I grew up in Fort Worth, Texas pre-Civil Rights era. My grandmother and grandfather reared me; especially my grandmother who came from Baton Rouge, Louisana.
Looking back, I can see there was not a prejudiced bone in her body. She pointed things out to me and tried to explain the situation black people (called Negroes) were living in.
Each city had a "color line" or ghetto area. It was invisible, yet known by all. My grandparent's house was less than half a mile from two sides of the color barrier territory. I spent a lot of time walking. I walked every place for miles and miles. I spent a considerable amount of time in the "black" side of town. I had no fear of it whatsoever.
When I turned 14, it was 1961. The color line had broken loose and black people were moving out of their ghetto into "white" neighborhoods. How? Proxies were buying the houses from real estate companies who knew how to keep people of color out--except--now it was impossible to know.
White Panic commenced! It was known as "White Flight" because white families were flying out of their neighborhoods close to the color line like their tail feathers were on fire.
Where did those White People go? The expanded into the suburbs to the South and the West of Tarrant County. The vacuum was quickly filled.
So too in my neighborhood. I lived at 709 E. Baltimore St. and it went 90% black within three months. Non-prejudiced white folks who remained behind welcomed the change. Let's face it, it was the jerks and assholes in the white community who had pulled up stakes and fled to the boondocks. Very frightened "colored folk" as the pale-faced neighbors called them, moved into houses a hundred times nicer than they had ever dreamed they could have. Why? The whites who ran off were so anxious to escape imaginary contamination, they were willing to sell at a loss!
These new families were quiet, polite (too polite), and tentative about all their activities. At least that was true for about a couple of years.
I finally found a friend my own age in my neighborhood who wasn't a violent piece of offal to play with. The previous white kids were my tormentors and bullied me relentlessly. After they moved, I thought I was living in paradise at last!
My new friend lived across the street. He was my first black friend. He was as sweet a person as you could ever meet. I never met his parents or saw any adult family member--that is unless you count his sister, who, for some reason unknown to me, stayed naked all the time and peeked outside from behind the drapes. I'm guessing she was maybe 18, but I don't really know.
My friend said his name was Prince! This seems funny now because of the famous musician who recently died. I thought the name was wonderful at the time. I can't really say with certainty how he spelled his last name. I'd never heard anything like it for reference. It sounded like "E-van-de-lay-um".
During the summer at spring break, Prince and I played every day from sun up till a bit after dark.
There was a constant stream of cars pulling up to his house which puzzled me and my family. Only men arrived and went inside. A little later, they came out and hurried to their car and drove away in a cloud of dust.
My mom was sort of a busybody. She had a telescope! She kept careful note of the license numbers of all the cars which drove up and the amount of time spent by the strangers during their brief visits. I kept after her, asking why she was interested and why she was documenting things which didn't seem like they could possibly be any of her business. My mother told me she had a friend named Fred Voight who was a Fort Worth Detective and he told her to do it.
I asked why he would tell her that and she changed the subject. My mother was a congenital liar. She'd rather lie than breathe. She mostly did both. It was many, many years afterward she confessed that she had figured there was trafficking in drugs at Prince's house. That seemed to my 14-year-old mind like a wild absurdity and it made me angry at her for meddling.
One fine Saturday morning before noon, I saw my mother and grandmother clucking like chickens at the front window passing the telescope back and forth and I couldn't make out the reason for the hubub.
"What's going on?"
"The police have swarmed all over your friend's house."
That alarmed me more than I could explain. I ran out the front screen door so fast I almost tore it off its hinges. I scurried across the street and zig-zagged between police officers who were startled and shouting at me to get the hell back home.
I couldn't get in the house or find Prince or his sister anywhere. I pleaded with every cop I bumped into, "Please Sir, what happened to the kids who live here?"
All but one brushed me off rudely. The last cop lifted his blue arm and pointed at one of the squad cars on the side street. I squinted into the morning sun and spotted Prince in the back seat.
The door was locked and the window rolled up tight. Nobody was around to watch, so I tried to open the door from the outside and it was secure. I tapped on the glass but Prince wouldn't look at me. His head was hung low and I thought I could tell he had been crying. I yelled through the glass, "Are you okay? What's happening? Is your sister alright? Where are your parents?" I may as well have saved my breath. I was a ghost as far as Prince was concerned.
Presently, I ran back across the road to my own house and began bombarding my mother for information and I wasn't very courteous about it! In fact, I was rude beyond all reckoning--I knew she was behind what was happening across the street.
My grandmother knew about my mom's hair-trigger temper and she wedged herself between us and pulled me away into the back of the house before the inevitable.
"Settle down, the police will take good care of those kids. Your mom's friend, Fred Voight is handling it. They are running a house of prostitution over there and that poor kid is going to be taken away from that kind of evil exploitation. This is a good thing and not a tragedy--so just let the adults handle it."
I may have been 14, but I was incredibly naive about life at that time. Nobody had even explained the 'birds and the bees' to me yet. (Nor would they ever.) I thought women got pregnant from French kissing! My friend in the Boy Scouts, Mike Mulligan, had explained it to me. So, the idea of prostitution meant nothing whatsoever beyond being something very, very unfavorable and perhaps dastardly in the eyes of Christian folks.
School started back in September of that year and I was informed along with the rest of my Junior High School class, that we (white) students were going to be riding a school bus every morning to a completely different school on the other side of Ft.Worth. Why? It was explained delicately (they lied) about Federal Laws mandating integration. Colored children wanted to go to white schools and the law was on their side.
