Two Stories About being Black

[Aaron (Al) Lewis]

Black is beautiful - You Think?

Willie Jones was a Negro teenager I knew back in Jr. High. He happened to be one of the darkest humans I ever had the pleasure of seeing and meeting. He has the whitest teeth and his dark hue added to their brilliance. He had a wonderful personality and was a kind young man. I liked Willie. He was kind and pleasant. I also noticed he was a little stand offish and I didn’t know why. I would soon find out.

I was attending Lincoln Jr High in 1967, arguably one of the toughest middle schools in the state. The list of atrocities I personally witnessed are so vast I just don’t have time to list them. To say I was traumatized after attending there is understatement.

Well, one day I when school let out I was walking this girl home. We were walking down Orleans towards Parkway and as we approached Southside Park I could hear a commotion coming from the park. There was a small hill at that section of the park and while we could hear the commotion we could not determine exactly what it was.

So we walked up the hill and there before my eyes I witnessed one of the most heinous and brutal acts I have ever seen and trust me I have seen plenty. It wasn’t just what was happening, a fight, but the intensity of it and what I would later discover, the cause of it, that made it so sickening.

There in the middle of that circle of teenagers was Willie Jones trying to fight off about 5 other boys. They were jumping on him, taking turns tagging him. By that I mean swinging hard blows and knocking him down. Finally he fell and like sharks attacking a wounded prey they lit in on him stomping and kicking him. I could here above the roar of voices, “kill that nigger”, “fuck him up” and quite a few people from the very large crowd were co signing the beating to this child. Over all of the screaming and beating I could hear one particularly loud voice saying, “I hate this black motherfucker.” As I looked for the owner of that voice I discovered it was coming from George Suggs. I had grown up with George, a crazy ass kid by all standards. He was as large or larger than most full grown men and could throw the “Lincoln Special” that being a football 100 yards.

I forced my way into the crowd and started screaming at George to stop and that was when I saw it. George stomped Willie’s head so hard it made an indention into the ground. Some of the others saw it also and commented on it. It was a brutal scene to watch. I got George’s attention and I started begging for him to stop knowing that if he stopped the rest would probably follow suit. I knew george well and his entire family. We had been friends since first grade. I also knew he was brutal and in fact had once slapped me in the face with a basketball, a mistake he never made again. I knew I couldn’t whip George one on one, but I threw bricks and rocks at him everyday for about 2 weeks in a row until finally he came to my house one summer morning and we made friends.

So George looks me in the eyes as I am screaming at him and crying and begging him to stop and he says, “Mann”, my nick name, “I hate this black motherfucker” with an emphasis on black, and I say, “George look at you nigga!” He pauses and just like that he stops as if nothing had happened and he and his crew just walked away laughing. The really odd part was George was as black as Willie. A few of us knelt beside Willie who was balled up in a fetal position just whimpering. I touched him and asked him if was ok and he cussed and lashed out at us screaming for us to leave him alone. Not knowing what else to do I did.

I walked away and looked back as the few others left him lying there all alone still balled up. The girl thanked me for intervening, but I didn’t feel like any hero. I felt confused. What had I just witnessed? What was that about? I didn’t know anything about self hate at least consciously, but I did know one thing I didn’t want to be black by any means. I am mid brown colored and if being black drew that kind of hatred I knew never in life would I wish that on anybody. Those were the lessons of a child. I have a contrasting story that follows. There was no happy ending. Willie continued to be tormented as were scores of other dark skinned kids unless they were crazy acting then people would leave them alone.

The Flip Side of Being Black

It was the fall of 1965, I was in 7th grade at Lincoln Jr. High. Lincoln had a huge student population and it was fed by the Lauderdale Subdivision a real tough part of town where you could get whatever you asked for up to and including a real good ass whipping.

I had attended Georgia Ave. Elementary that had been fed my three major housing projects so most of my friends went on to Porter Jr. High, another real tough school, but they seemed to have more pride for some reason. I was slated to go to Porter, but my best friend Ronnie, was going to Lincoln and we had planned to reunite every since we parted back in second grade. Close to the end of the first semester I notice this gorgeous new girl and to my surprise she look like a real white girl.

Please understand that up until I joined the Navy in 1971 I had never had a conversation with any so called white person near my age ever. I didn’t miss it because I had everything I thought I wanted in my community. I didn’t hate “white folks” as many of my peers claimed they did, nor was I afraid of them. I just didn’t personally know that much about them. Well this pretty young lady, Bobbie had long golden hair, and blue eyes and a nice figure to go along with it. The buzz was all over the school. “Did you see that white bitch, who does she think she is”, were just some of the things I heard the girls saying. I will not repeat what some of the guys said.

I began to wonder how Bobbie was going to make it the rest of the day let alone the rest of the school year. You see there was growing resentment and then the threats started. “I’m gon whup that hoe’s ass”, one girl named Sharon boasted. Mind you this was just Bobbie’s first day at school and the entire school was blazing with gossip.

