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It had been seven years since I had come to Boston. I had received my law degree and passed the bar examination on my first attempt. Being a lone woman of color on many occasions, I had stood out and come to the attention of people with influence, who pointed me out as an example of what a colored person could achieve. After my first semester at Boston University School of Law, I had been offered a scholarship, full tuition and board. I had been given a part-time job. After graduation and the bar, I was offered the opportunity to travel to Europe and Africa with a program funded by a philanthropic group associated with colleges in the region whose purpose was fact-finding and improving relations with emerging African nations. The program was for one year. It was something very few Negroes had the opportunity to do, and I reveled in it. Before heading to Africa I went to England and France and Germany, up to the Scandinavian countries, Denmark and Sweden, down to Greece and Italy too. With the group in Africa, I traveled to Egypt and down into Kenya and Uganda, Tanganyika, and Ethiopia.
Each African country where I went, people stared at me, studied me in silence, then welcomed me even more than they welcomed others in my group. They told me I was not what they had expected. In Europe, the people had seen our colored soldiers during the war and the ones still stationed in Germany. But in Africa it was a different story. Many of the people in the villages had never seen an American Negro before. All many of them had seen of the American Negro was what was presented in American films, and most of those films certainly did not flatter American Negroes. They were movies depicting the American Negro as enslaved, shiftless, ignorant, usually following behind or at the will of some white person. Few showed the Negro as heroic. Very few showed the Negro as standing up for herself or himself, educated, with a mind of her or his own. Few showed the Negro as handsome or beautiful or with an intellect equal to a white person. Although Negro filmmakers had produced films showing these qualities, such films were not widely distributed. In recent years, a handful of Hollywood movies had begun to depict these qualities too, but still the widespread concept of the American Negro was of a people enslaved, and maybe that was because in many ways we still were. As the lone Negro in a group of twenty Americans, I fit none of these stereotypes, and everywhere I went people seemed amazed that I didn’t. I was welcomed, and that amazed me.
Upon my return to the States I had gone first to Toledo, then with Stacey and Dee and the girls back home to Mississippi. Christopher-John and Becka, with Clayton Chester and Rachel, had followed with their children. We all went home to celebrate my being back. It was 1957, the first time all of us had been together in five years.
Some things at home had changed. Some things had not.
For our family house, some of the changes were major. The old outhouse was gone. We now had an indoor bathroom. The boys had built it themselves, walling off a section of their old room to install it. They had done all the work—the carpentry, the drywalling, the painting, even the plumbing, which was now in both the bathroom and the kitchen. We no longer had to draw water from the well, though that didn’t keep us from doing so. A bucket of well water with a ladle handy for anyone who wanted a drink still hung from a giant hook on the back porch. Electricity was now available in the community, and it had been installed throughout the house. The kerosene lamps were no longer needed, but were kept nearby in case the electricity went out. The boys bought an electric stove and a refrigerator for the kitchen. Big Ma balked at having to give up her wood-burning stove, but she liked the idea of the refrigerator, which kept her foods from spoiling. Telephone lines were also strung in the area, and Stacey, Man, and Christopher-John had insisted that Mama and Papa have a telephone in the house. Neither Papa nor Mama much cared for the idea. Mama still believed letters were the best means of communication, and Papa, who never wrote letters, figured there was nothing like face-to-face communication. Finally, they were persuaded that a telephone would allow the family to keep in contact more easily, and they relented. The boys even bought them a television. While I was going to law school and traveling, Mama, Papa, and Big Ma had allowed the modern world into the house.
There were changes in the community too.
Although Great Faith Church remained the same, there was no longer a Great Faith School. A new school built by the county for Negro students in the area was located several miles away. The old class buildings, which had been built by the church, not the county, still stood. Many of the families I had always known remained in the community. Moe’s brothers and sisters, most with families of their own, were all still in the area. So were the Averys, Claude and the others, and most of the Wigginses, although Little Willie and his wife, Dora, with their five children had moved to Jackson.
Some things had changed. Some things had not.
Mostly things remained the same. This was still Mississippi, and Mississippi at its core, despite some attempts at modernization, had not changed. When I went into Vicksburg and into Jackson, life was still the same. I still could not eat in the white restaurants. I still could not try on clothes I wanted to buy in the department stores. I still had to go to the back door to buy ice cream or a hamburger from a fast-food parlor. I still could not go to the “white only” library. I still had to drink from nasty-looking water fountains marked “colored” in public places. I still had to sit at the back of the bus. And, of course, the signs all were still there. Signs, signs everywhere you looked.
Whites Only. Colored Not Allowed.
The racial divide in Mississippi had not changed. But I was different, and much of the world was different, and I expected Mississippi to be different too. I stayed with Mama, Papa, and Big Ma for three weeks, then returned to Boston. I had not been back since.
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Stacey was right about more than one thing. I did live mostly in a white world. The law firm at which I worked was all white except for me. The neighborhood in which I lived was all white except for me. The building in which I lived, all white except for me. I had managed to get the apartment through my connections with the law firm. Guy had helped me get it, but I couldn’t admit that to Stacey. Although I was the only colored person in the building, I refused to let that bother me. At first there had been odd looks and hostile stares from the other tenants. I was reminded of the apartment Flynn and I were denied in Westwood, and I put up with their hostility. The apartment was worth it.
I worked at a law firm owned by Guy’s father and uncle. I had come to the attention of the firm in part because of Guy, but also because of my own merits at the law school. Before the trip to Europe and Africa, several law firms, impressed by my scholastic record, had approached me, but I had chosen Guy’s firm. It was another opportunity to advance. Opportunities always seemed to be coming my way, opportunities so many other colored folks didn’t have. I was fortunate. Most Negro lawyers could not get into such a firm, into any kind of white firm, so they established their own individual law offices or partnered with another Negro attorney. I knew the opportunities offered to me were because of my youth, my mind, even my looks. I knew also that I was accepted in part because I was the “only one.” In a white world, a few black folks could be tolerated, even welcomed, but if it was more than a few, that worried white people. I knew that too, and I snatched every opportunity presented to me, as the “only one.”