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In 2000 I received an Undergraduate Research Grant from the University of North Florida to explore my family history. Funds from the grant enabled me to return to the Mississippi-Louisiana Gulf Coast where I tape-recorded conversations with my mother, her sisters, and a female cousin. The grant also included an independent study with Dr. Bill Slaughter, Chair of the English Department at UNF. Under his direction, I began to document what life was like for my foremothers. My plan was to speak with as many women as I could, and to tape record our conversations.
Each of the five women I interviewed provided me with her unique memories on growing up in the South, and each requested I give her a pseudonym in order to protect her privacy. Out of respect for this request, I changed their names to Nola, Faith, Hope, Mary, and Marie. Most other names of people and places mentioned in their stories were also changed.
Nola
I interviewed Nola twice, in May 2000 and again in August 2000 at her home in Ocean Springs, Mississippi. She is the oldest of fourteen children, and was born on July 19, 1931, in New Orleans’ Charity Hospital. Although it was difficult interviewing Nola, I now have a much better understanding of her. In her lifetime, she has survived poverty, racism, the death of both parents, rearing ten children and two of her sisters, the death of a son, the death of a husband, alcoholism, and the overcoming of alcoholism.
Nola remembers what it was like growing up Creole, and she remembers how both Black and White people treated her: “It was nice to be Creole amongst the Blacks, but then when we were amongst the Whites, we were just another Black. In the Black community, we were treated special, you know; your skin was light, your hair was nicer. Back then Blacks were almost as prejudice as the Whites are now against the Blacks. Because, back then you stayed with your own color. I can remember when I first started dating my husband, who was very dark, the people with light skin wanted to know what did I see in that Black boy.
“The White people, they treated us very bad. I mean they let you know you were Black. When I was growing up, the signs were still there. For Colored Only. For White Only. There were two ten-cent stores in town, Kress and Woolworth, and the water fountains were in the back of the store. One fountain was for Whites only and one was for Coloreds only. My brother and I, well, it made our day to go drink out of the White Only fountain when no one was looking, and if the clerk saw us, she would run us out of the store.”
Hope
I interviewed Hope in July 2000, in Gulfport, Mississippi. I asked her where she was born; she didn’t know: “Some people say I was born at home and some say I was born in a hospital. Somebody else said I was born at home, so I don’t know. My uncle’s wife said she came to see me in the hospital; but I think your mama said I was born at the house, and delivered by a midwife.”
“You don’t have a copy of your birth certificate?” I asked. “Yes,” Hope answered. “Well, on your birth certificate, where does it say you were born?” I asked. “I never looked,” she replied.
Hope remembers what it was like to be Creole. She talked about moving from an all-Black Catholic school, after eighth grade, to an all-Black public high school: “Those girls in school would tell me I was ugly, and my friend would say, ‘They’re just jealous of you child because your skin is light and your hair is long.’ In high school they told me I was ugly for so long, until I believed it. I had a hard time getting over being self-conscious. I think it’s sick when you’re Black and you don’t like your own color. My daddy’s family taught him not to associate with dark people. When he married my mother, he went against his parents’ wishes and that’s why he couldn’t finish college. A lot of Black people are like that, when the only difference is the color of our skin. People associate Black with evil, dark skin with evil. Some people are intimidated by skin color, and people don’t want to give Black women credit for anything.”
Mary
Born April 28, 1951, in Biloxi, Mississippi, Mary was the youngest of fourteen children. She was eight years old when her mother died. I interviewed Mary in July 2000 in Biloxi. She remembers what her mother looked like: “She looked like an Indian. Tall. Real pretty, wavy black hair. And I remember, one night we were all sitting around Mother’s chair in the living room and she asked us, ‘If I die, would y’all want me to come back and visit you?’ Hope and me both yelled ‘No!’ at the same time. And right after that, I remember, everybody else thought it was real funny when one of my brothers knocked on the window and tried to scare us.”
Mary remembers when her mother died, “I remember her casket being in the house. It was open. You see, in those days, people were waked in the house. And, you know, people would stay at the house all night at the wake. It was like a big party. And I remember we all had to kiss her goodbye.”
She also remembers the pressures of going from an all-Black Catholic school, to an all-Black public high school; and, she remembers desegregation: “I went to Our Mother of Sorrows Catholic School until the eighth grade. After eighth grade, I went to Keys High School. This was a big adjustment for me. I got called names. They called me yellow bitch. People didn’t like me. Because we were Catholic, we still had to go to religion class, and they talked about us because we had to leave school early one day a week to go to religion class. It was a whole different environment, because we lived a very sheltered, secluded life.