Poor Bobbie apparently made it home safely and I think someone picked her up, but here comes the good part. By the next day tempers were so heated that the school administrators, the venerable Oliver Johnson, our principal and the hated Horace King, our assistant principal, called a full assembly the very next morning.

They announced that we had a new student and that she was indeed a negro and they let it be know that serious repercussions would follow if anyone laid a hand on her or even made fun of her. I was relieved to hear that because I had feared for her safety. On the way out of the assembly I heard a girl say something that has stuck with me all these years. She said, “Well I don’t care if the how is a nigger I gonna kick her ass anyway because the bitch thinks she’s pretty.” She didn’t, kick her ass that is, but I have often wondered what drove that behavior, what inspired her to feel that way?

To my knowledge no one jumped on Bobbie that year and later in 10th grade we became pretty good friends. She really was a sweet girl. We spent a lot of time together when she would visit her cousin who lived in the same neighborhood as I did. She never talked about what happened at Lincoln.

About 5 years ago she attended a retreat where I was a senior staff person. She could not finish, she stayed up all night terrified with a pair of huge shears in her hand. Though she was in no danger whatsoever, in fact she was super safe, she said she was too afraid of being around that many black people. At last I understood. I thought to myself if I didn’t know all of them I would probably be afraid too.

Where and when will this race madness end?

[Aaron (Al) Lewis]

Wiile Lynch, the mythical Übermensch of Negro lore and legend. Naw, I don't think he's responsible for the conditioning of the Negro. I think it was neglect and cowardice that bares the lions share of that condition.

 

[Clifford Black]

Sheena, U are making good observations but in regard to your remedy---Not as easy as one would think that it should be.  There are more varibles to the equation than the average person has learned how to see.

B.

[Savvy Sheena]

WOW!!!!! I truely do not understand but somehow feel that based on what these children parents talked about during that time stemmed the fury that the kids displayed at school... Although by the time I started school everyone went to the same school and in my eyes it was not an issue but now that think about it I use to hear darker skinned people talk about the lighter skinned people stating similar statements about them "thinking they were white", or "he/she thinks they are all that because they have good hair"... So clueless at this point because I couldn't understand where they came to that conclusion, I never heard the accuser boast about anything or flaunt their stuff as most would say. They were simple being themselves NORMAL to me....

 

So to answer the question about where and when will the answer end, in my opinion, when people stop suggesting their personal ideas and thoughts be everyone else and learn to respect the others opinion and learn individually who they are as a person

[Clifford Black]

Please reread the comment---I am not saying that willie lynch was a real person---how you arrived at this conclusion is beyound me.

B.

[Aaron (Al) Lewis]

Belinda, race is a madness that defies description particularly because of the fact that it is just some made up nonsense. I remember once at 6 years old I got my first "big boy" bike, a 24 inch Western Flyer. I was riding on he street next to my street. A Rambler station wagon passed me going in the opposite direction. It was loaded with a little league baseball team. Suddenly it stopped and the kids emptied out all red faced. The coach, a grown man jumped out shouting, "Get that nigger!" The started running with bats towards me and I started pedaling that bike for life. Luckily I out distanced them. As I got to Parkway and Orleans, a safe distance I stopped and looked back trying to figure out why they hated me so. I had never done anything to them. 

 

When I got back to my block I told my friends and they just shrugged it off. I had a few more encounters like that as a young person growing up in the south and still never understood the animosity. However when I grew older it stopped abruptly. I stopped running. Things change when you stop running and you are over 6 feet tall and you are well over 200 pounds and you hit real hard, things change for real and they never stopped changing.

[Belinda Ashamee]

I know Bobbies story very well.  I didn't have blonde hair or blue eyes, but light skin and curly hair.  I faced the same ridicules attitudes when we moved from Kansas to Denver.  I didn't understand it at the time.  I had several fights over nothing.  But since I was a girly tom boy ( I played with dolls and trucks)  I didn't start the fights but came out on top most of the time.  But still had to fight at least once at each new school. 

 While living in Kansas, my Mother thought it was better to send my 3 brothers and I  to the all white elementary school down the street instead of  the diverse school my cousins went to.  Race wasn't talked about at home. 

My first encounter was the 5th grade.

A white boy named Dant Lasiter would chase me on the way to my Friday Girl Scout meeting every Friday.  He threw rocks and called me nigger.  I had never heard the word before.  I just knew he was very angry.  I never mentioned it to my parents but would stop at the tree in front of the GS Hut and cry, gather myself together go inside, and forget about it, until the next Friday.  In the sixth grade we moved to Denver, lived in the Curtis Park projects, my peers used nigger to referr to themselves and others, but we were not allowed to use it.  My Mother never said why and to this day I have never heard her use it.  Not black enough not white enough.

Today I don't care what you call me and I love trees!

 

[Belinda Ashamee]

I want to comment on this but it did not add so this is a test.

[Clifford Black]

The attitudes that you have illustrated and given a real view, into,are still present and I am being told that this behavior was the creation of the super intellect named willie lynch. I guess that must be good reason for the behavior. "The white devil made me do it".