Reflections of a Colored Girl

In my life, I have been a colored, a Negro, a black, an African American, and a person of the global majority. This is my reflection as a colored girl. Decades of being defined. I was born May 2nd, 1945. The “C” on my birth certificate symbolized the life planned for me. As a colored, I was born into a society that would not recognize my beauty, my intelligence, or my humanity. I grew up in the Jim Crow South. For those first 16 years, Jim Crow laws and customs required me to experience segregation and discrimination in almost all aspects of life outside of my own community. I was expected to keep my place in the racial hierarchy. Whites over colored. In 1962, I went up north to college, where I hoped to evolve from a colored to a capital “n” Negro. But even at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, we were considered negroes with a lower case “n”. We were still socially and culturally separate and considered intellectually inferior by our white teachers and students. Then in 1966, civil rights activist Stokely Carmichael shouted, “Black power!” And instantly my racial identity was changed. James Brown sang, black and brown. Our afros were the rage, and this former colored girl embraced a new definition of beauty. The Black Power movement throughout the 60s and 70s promoted racial pride and self-respect, and it recognized the vitality of our culture and the importance of my own. 22 years later, in 1988, civil rights activist and Baptist preacher Reverend Jesse Jackson began a movement to change our designation from Black to African-American. It was meant to show a direct connection to our country's history. In fact, it was the first time in the United States that blacks were acknowledged as Americans. Oh, yeah. That didn't mean that the narrative of intellectual inferiority had changed just because we were now African-Americans. My children experienced that old negative stereotype as early as elementary school. So I became a consultant to help teachers and schools change how they perceived and felt students of color in the classroom. Oh, no. The white. Oh, today I marked the other box. No longer bound by any social construct that accepts white superiority as the norm. I now consider myself a person of a global majority. Here in the United States. Everything I learned as a colored, as a black, as an African American, and as a person of the global majority allows me to fearlessly embrace my cultural heritage, a heritage that has sustained my people over 400 years. Confronting the realities of traveling during Jim Crow. Traveling was the greatest adventure for me as a child. But during the 1940s and 50s, travel could be challenging for colored people due to Jim Crow laws. We were often denied access to restaurants and restaurants. Stopping somewhere unfamiliar could mean humiliation, threats, our violence. So before any trip tires the engine and the water tank were thoroughly checked to avoid mishap. Colored drivers maintain the speed limit and always were aware of law enforcement. This was true for my father, who drove to and from Virginia. Without fail, daddy was stopped for either driving too fast or driving too slowly. He carried extra money to pay the fine on the spot. My family breathed a sigh of relief when he called collect to let us know he arrived. Traveling by bus in Jim Crow, that colored people sat in the back, which is what I did for six years during high school. My hometown didn't have a school for colored students beyond seventh grade. Instead, I went to a colored high school an hour away. I stayed with my aunt through the weeks so I could participate in extracurricular activities, and twice a week coming from and going home, I boarded a Trailways bus, dreading the walk to the back, which for me meant headaches and nausea from the bus exhaust. Discrimination even followed us when we traveled north in 1962 on the way to college in Kalamazoo. We had to sleep in our car because no hotel or motel would accommodate us. Despite these deprivations, I learned self-worth through my father. Daddy didn't talk about race, but his actions spoke loudly. He once quit a job because of unequal pay. Daddy had learned that a fellow driver who was white made twice as much money as him. So daddy walked into the office and asked for equal pay. When he was denied, he calmly walked out and came home. I thought he was so brave. My father went on to receive employee recognition awards. He even has a building named after him. That resisted the subservient role the society imposed on him as a colored man. He knew who he was. He knew his self-worth. Through my father. This colored girl recognized her own higher purpose. I now see that these discomforts prepared me for my full potential as the adult I am today. Powerful colored women. During the Jim Crow years, white society often portrayed colored girls like me as an exotic temptress, a likely unwed teenage mother, as unintelligent. “We all did,did come here to wish him a very happy, happy-”. “Return”. Or fit only to be the help for white women in their homes. However, it was in the community that surrounded me where we learned our true identities as colored women. Teachers, church leaders, and volunteers. Neighbors taught us etiquette to respect our elders and helped develop our morals and our character. And my training to become a powerful colored woman began at home. Starting