Here is how this boondoggle worked. Instead of mixing white kids with black kids in each school, in Texas (or at least Fort Worth) the school board had concocted a scathingly awkward end run around the law. White students from Morningside Jr. High school (very nice previously white neighborhood) would be bussed (one and all) to Dagget Jr. High in a run down, white trash neighborhood. Colored students would be bussed to Morningside--the obviously better end of the swap so nobody would complain at the A.C.L.U. The upshot of this nonsense was simply to achieve total segregation while appearing to integrate!
Many of my classmates had spread the word that I was a N**ger lover, having seen my friend Prince and me playing together during summer vacation.
I spend hours speaking with my grandmother about it to no avail. Her words were enigmatic and soothing, yet lacking in philosophy or logic I could get a grip around.
So, I sought out my Grandfather (the fellow with the KKK robe nestled loving in a white enamel cabinet in the back shed.
He sat on the couch buffing his nails and answering thoughtfully. He was a dandy if ever there was one. He administered a pedicure and manicure to himself every single night--buffing and polishing until you could see the moon and stars reflected in his fingertips!
"You see, Terry, the Bible teaches we should each only go with our own "kind." White swans together and crows separately. It's not a question of hate--it's God's will."
I couldn't quite grasp any actual content in his statement. I shook my head like I was trying to get water out of my ears.
"Think of it this way, at a party or a picnic, the men naturally want to gather with other men and the womenfolk with other women, and kids go off by themselves."
"Paw-paw, are you saying children and women and men are all different Bible 'kinds' meant only for those select groups?"
He twisted the corner of his lip and raised his eyebrows? "Say what? No, that's not what I said."
"Well, it isn't making sense."
"Okay, look--dogs go with dogs and cats go with cats and neither go with bullfrogs or mockingbirds. Now do you get it? Each with its own kind."
"Black dogs go with white dogs, white cats go with black cats, both go with spotted black and white----" He interrupted with exasperating and wild gestures suddenly!
"No, no, no, you're not listening. You are a smart young man--I don't know why you're fighting me on this. Listen one more time and learn. . . "
He was forming thoughts slowly inside his head. Actually, it looked to me more like he was juggling bad arguments and rehearsing how they sounded before he offered another one. Presently he gave me his last best shot.
"Okay. Let's try this. . . White people--some, not all. . . used to own colored people. It was in the days of slavery. When the coloreds were set free, it was suddenly very embarrassing. The President had sent armies and lots of people had died all because white people wanted slaves for cheap labor. Now, all of a sudden, the very same people they had treated like scum were going to be equals? The fellow you used to hit with a whip is now going to sit next to you in church? No Sir! White people would have to say how sorry they were and how wrong it had been and beg for pardon. You understand? That takes more humility than any Southern man can muster! It takes a really great man of tremendous character to say how wrong and sorry he was. Besides, they weren't sorry--they were humiliated, angry, and their blood was up. Now do you get it?"
The fact that I can still remember his words must mean something. Yes. I understood. That sounded real. It must have some truth to it. White men in the South did NOT have the character and humility to humble themselves before people they belittled, beat, cursed, and denied an education. They couldn't handle BEING SO DEAD WRONG--they decided to hate instead. And when they couldn't get away with the hate any longer, they decided to keep their former victims out of sight, separate, and under their heel as long as possible.
Well, I rode that bus for two years until High School. In the Senior year, one black student finally appeared and entered the totally white school all by herself. Her name was Ruby. By then, every teen welcomed her warmly. She was "token" of course but it was a start. That was 1965. I graduated with one black girl and it was as though the history books were going to turn their pages all by themselves from then on.
I never saw Prince again. Oh how I wondered where he went and what became of him! If I had known how to spell that strange last name of his I might have scrounged a clue. It was not meant to be.
Did he have a decent life free of conflict and filled with beauty and friends, happiness? God, I hope so. Back when I used to pray, I'd mention my old friend in my prayers and ask the Almighty to watch over Prince. In time, even that faded from memory.
People come into your life like a mighty ball of light in your sky and sail through the day brightening everything only to sink low into darkness and vanish from our line of sight. That was what happened to my friend. He went off into the darkness.
.My memories of the Civil Rights era were largely from watching the clash of black and white figures (literally) on my TV screen and reading grotesque newspaper headlines.
I joined a religious cult and ended up in Federal Prison. Tumultuous times boiled over and the ground under our feet rumbled with change and fear of annihilation.
When I see and read folks today shouting about politics or terrorists and claiming "The End is Near", I have to chuckle. I shake my head in wonderment. I've seen it all before and it was much worse than now. I have a perspective the young cannot know.
Sometimes, late at night, when I can't sleep. . . I'll go inside my head and paint the backdrop on my old neighborhood and decorate the stage with my old house and my grandmother and grandfather and mother (now all gone forever) and then, I see myself walking cross Baltimore street to that little house on the corner. It's Texas summer again and the sparrows and cicadas and the trains next to the Katy railroad take up their song in my ears again and smile as my old friend, Prince runs out of the front door of his house and we scamper off together down to the creek and drop string with bacon on the end into the water and pull up crawdads together. We laugh and talk about all the crazy things kids decorate their lives with and time stands still once more.
If only . . .
If only . . .
