Freedom in the Family Page 5

  My sisters Johnita and Lydia and I never had boyfriends in junior high or high school. Although our schools were racially diverse—about one-third each black, white, and Hispanic—we tended to take honors and gifted classes, where there were hardly any other black students, and white boys, for the most part, weren’t interested in us romantically. My glasses had thick lenses, and I tried no hairstyle more ambitious than pigtails for much of my high school career. I felt woefully unattractive. When I complained about the lack of male attention, my mother explained that I intimidated some of the boys, since I was editor of the school newspaper and on the speech and debate team, and my name was often heard on the morning announcements. “Wait until you go to college. It’ll get better then,” my mother promised me. “You’ll meet boys you have more in common with.”

  The wait seemed interminable. I had “arranged” dates to both my junior and senior proms. I went to the first with the son of Miami activist and minister Anna Price, a good friend of my mother’s, and to the other with the son of U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings, a former federal judge who was later elected to Congress, and who had attended law school with my father. I met both boys for the first time on prom night. They were nice to me, especially considering the circumstances. (Hollis Price took me to a movie a couple of years later, when we were both in college, but we never stayed in touch.) I simply didn’t have enough boys to choose from, and despite the best intentions of my parents, both proms were terribly awkward for me. How could I have fun with a stranger?

  Even worse, I went to my senior prom with a guilty conscience. I’d had an unexpected incident with a male friend of mine, a boy I’ll call J. who was in my newspaper class. J. and I spent a lot of time together, and he’d recently invited me to see a performance of the gospel musical Your Arms Too Short to Box with God, starring vocal powerhouse Patti LaBelle. I really thought of it as going to a musical with a friend, but when we walked inside, the first person I saw was a bearded man named Dr. William Perry, the president of the Miami branch of the NAACP. Dr. Perry’s grin began to emerge when he spotted me, but as soon as J. appeared beside me, his face hardened. When I introduced J., Dr. Perry was polite, but it was obvious to me that he didn’t like seeing me with a white boy. (One of J.’s parents was Cuban, but his skin was most certainly white). Oh, Dr. Perry thinks we’re on a date! I thought, horrified. I longed to explain that J. and I were just friends, but I never had the chance.

  But we weren’t just friends in J.’s mind. Toward the end of the school year, while we were lingering in my front yard one afternoon after school, he asked me if I had a date to the senior prom. “No, not yet,” I said, thinking he was just making conversation.

  “Will you go to the prom with me?” he asked suddenly, in a nervous rush. Maybe I was just naive—my mother has a very endearing naive streak, and I’ve often suspected it must have rubbed off on me—but I was honestly shocked that he was asking me. “I really like you, Tanana,” he said earnestly, clasping my hands. I must have stammered an Okay, because the next thing I knew, J. was stretching upward to kiss my lips. His hands were clammy. I tried not to show it, but I was almost repulsed, as if my own brother was suddenly kissing me on the mouth. I wasn’t attracted to J. I liked his mind and his sense of humor, which was much sharper than the average high school boy’s because he was so bright, but I’d never thought of him romantically.

  Even if all other factors had been unchanged, I would have gone to the prom with J. if he had been black. The fact that he was shorter than I was wouldn’t have mattered. His acne problem wouldn’t have mattered. I would have gone simply as a friend if J. had been black, but I would not, could not, go to my senior prom with a white boy and subject myself to the stares of other blacks who had always thought I was an Oreo. I would have weathered anything for true love, but I wasn’t in love with J. It wouldn’t be worth alienating myself further from the people I had been longing for acceptance from since the days at R. R. Moton Elementary School.

  I told my mother my problem. The next thing I knew, she’d called Judge Hastings and arranged a prom date for me. I lied to J., telling him it had all been set up beforehand without my knowledge, claiming I felt horrible about it. He told me I should stand up to my mother, that she was too domineering, but I only shrugged and sighed, feeling guilty about my lie. I just didn’t think he would understand the truth. How could he? Maybe he didn’t care what other people would think, but I did. I could just imagine what the football players and their black dates with manicured nails and sophisticated ways would say when they saw us: Girl, look at her. I can’t believe her nerve, showing up with that short li’l white boy. What’s wrong with that Oreo wannabe?