with my grandmother, Martha Andrews, she had a saying “that doesn't mean us”. Which meant that while we had to obey Jim Crow laws, we were never to surrender our dignity by going to the back of a restaurant or shopping where we were not respected. Granny taught me I could achieve anything in life that I wanted because she did. She had a family and lived a very prosperous life. She attended night school and got a mail order certificate for private duty nursing, and in her elder years she went to the Holy Land. My grandmother also held to our cultural traditions of tending to our entire community. She built a house and cared for an elder without a family, and she was one of the three people who formed the first NAACP in our hometown. My mother also taught me to respect my worth and the value of giving back. Proud of her colored heritage and history in Punta Gorda. Bernice Russell was a visionary for the Blanchard House Museum of African American History and Culture of Charlotte County. She was a leader in both colored and white civic organizations, and because she was an activist and humanitarian. My mother was awarded the Rotary Service Above Self Award. Her bigger than life image can be seen on a mural of seven important women in Charlotte County. My Aunt Ruth was a home economics teacher for 40 years. She inspired girls to be a model of colored womanhood in the family and community. She preached the message how will you serve? You have any idea what you want to be when you grow up? I would like to be a teacher. A nurse. These powerful lessons of self-identity, self-worth, and self-determination about the women in my family have been passed on to my daughter, Saba. She graduated from both Stanford and Harvard Law Schools. Through her law practice. Sahiba is committed to securing fair and equal rights for everyone. Like her great grandmother, Aunt and grandmother. And even me, Saba has joined a long list of powerful women. The value of education. Since 1885, the colored pioneers of my Gulf Coast community have made education a priority. In fact, by 1900, 70% of the colored residents could read. 65% could read and write. Education was the key for colored children to reach our full potential. It was a tool for citizenship leadership and to gain equality in American society. Education empowered us to lift our brothers and sisters as well as ourselves. When I was growing up, our schools were segregated. Colored students attended schools with colored teachers. Despite unequal funding, poor facilities, and fewer resources, our schools provided an environment of excellence through culture, curriculum and instruction. I have no idea of what low expectations could feel like at school. Our teachers believed we had unlimited potential, that we could learn and succeed, and that we could always rise above our current life situation. Then, on May 17th, 1954, in its landmark decision, Brown versus Board of Education, the Supreme Court declared that segregated schooling based upon race was unequal and unconstitutional. Both, but blending colored and white students into a single school didn't change people's minds about African American stereotypes. And Brown versus board didn't require educators to treat students equally. Many educators then and now believe that African Americans are culturally, intellectually, and morally inferior to white people. They believe African American parents don't value education. They have low expectations for the achievement of African American students, and African American boys have been victims of racial disparity when it comes to discipline. As a result, African American students are put into lower level classes, overwhelmingly placed in special education classes, and denied access to gifted classes. In the 1980s, our own children's abilities and merit were denied in their desegregated schools. If the children of two middle class African American parents, both holding graduate degrees, were not given opportunities for an equal education, what happens to all the other African American children? The educational system is supposed to provide equal opportunity for all students, so that their abilities and talents can be recognized and nurtured. Where I, a colored girl, was empowered through my education. Many African American students are disempowered in schools today. Equal education remains an ideal and not a reality for many students of color. The value of community. In the Jim Crow South, colored people were segregated and discriminated against. We were the other. But we as a community didn't see it that way. Community in my colored culture was not just a physical location, but a consciousness of we versus I. There was a sense of interdependence. Sharing and cooperating were essential to our community. Growing up in my Gulf Coast community, no one went hungry or homeless. People fished and planted gardens and shared what they grew. We could pick oranges, lemons, limes and guavas right from the tree every week. Our segregated, all colored community found ways to express tremendous joy from baseball games and fish fries on Saturday, to church plays and gospel singing on Sunday. As children, we were the hope for our community. Every adult was responsible for the development of our character. They had the authority and the duty to reprimand us for bad behavior. We were expected to use our gifts and talents to give back and uplift our colored