About this author: Dera R. Williams has lived, worked, and played in the Bay Area for most of her life. Her creative non-fiction has been published in A Cup of Comfort for Women, Life Spices for Seasoned Sistahs, and The Peralta Press. She has written a collection of family memories and childhood memoirs about growing up in Oakland. Dera is also writing a novel, a coming-of-age story set in her birth state of Arkansas. As she is her family's storyteller and historian, her stories are rooted in the Southern tradition and thereby look to the ancestors for guidance in overseeing a rich legacy. Contact this author at: Dwillautho(at)aol.com

Done

by Dera R. Williams
August 2006

I have looked into the face of hate of someone who did not even know me. It is as vivid now as it was forty three years ago. The events of my family's summer trip from California to Arkansas when I was twelve years old in 1963 made an indelible impression on me as I to know the realization of racism.

It was the year I went from being a little girl to becoming a young woman.

Texas is one long road, a large expanse of never-ending dry plains and highways. Though it is only mid-June, the heat is stifling, infusing the car, because though we have air conditioning, Daddy said we cannot run it all the time for fear the car will overheat. A big mottled pickup truck of a questionable color rides up beside us and the people inside peer into our car.

There is a man driving with a hat, maybe it was a cowboy hat and a woman inside with long stringy dirty hair hangs over the passenger side. There is a boy in the back hanging over the cab. He is probably about my age. When I look up they are laughing and motioning towards us. The young woman points her finger in a mocking manner. She is perhaps in her late teens or early twenties. It is eerily quiet in our car as the young woman points at us and guffaws uncontrollably.

I innocently ask, "Why are they laughing at us?"

"You all look straight ahead. Don't look at them." Daddy whispers fiercely. "Look straight ahead," he says again, his voice louder.

I cannot imagine these people in their raggedy truck and unkempt clothes laughing at us but I do as Daddy has said. We, who are riding in our brand new blue 1963 sky blue Buick with metallic trim.

What in the world can be so funny?

"Poor white trash," I hear my mother mumble under her breath.

My father looks straight ahead intent on driving. "Don't look at them," he once again admonishes. After a few tense minutes, they speed up still jeering at us.

My brother, Skipper asks, "Who are they?"

My father reacts in a manner that lets us know he is frustrated, distressed. "Be quiet, Skip. You guys need to know we are in the south now. You are going to see and hear some things now you aren't used to. There are some people who don't like Negroes so we are going to have to be careful."

I am looking at my brother, who is ten years old, about to open his mouth and then he just shuts it looking confused. Mamma says, "It'll be alright. When we get to Texarkana, we got it licked." She forces a laugh. "We're almost there." But as events unfold that day it becomes more apparent our pilgrimage through Texas is far from over. There is much more in store for us that day in the The Lone Star state.

That year of 1963 remains indelibly etched in my mind.

It was a year of beginnings and endings and a time to put away childish ways. I do not mean the ordinary, such as giving up childhood toys; I had long stopped playing with dolls, probably at the age of nine preferring to spend my time with my journal, books and music. But this was a year many of my childhood realities were shattered.

That was the year I found out my father could not save me from anything and everything, but I also came face-to-face with racism in America. Those events are intrinsically connected.

I was born in Little Rock, Arkansas to parents who were native to that state. Our family migrated to California when I was two years old and my brother a newborn in the 1950s like so many African Americans from the Southern states. My sister was born almost two years later.

My parents met at Philander Smith College in Little Rock and married two years later. After my birth my father felt stifled by the limited Jim Crow south and the lack of opportunities so he made that long train ride here and we soon followed. They struggled at first at but Daddy established a real estate practice and Mama earned her California teacher's credential. They plodded through with three young children.

Our childhood was almost idyllic growing up in the Central East Oakland neighborhood area of 24th Avenue between and East 27th Street. The neighborhood was my oasis. I had free rein of my surroundings and had many friends. Negro, that's what we were then, White, Asian, and Mexican- Americans ran in and out of each other's homes. In later years when looking at reruns of the popular sixties program Leave it to Beaver, the memories somehow coincided in many ways.

My days at Garfield and then Manzanita Elementary Schools as I remembered fondly were happy times. There was kickball, tetherball, listening to the radio in the morning while I waited for Mama to get the younger kids ready. The teenagers waiting for the bus outside my house would dance to the music of the sixties era, the Shirelles, Smokey Robinson, and Ricky Nelson coming from the radio in the corner of our living room. Until that summer of 1963 words like racism, segregation, and discrimination had no place in my vocabulary or I thought, in my life. Incidents of racism were rare in my world.

We are excited about our trip back to the south as a family. This is to be my second trip back to Arkansas since I left when I was two years old. We had made the trek in 1960 driving straight through for three days and nights until we reached our destination. That trip is a blur. I had been car sick much of the trip going and coming back. I was nine years old and I spent a few summer weeks getting acquainted with my birthplace and playing endlessly with my maternal cousins in the country and paternal cousins in the Little Rock.

Our shiny blue Buick, purchased earlier in the year is ready to go. Planning this trip is a family affair, looking at maps, and plotting routes. Mamma regales us with stories of her rural home down in Union County near the Louisiana border. She talks about mosquitoes, snakes, and armadillos on the road and the family ghost stories; Grandmother's chickens and hogs. We cannot wait. The day finally arrives. With strains of Gary U.S. Bond's School is Out still humming in my ears, we awaken 3:00am to leave. Daddy packs the car, we get in and by 5:00am we are headed down the highway.

We travel through Arizona and New Mexico without much fanfare and thankfully with medication, I am not carsick. We finally are in that great expanse of Texas. The sun is setting over the desert as we continue on our way trying our best to put away the unpleasant incident that had happened earlier, our destination reestablished.

We continue on our journey to southern Arkansas. As we approach Hot Springs, we suddenly hear sputtering sounds. Something is wrong with the car. After a few miles it is obvious we cannot go on much further and we stop at a gas station/garage in Wichita Falls, Texas where my father nervously awaits to hear what is wrong with his new car. He is told that the car needs a special part unavailable until the next day but the car can be driven locally. With nightfall approaching, we will need to find a place to spend the night.

"Listen you guys, we have to find a place to stay. And we just can't go anywhere."

"There's a motel, Daddy," my eight year old sister, Florence said as we drove down a street looking for shelter. She pointed at a brightly lit vacancy sign.

"Yeah, Daddy I saw lots of motels and hotels on that road back there," Skipper said.

Again, Daddy had that look on his face. Mamma said, "We'll find a place, don't worry."

Daddy sighs, "We have to find the Colored part of town."

"The Colored part of town?"

My brother and I stare at each other, neither of us saying a word.

So here we are looking for shelter for the night; it is now very late. We drive around for what seems to me to be for hours. But the reality is we just cannot go to any hotel or motel; we have to find one where we as Negroes can stay, separate from white people. We drive further and further, Daddy following directions my mother is reading to him.

Finally we are directed to what appears to be a rural area on the outskirts of the town. We pass a number of ragtag houses and crumbling shacks. Daddy pulls up to what is supposed to be our refuge for the night. I can see the tension in his face and his shoulders as well as feel it as he sits there for a few moments. We take in our surroundings, shanty looking houses on one side of the street juxtaposing what is to be our motel. This does not look like any of the nice looking motels we had passed earlier.

"I'll be back," Daddy finally gets out of the car.

He eventually comes back, walking slowly with a key and tells us to follow him. He opens the door and turns on the light. We immediately notice bugs scattering. Drab, once red blankets draped over two king-sized beds await us. The walls, a non distinct dirt covered beige. Welcome to the Jim Crow south, American style.

My eyes were opened that summer. That was only the beginning. I was now sensitized to race and the impact it was having not only in my own little world, but our country as a whole. I was more in tuned to the civil rights marches and sit-ins. The remembrance of the hard, grimaced look on George Wallace's face when he said, "Segregation yesterday, segregation today and segregation tomorrow" reverberated in my head. Racism, prejudice; I now knew what those words meant. It was real to me because I had experienced it, lived it.

I could now feel the pain of Medgar Evers' children when he was gunned down in cold blood just days before we left on our trip south. I was to take great interest in the March on Washington lead by Martin Luther King and others later that summer in August and I would weep bitterly when four little black girls, my age, were killed in an explosion in their Sunday school room in Birmingham that September. They were in a safe place, their church, yet they were not safe from the evils of hate.

Their fathers could not protect them and their law enforcement officers would not. Texas would hold more bitter memories for me when President John F. Kennedy, a proponent for civil rights for Negroes was shot in Dallas. All of these happenings served to open my eyes and portray a clear picture of racism. I was a black girl in America. It is now 2006, forty-three years later and I had cause to look back as I attended a family reunion last summer in July 2005.

I had been back to Arkansas several times since 1963 but this time while in Little Rock and visiting what is now a historic landmark, Central High School, I was reminded of the bravery of civil rights activist Daisy Bates and the children who integrated the school in 1957. Yes, great strides have been made, that cannot be disputed. White and black southerners blend together in most communities and opportunities abound for all people of color.

But I cannot forget that summer and I do not want to forget for it is a part of me and American history.