| The turf over which I roamed and played with neighborhood
children covered a six block area of rundown houses and partially filled
storefronts. An unused dirt alleyway which had once been a street traversed
the blocks, splitting them with three squares on one side and three on
the other. Most of my playmates were children of the black families huddled
together in one section on the south side of St. Joseph. The remaining
few friends were what I would later hear called poor white trash. It was
not until the impressionable years of early high school that I realized
I might be seen to wear that same label. Daily we played ball, hide-and-go-seek,
cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians, and wrestled together from early
morning until after dark. Sometimes an angry parent would show up to call
one of us home to a cold supper; such was the fun we made together. That
was in the summertime. When school began, we still played together after
school and on into the evenings, however, we walked two different paths
to school. My white friends and I walked east, up Kansas street, to McKinley
grade school. My black friends walked up a different route up a parallel
street to Douglass Elementary. Of course, our lives were separate in many
ways, but they were especially separate in matters of schooling and learning.
It was this separation that first made me realize we lived different stories.
This is a work of stories, recollections set within
a historical context of race relations in a small Missouri city. This is
also a study of contradictions, of dialectics of bigotry and open-mindedness.
I know these extremes can co-exist within one entity since they both have
lived in me. Two stories from my early childhood come to mind that may
help you, the reader, locate me within my St. Joseph context.
Reverend Blake As I think back over my childhood years, I inevitably see in my mind’s eye the building next door. It was a two story apartment house on Missouri Avenue with a store front church on the first floor. The sloping flat roof was black and tarred as was ours. The sides of the building were covered with dark green asphalt roof shingles. The side that adjoined our fenced backyard had a single window with a window well that was always overgrown with weeds. I think of this building, not because of any beauty or distinctiveness, it had neither, but because of the black neighbors who lived there during my childhood. I especially think often of the black preacher that, in order to provide anonymity, I shall call Jack Blake. I would hide in the narrow space between his garage and the manufacturing plant to the west and watch his evening routines. Just at dusk he would ease his smoke-gray Cadillac off the front street and around through the alley to put it to sleep for the night. I watched him out of wonder, the wonder of a youngster feeling alive and in control of my destiny. To think that I could move so adroitly and so master my surroundings that I could hide from an adult. I was also in awe at this old black preacher who was not only so happy in front of his white neighbors but sang out his joy and praise when he thought he was alone before his God. His voice is still one of the strongest childhood memories: a husky tenor that was infectious with thanksgiving. I watched him at other times too, for Reverend Blake held church in the ground floor storefront of his apartment house. I never told anyone of the hours I spent braving
the chiggers and the dampness of the evening to watch and listen to the
services held beyond the window. I watched from above and over Reverend
Blake’s left shoulder as he led the worship and preached to the few who
would come and sit in the dark folding chairs. There was rarely any accompaniment
for the worship save Jack’s tambourine. He always held the much worn instrument
in his right hand and shook and beat it against the top of his left hand,
right where his thumb was missing. Dad said Jack had lost it in a sawmill
in the South when he was young. I always wondered if there was more to
the story, having also heard that the Reverend had been a real hell-raiser
in his youth. Whatever, he had the depths of peace and goodwill that were
forged out of trouble and were a positive force in the man, not just the
absence of malice. It must have looked strange in the racially-hostile
time of my youth for anyone to have seen the little white boy often sitting
on the brick sidewalk, at the feet of the old black man, as he sat in front
of his church on long summer evenings. I both loved and deeply respected
Reverend Blake. If this had been my only window into the black community
of St. Joseph, I may have naively concluded that they were a happy people
who were living out their lives free from the effects of racism. However,
other scenes and experiences from childhood often intrude upon my thoughts.
My Friend Joey
My closest friend during early childhood was Joey
who lived with his parents and sisters in a small apartment on the second
floor of Jack Blake’s building. One day in 1953 Joey and I were playing
on the front steps of my dad’s shop. I brought out a package of small plastic
cowboys, Indians, and horses I had been given by my aunt. They were of
various colors: white, dark red, black, and light brown. One could either
match colors, sitting a red cowboy atop a red horse, or mix them up. Both
of us were very excited about playing with new toys, especially Joey since
he had very few toys of his own. I really wanted the black cowboy and horse
but let Joey choose what he wanted. Joey chose the black set and I chose
the red set and proclaimed that I was the red rider. Joey asked who he
was. Since he was a year younger than me he often had questions and looked
to me to help define our games. I said, "You’re the black rider." He shrieked
in joy and ran next door with his cowboy and horse to show his mother.
Within minutes, his very large mother burst into my dad’s shop and physically
attacked him. "What do you mean your boy telling my son that he is the
black rider?" she yelled. My dad tried to hold her away from him but she
ripped his shirt and bit him in the chest. Her husband quickly came and
restrained her; my father went up the street to the doctor’s office for
a tetanus shot. At six years of age I had my first exposure to the rage
and hatred that can lie beneath a surface which appears calm. However,
it would be unfair to Joey’s mother to not tell the rest of the story.
Within a couple of weeks, she apologized to my father and told him about
how she had attended a small church nearby and her life had been changed
by the experience. Her testimony had a profound effect on my dad and contributed
to our subsequent church involvement. Joey moved away to Nevada a few years
later but returned for a brief visit in the early 1960s. When I reflected
back upon that visit years later I realized he was most likely on drugs
as he was somewhat incoherent and definitely hyperactive. In the late 1960s
one of his aunts told me that Joey had committed suicide.
Border Stories Other stories come to mind, of a young black man who attacked me without provocation while he was visiting from Chicago, of knifings and murders I witnessed, and of wonderful basketball and baseball games in my old neighborhood. These are border stories for I lived all my youth at the juncture of the black and white worlds. Endemic to such border stories are ambiguities, grays which are neither black nor white, for borders are messy places. However, borders are significant places since they
are the only points of access from one region to another. My study revealed
desegregation in St. Joseph to be such a region. Situated between segregation
and integration, desegregation served as a point of access from either
to the other. Because of its strategic placement, a border is also a contested
piece of property which is, more times than not, won by the strong. And
when the strong win, they write border history the way they wish it to
be read and remembered. Prior to this study, there was only one account
of the desegregation of St. Joseph schools, an account which was silent
regarding the experiences of the black students most affected by the change.
It is my hope that this study will illuminate, through the power of their
stories and the perspective of a lens of critical theory, how desegregation
affected black students in St. Joseph, how they assigned meaning to their
desegregation experiences, and the contributing factors and mechanisms
of the silence which surrounded desegregation.
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