brothers and sisters. Even though prejudices surrounded us daily. It wasn't until I went to college that I learned that my community was considered culturally deprived. One particular shocking study said my community lacked certain values, skills, and attitudes to function in society. That study was based upon mythology and ignorance of our cultural differences. I know this because the dynamic Negro community made it possible for us, for me to develop a resilience to combat those myths and differences. Our resilience comes from our spirituality, our hopes and joys, our traditions, and our belief as a community that I am because we are. And after 75 years, this cultural resilience has led me to embrace my true ethnic identity and identity. That includes 85% of the entire world. I am a person of the global majority and my community comes from the ancient and rich heritages that have contributed to world civilizations since the beginning. This is my community. I am not tragically colored. Author Zora Neale Hurston once wrote, “I am not tragically colored”. Hurston, like me, didn't believe that we colored people were downtrodden and culturally deprived, even during the Jim Crow era, a time filled with division, segregation, and hate. The most empowering lessons I learned about my life and future were when I was labeled a colored girl. As children, we learn four lessons to know our true identity. Denial, affirmation. Protection, and character building. The lessons of denial taught us that we were not who white society believed. We were, and we knew that we were not inferior in any way. Affirmations confirmed that we were precious gifts to our family and community. We were born with unique gifts and talents to fulfill our life's purpose and better our community. A third and crucial lesson as a colored child was to protect myself during Jim Crow considered second class citizens. We obeyed segregation laws, separate drinking fountains, bathrooms, hospitals, and pools. But there was also an informal etiquette where we had to act like we were less than white people. Like stepping off a sidewalk to let a white person pass. It was the fourth lesson that colored children were expected to develop to the highest extent. Character building that began at home, where we learned the generational and cultural values to respect ourselves, respect our family, and respect the elderly. Unfortunately, that kind of respect was not given outside of my community. I learned that lesson when I was just 13. My mother, always proud of her daughter, told some white women that I had completed a typing course. One woman asked if I could come do some typing for her. When I arrived at her house instead of a typewriter. She guided me to a bucket to wash windows. I was shocked. I called my mother, who immediately came to pick me up. I left without saying a word. While my mother was angry. I felt pity for this white woman who was so insecure of her place in society that she was threatened by a child learning a skill. These life lessons and the lesson of self-determination from my grandmother and self-worth from my mother, fueled my determination to rise above this lowered expectations of me and the greater society. Instead, I went to college and I became who I was destined to become a mother. An educator. A writer. A performer, a witness to history and a person of global maturity. So, as you can see, like Zora Neale Hurston, I am not tragically colored. I started writing Reflections of a Colored Girl in 2020. It was my 75th birthday. I was so excited because it was to be my Diamond Jubilee. Yet things were not as amazing as I thought they would be. First there was the pandemic. Secondly, the George Floyd killing and all the protests. Then Hurricane Ian, which destroyed our town. My house and the Blanchard House museum. My mother's legacy. And where I was director. As I looked at my life. I've had a good life. I've done the things I wanted to do in life. I have four degrees. I've had my own company, Diversity Training Associates. I have traveled the world. And I have two successful adult children. And so I ask Martha, how were you able to accomplish this? It was the foundation I received as a colored girl growing up in Punta Gorda The lessons I learned from my family, my community, and my school made me who and what I am today. Much of what I've seen in movies and has been written about poor colored people, is about how awful our lives are. I've had a very good life. These essays are about our strength, resilience, and power. Despite discrimination, segregation and racial oppression being my age and having grown up in Jim Crow, I know how it feels. I believe we're in a second Jim Crow. The overt racism is back. Children of color feel like victims and the opportunities fought for are disappearing. The only way to heal this country is to lift the veil to left the whole country, to let white people know who we truly are. Now the narrative says, but our strengths, our beliefs, our true humanity. That's why I wrote these essays. I think most patriotic people in this country want us to come together and to be one country. We really need to show each other who we truly are and embrace each other. Once we do that together, we have the power to create a great country. Funding for this program is provided through a grant from Florida Humanities with funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities.