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| Linda Brown, 1974 (from New York Times) |
When the decision came down in the spring of 1954, I was not yet ten years old, a double-digit age I could not wait for (but I had to wait, of course, until November 11--mark your calendars!).
We were living in Enid, Oklahoma--in the north-central part of the state (only about fifty miles from Kansas, which, by the way was a "wet" state--i.e., you could buy alcohol there; Oklahoma was "dry" then).
Oh, and the schools in Oklahoma were racially segregated. In Enid, Black families almost all lived on the south side of Market St. (now renamed to honor Enid's astronaut, Owen K. Garriott). I grew up in the time of separate drinking fountains, separate public restrooms--you know: You've seen the pictures. Shaken your heads in wonder.
Public parks were segregated; the city buses had signs in the back: Colored. Black patrons were not allowed in the Carnegie Pubic Library, which sent books over to the schools for people to look over and check out.
And there were, of course, separate schools. The black kids went to their own elementary school named for George Washington Carver, to their own high school named for Booker T. Washington. Both schools, of course, were on the other side of Market Street.
As a young boy I never questioned the appropriateness of all this. It was just the way of the world, you know? The only black people I ever saw were in the back of the bus, heading up to the "colored" section of the movie theaters. My elementary school--named for John Adams (who never owned slaves)--was all white in 1954. And 1955. And 1956. The Supreme Court had authorized desegregation with "all deliberate speed"; Enid apparently liked the "deliberate" part.
We moved to Ohio in 1956--to Hiram where my dad would teach at Hiram College, where there were, then, very few black students. There were none in the Hiram Schools when I attended them, grades 7-12.
But I would learn ... oh, would I! I would learn that I'd been living in a perverted world, a world where cruelty was king, where inhumanity reigned among people who called themselves Christian. I could not believe that I'd lived in such a place--that I'd never thought something was wrong.
Years later, by the way, I would learn that my mom, who taught English at Emerson Junior High School in Enid, had taught some of the first black students in that school's history.
Decades later--another lesson. I was back in Enid doing research for a memoir about the Carnegie Library there and about my life as a reader.* I visited those two former black schools--both were community centers at the time. And I visited the Leona Mitchell Southern Heights Heritage Center and Museum, a place dedicated to preserving and displaying the history of African Americans in the region. I was doing some research on the segregated schools. (Link to museum site.)
A kindly employee--a woman who appeared to be about my age--showed me some things, and I told her I'd been born in Enid. She asked me where.
"St. Mary's Hospital."
"Me, too," she said.
We'd connected. Then ...
"But," she said, "black women had to give birth in the boiler room."
We've come a ways in this country--thanks, in part, to courageous families like the Browns. And countless others.
But--as recent events have shown us--we have a long, long, LONG way to go before we can truly realize the dreams of Linda Brown and of the myriads of other Americans who have had to endure unspeakable discrimination since, well, since Jamestown, 1607.
*Turning Pages: A Memoir of Books, Libraries, and Loss (Kindle Direct, 2012).
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