  I let J. down, and I think somehow he knew I was lying all along. He had been a good friend to me at a time when I had virtually none other than my sisters; J. and I were both intellectuals and outcasts, and we had that in common. After that day, when I saw the same hurt in J.’s eyes I’d seen in Darren’s seven years earlier, J. never spoke to me again. I thought he was overreacting, but it made my stomach hurt.

  My senior prom date was black, tall, and acne-free, but he was bored silly. We danced very little, and we rarely made eye contact. He didn’t know anyone at my high school, and he couldn’t wait to leave. The hard contact lenses I was wearing for the occasion were stinging like saltwater in my eyes. After we’d spent a token amount of time feeling uncomfortable, he said he was ready to go, and we left early. I missed the awards ceremony, so I wouldn’t find out until the next day of school that, although there were only a handful of students I could call friends at Miami Southridge High School, the senior class had voted me “Female Most Likely to Succeed.” I think if I’d been there to hear it on prom night, I would have broken down in tears of joy and disbelief right there on the stage. I had no idea my classmates believed that of me. Prom night, one of high school’s most disappointing memories, might have become one of my best.

  Yet even today, after having dated men of different races and nationalities both here and abroad, I ask myself if I could have found a way to go with J. to that senior prom, and I still can’t imagine it. Race loomed too large between us. I know why I felt I couldn’t do it. I’m not even sure I wish I had.

  But I’ve always been sorry for the lie. J. deserved to hear the truth. How would I have felt if our positions had been reversed, if he’d felt too embarrassed to take a black girl to his prom? I would have considered his position weak at best, racist at worst. I’d hoisted the weight of my racial insecurities and the history between the races onto J., and he’d only wanted to go to his senior prom with a girl he really liked.

  Five

  PATRICIA STEPHENS DUE

  “Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters.”

  —Frederick Douglass

  I didn’t go to college expecting to get swept into the civil rights movement. Like any young person, I was excited about living away from home for the first time, and I was eager to begin more serious study in music, which had become the great love of my life. I considered myself very good on the trumpet by the time I graduated from high school, and my dream was to make a life as a musician or band director. I had a new high school band director, a man named Eugene Woods, and he was very conscientious about helping his students secure music scholarships. I ended up getting several offers for scholarships, including from two Negro colleges; one from Central State College in Wilberforce, Ohio, and one from Florida Agricultural & Mechanical University (FAMU) in Tallahassee.

  To show you how young I was emotionally, I made the decision to go to FAMU because I didn’t want to be too far away from my family. My parents were still living in Belle Glade then, almost 500 miles from FAMU’s Tallahassee campus. When I told my family I wasn’t sure how to choose one of the schools, they reminded me about a summer I had spent with
my mother’s cousin in Haddonfield, New Jersey, while I was a junior in high school. I missed my daily conversations with Mother so much that I had called home every single day. Based on that experience, Mother told me, “You know, you don’t need to go too far to school. Remember what happened when you went to New Jersey? We can’t afford all those phone bills, and it’s more expensive to come home from farther away.” That was all the convincing I needed. I forgot any ideas I’d had about going to Ohio, and instead I registered at Florida A&M University, remaining deep in the South to begin my life as an adult. If I had not made that decision, I’m certain my life would have taken a very different course.

