This is the introduction that I wrote for an unpublished anthology that I edited with by Pat Schneider, Director Emeritus, Amherst Writers and Artists.  All That I Remember:  Black and White Women Remember Race Before the Birmingham Bus Boycott are the stories of women who recall race lived intimately, yet separate. 

I am posting this because renewed interest in the relationships of black and white women as a result of Kathryn Stockett's novel, The Help.  This was written before the election of Barack Obama.  Even in this Obama era in which some pat themselves on the back and proclaim we are now post-racial, it is race that often causes us to slow down as if we are a traffic jam of gawkers staring from behind our safety glass determined, yet hopeful not, to witness the pain and suffering we cause one another when we collide.

I remember 1955 as a world of school and home. I turned eight years old only weeks before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus. I remember third grade, Miss Woods, the brown weatherboards of McDonough #32, the asphalt playground and the deadly merry-go-round where my classmates and I learned the physics of centrifugal force as five older boys ran alongside and pushed the iron frame with all their might: our lessons marked with skinned knees, scraped palms and bumps to the head.

I remember a classroom with blond wooden desks and chairs. The first row was snug against Miss Woods’ desk, while the last row of chairs scraped against the bulletin board causing the construction paper edging to sag. Above our heads and out of reach of curious fingers, Miss Woods thumb-tacked our successes, emblazoned with 100’s in the two-inch header space above our chunky, innocent letters.

I remember 1728 Hendee Avenue, the white house with red trim, the two-bedroom miracle my parents bought on Daddy’s GI bill. I shared a bedroom with two younger sisters. At bedtime, Mama entertained us with the adventures of Bre’r Rabbit and Bre’r Bear. We giggled at her dramatic recitation of Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “De Party.” Just before she flicked the light switch, she knelt beside our beds, showed us how to clasp our hands and pray the Lord would keep us through the night.

In the morning, Mama fed us hot oatmeal in her bright yellow kitchen. When I stepped outside 1728, I walked into a vibrant world, richly black. Friday night fish fry’s honky-tonked into Saturday mornings and raised enough money to make the next month’s mortgage payment. Saturdays, we watched Momma “do” heads and unwrap row after row of tight, shiny coils from the metal prongs of curling irons. Sunday mornings, girls in frilly sherbert-colored dresses, and boys in dark pants and white shirts, each family loaded into its own car and drove to Sunday school or mass. I remember a neighborhood where Mamas stayed home with babies, while Daddys went off to work as longshoremen or mailmen or shipbuilders. That was Truman Park, four square blocks of post-World War II working class, black suburbia.

What I don’t remember are those other folks, the white people. We saw them as gray apparitions on our black and white TV, we saw them as we drove through their neighborhoods on our way to church or to visit cousins, we saw them masked and sequined riding Mardi Gras floats. I knew about them from stories, from gossip, from bits and pieces of information I gathered when I eavesdropped on Mama’s conversations with her sisters and friends. Sometimes Mama talked about the lady she worked for when she was a teenager. Most often, she chased us from the room when the conversation turned to white folks and their business.