will depend on how much you study or train, how willing you are to work hard for what you want, and if you are a kind, good person. You can be president. You can fly to outer space, be a doctor here on earth, or become a world famous chef. You can marry whomever you want to and live wherever you can afford to live. You have the right to be you and to be loved for who you are—the best girls in the world.
Love,
Grandma
Self Portraits by Hanan and Mirna
References:
Teaching Tolerance editors (2004) Teaching Tolerance. Brown vs. Board of Education Time Line of School Integration in the U.S. . retrieved from https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/spring-2004/brown-v-board-timeline-of-school-integration-in-the-us
History. com editors (2020) Civil rights Movement time Line. History. retrieved from https://www.history.com/topics/civil-rights-movement/civil-rights-movement-timeline
History .com editors (2020)Civil War. History. retrieved from https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/american-civil-war-history