  My naivete showed in other ways, too, giving my parents very little warning of the serious business that would soon overtake my life. The summer before I began college, I lived with my biological father in Miami and worked as a waitress at an Overtown restaurant called the Third Avenue Dining Room. In the 1960s, Overtown was a thriving Negro community. (Despite the black community’s recent efforts at improvement, such as the renovation of the historic Lyric Theatre, and other proposed changes, Overtown today is one of the poorest areas in Miami–Dade County.) Because of segregation, Overtown was home to pharmacists, dentists, doctors, entrepreneurs, and lawyers, providing a full spectrum of Negro life; educated and uneducated, professional class and working class, well-to-do and struggling. They all had their skin color and discrimination in common, and they lived side by side. Overtown also boasted several renowned Negro-owned hotels, where celebrities like Billie Holiday and Dizzy Gillespie stayed and gave impromptu performances because they were not permitted to live in the segregated hotels in Miami Beach, where they were headlining. Wasn’t Jim Crow something? These Negro artists were good enough to play at the white hotels, but not good enough to sleep there. But Overtown benefitted from segregation, because that was the place to be in black Miami. Overtown had its own tempo and rhythm back then, and I was excited to be part of it.

  One of the people I met that summer was a piano player named Billy H., who entertained guests in the hotels. He was a good musician, and he was called “The Man with the Golden Hands.” The Third Avenue Dining Room was very close to the Carver Hotel, and I met him because he came in to have quick meals between his sets. I loved hearing Billy H. tell stories about his gigs, and he was taken with me right away. I was only seventeen, but I was very interested in music, and a professional musician intrigued me. In high school, I’d had a “boyfriend” in name only—the most we’d ever done was hold hands. And here was Billy H., a worldly musician with two children from a previous marriage, who was much older than I was. He was twenty-nine, and his daughter was about nine, only eight years younger than I was. After only a few conversations about music at the Dining Room, he actually asked me to marry him. I don’t remember going to so much as a movie with him, and he wanted to get engaged!

  Well, I knew there was no way I was ready to marry anyone, much less a man I hardly knew, but I didn’t want to hurt Billy’s feelings, either. So, feeling shocked and shy, I must have murmured “Well, okay.” But I told him I couldn’t possibly get married without my parents’ consent, and he readily agreed. At that, I exhaled a huge sigh of relief. Mother and Daddy Marion would never let me marry such an old man, especially when I was supposed to be going to college. I thought I could wiggle out of my engagement without the responsibility of rejecting Billy myself.

  At his first opportunity, Billy dressed up in his Sunday finest and drove out to Belle Glade to meet my parents. I accompanied him, feeling like a bundle of nerves. I could only imagine the look my mother would give me when this musician told her we were engaged. I hoped she would let him down easy, without being too insulting. After all, he had been nice to me. My mother sat and listened, very tight-lipped, as Billy H. laid out his plans for our future as man and wife. Then, after he’d said his piece, she sat back in her chair and astounded me with her response: “Well, sure,” my mother said in a chipper tone, “if that’s what she really wants to do.” Her eyes were on me, and I could see a twinkle of amusement there, along with her annoyance. My mouth dropped open, and I thought I was going to faint. I couldn’t believe my ears! Then, I realized my mother was only trying to teach me a lesson, and I felt my face grow hot. It was one of the most embarrassing episodes of my young adult life. I don’t think I ever truly had the nerve to tell Billy H. that I didn’t want to get married. Once I went to college, we grew apart, and that was the end of my engagement.

  A Different World—the Cosby Show spinoff about life on a black college campus—provides the perfect description of what college life felt like for me. I had done some traveling with my family as a young person, but it was refreshing to meet so many serious-minded students from all over the state of Florida, the nation, and even the world. FAMU had (and still has) a nationally recognized music program, especially its Marching 100 Band, which is known for its lively dance routines. In my earliest days, I spent most of my time in the music practice rooms preparing for my audition for the concert and symphonic bands. Regrettably, girls were not permitted at that time to play in the famous Marching 100 Band. Another female band member—Avalon Darby, a percussionist from Jacksonville—worked with me to try to break down the gender barrier in the marching band. Dr. William Foster, the band director, gave us all kinds of delaying tactics and excuses—Oh, it’s too rough for girls, or Well, learn the music and we’ll see—but as soon as we overcame one obstacle, he thought of something else. (Eventually, of course, I would have much larger battles than this on my hands.) But Dr. Foster did give me encouragement as a musician. Thanks to the preparation I did with Daddy Marion, I won a spot in the symphonic band as a bassoonist, and Dr. Foster had enough confidence in me to ask me to play a form of the instrument unfamiliar to me, the contrabassoon. With more trumpet players, I had a better chance to secure a spot in the symphonic band as a bassoon player. The hours I spent lost in a world of sound in the music practice rooms at FAMU, whether I was practicing the trumpet or the bassoon, are among my most precious memories from college. They are among my last memories of my days as a “normal” student.