“Keys High School. It was a Black school. There were no White teachers in our school. Everybody was Black. In my senior year, I was going to be valedictorian, but then integration came. And I had to go the White school, Ocean Springs High School. And I hated it. But they closed Keys High down, so we didn’t have a choice. I didn’t participate in anything my entire senior year. No prom. No nothing.”
Marie
Marie is first cousin to Hope, Mary, Faith, and Nola. She was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on December 6, 1945. I met Marie for the first time in July 2000, and interviewed her in August 2000, in her New Orleans home. She remembers her mother: “She was on the heavy side. She had black curly hair and she was just very fun. She was a fun type person, very bubbly. She was a good cook, she never did work, and it seemed, as time passed on, like I was the mother and she was my baby. She always needed me to do things for her, you know, things like clean up, wash clothes, go to the grocery store. I guess because she had a heart condition, and she wasn’t very well.”
Marie remembers when she moved in with her mother’s sister, Edith, at an early age: “Well, Aunt Edith didn’t have any daughters, and she just wanted me to stay with her. In a sense, I liked staying with her, but there was never anyone there. I was there most of the time by myself. Aunt Edith was a workaholic. She had a short order restaurant, a franchise. Alexis Chicken. She worked fifteen hours a day, seven days a week. And no holidays meant anything to Aunt Edith, because nobody was ever there. We never put up a Christmas tree at Aunt Edith’s. At Christmastime, everybody would be running around doing different things around the holidays, and there were so many things I wanted to do, things that Aunt Edith took me by my mother’s house to do.”
Marie also remembers what it was like growing up Creole. “Most of my friends were darker than me. And, you know, black people will remind you of your color. They called me red. Or yellow. Or they’d say, “You get over because your skin is light.” Stuff like that. This old black woman was on the streetcar with me one day, and I was minding my own business when she said, “You red mother fuckers been getting over all your fucking life! That’s why I don’t associate with you mother fucking passant blancs!” That means to pass for white. See, that’s what they used to call people with light skin. Passant blancs, high yallah. Not yellow, but yallah. And what else did they call us? Oh yes, they called us Creole.”
Faith
Faith is the eighth of fourteen children. She was born in Biloxi, June 3, 1941. I interviewed her on July 7, 2000, in Biloxi. In addition to discussing what she remembers about her mother, Faith remembers, in great detail, the games they played as children: “We played. Like sometimes we made dolls out of Coca-Cola bottles and we put grass in the bottle for the hair. We had a little house under the fig tree and we’d sweep it with the limbs from the tree, sweep up the sand and have a cardboard box turned over. That would be our table, and we’d go out there and eat figs. We had more fun than it is now.”
I asked Faith what she remembers about her mother: “We used to go to the movies together. And I never remember being really hungry or nothing. I don’t know how Mother did it with all of us, making meals out of nothing. She made all of our clothes and most of the time, when all of the kids were there, all of us had something to do. And all I had to do was clean the bathroom, and if I went outside to play, and it wasn’t clean, then I’d have to duck to come back in the house.”
Like all the other women I interviewed, Faith has faced seemingly insurmountable odds in her lifetime. And, like all the other women, she has relied on her faith in God to help her through some difficult times, including the death of her daughter, who was killed in a car accident at age sixteen: “You just can’t describe it. But I would talk about it. I talked about it. I went to therapy. I questioned God about it. I did everything.
“When my daughter died, the doctor gave me pills. And the pills made me not think; the pills really helped me. Because I knew what I was doing. I went to her funeral. I watched them put her in the ground. I got back in the car. I came home. I sat out in the yard and I talked to people. And the next morning, I got up and it was that empty thing all over again. It was mostly when I was by myself.
“One day, a lady came up to me and she said, ‘You know what? I’m going to tell you a story. All the angels were up in heaven and they were running around and singing and playing. But there was one angel sitting in the corner and another angel asked, ‘Why aren’t you playing?’ And the little angel said, ‘I can’t have fun, because my mamma’s tears are in the way.’
“The story that lady told me was telling me to give my daughter up. The little angel said, ‘I can’t play because my mamma’s tears are in the way.’ And then I got to thinking, whenever I feel happy, I feel guilty. The psychiatrist told me this was going to happen, but no to let it bother me, because it’s natural. Just like when they say God’s not going to put nothing on you no more than you can handle, it’s true. And I often wonder about people who don’t have faith. What happens to them? Who do they ask? What do they do?”
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