  Priscilla and I were very, very close during that time. We were roommates in the freshman dorm, McGuinn Hall, even though Priscilla had graduated high school a year earlier than I had. She had spent a year in Washington, D.C., in post-high-school courses, believing she had not been properly prepared for college in the segregated school system. Priscilla always kept her side of the room very neat, and my side left a lot to be desired—but other than that, we got along very well. In fact, we had begun to earn ourselves a bit of a reputation on campus by the time we were sophomores, but not because of civil rights.

  I have no idea how we met this man—Priscilla has always said we met him on a bus, although I don’t remember riding the buses very often—but one day we came across an exotically dressed Negro man who introduced himself as Mujuba Cetawayo, a prince from French West Africa. He was heir to the throne recently vacated by his father’s death, he told us. Believe me, it wasn’t every day that you encountered African royalty in the sleepy college town of Tallahassee, so naturally we were both very excited, and he asked us to introduce him to Dr. George W. Gore, the president of FAMU. With his genteel ways and his ability to speak several languages, this man instantly charmed everyone who met him, and Dr. Gore was no exception. Soon Dr. Gore was parading our prince around the campus, proclaiming, “Thanks to the Stephens sisters, we have Mujuba Cetawayo!” The prince was lavished with gifts and favors. Even the Florida governor was taken with him, as I recall.

  The only person who wasn’t charmed, however, was Mother. He offered me a sports car for my birthday, and I got on the telephone right away to ask Mother if I could accept it. “It’s this prince. He says he’s in love with me and he wants to give me a sports car for my birthday,” I told her, excitedly. Mother said, “Are you crazy?” It was unthinkable to her that a young lady would accept a gift like that, so I told the prince no. S
oon afterward, the prince moved on. Later, we read about our famous visitor in Jet magazine: He was a complete fraud! He wasn’t a prince at all, just a Florida con man with an elementary-school education who had been traveling the region, accepting gifts and royal treatment as a “prince.” Even the white folks at the University of Miami had been falling over themselves to host him, we heard. Eventually, he was arrested for fraud.

  Unfortunately, this was how the “Stephens sisters” first became known to Dr. Gore and most of the FAMU community. Still, our inauspicious beginnings couldn’t begin to foretell the impact we would soon have on the campus, the city, and even the nation as a whole. We went from being virtual children to inspired adults in a blink of an eye.

  The summer of 1959 changed everything. The turning point was cloaked in normalcy, giving us no warning of what was to come.

  Our biological father lived in Miami, and that year Priscilla and I spent part of our summer break living with him. While Priscilla and I did not know Daddy well and certainly did not have much of a relationship with him, Mother encouraged us to spend time with him. What I remember most about Daddy is that he was strict, strict, strict. He also had beautiful, thick, prematurely gray hair as long as I’d known him, and the contrast against his very dark skin was always striking. His nickname in Gadsden County was “Snow.” Naturally, we were not allowed to have male visitors, and we lived with a very early curfew. Being typical young people, we tried to find ways to circumvent Daddy’s authority. For example, he worked nights as a restaurateur and cook, and often he wouldn’t return until early dawn—so Priscilla and I stayed out late and snuck over to the “colored only” beach, Virginia Key Beach, where there was a basketball court and a jukebox for evening dances. I loved dancing! I loved all the old favorites, like “Dance with Me” by The Drifters, “Don’t Let Go” by Roy Hamilton, and “Please, Please, Please” by James Brown. Priscilla and I stayed out all hours, sometimes not getting home until three or four in the morning, always rushing to get in bed before Daddy got home from work.