I know what I’ll cover for tomorrow’s entry, but today I was at a loss — for a few minutes. Yesterday I talked/wrote about food and diversity. Today I think I’ll cover at least a little bit more on that topic.
I mentioned the Jewish family down the street. Occasionally we’d play with the kids from that family, but we never ate at their house or invited them to ours. It wasn’t done. Why? I certainly didn’t know and didn’t ask. I knew that they were “Jews” but what was that? They went to a different church, the “Jewish church” with the six-pointed star on the roof. As I grew, I found out that it was actually a synagogue and that the star was known as a Star of David or Magen David. I even learned the difference between Christian and Jew and some items from history. But at the time, it didn’t matter. They were a family that was a little bit different and they spent their Saturdays, not their Sundays, here:
While searching for a photo of this (and all I could find was this blurry one), I found out that it’s actually the B’nai Jacob Synagogue and was built in 1906. You can read about it if you want: http://www.bnai-jacob.org The synagogue isn’t really the point of this post. The point of this post is that we were very insular.
And yet, in some ways we were very progressive.
Coloreds. That’s what we called them. Even the word “Negro” wasn’t acceptable — too close to the other n-word, which I definitely heard but had I ever used would have had my mouth washed out with soap, so to speak (I don’t recall ever having that punishment, though I tried it myself once just to see what it was like). Definitely taboo.
So was associating with them. They — the coloreds or colored people — lived pretty much on the other side of the tracks. Yes, there really were railroad tracks and they loosely defined the areas, though there were plenty of “white people” who lived there as well. Just an expression and yet accurate in some ways. They came to school on this side, our side, but played on their own.
I guess that my strongest memory of anti-black sentiment has to do with shopping trips. Every now and then my grandmother would take me shopping with her. I remember traveling by bus at least once, but I think that we usually drove. We went to Harrisburg, to Pomeroy’s. We had to leave early in the morning so that we could be there when they opened the doors. I guess that things haven’t changed so much considering the lines outside of Target and Best Buy on Black Friday.
Ok, so there we were, approaching Pomeroy’s, and Gammy leaned down to me and said, “Remember, it’ll be crowded in there, but don’t let any of the coloreds touch you.”
That’s it. No explanation of why, just an instruction to keep a healthy distance.
My other contacts with colored people (I’m tired of adding quotation marks, so you need to imagine the time and the place and just let me ramble):
Aunt Jemima.
I loved my pancakes, so this was a fond memory. I especially liked when we went to the Pancake Jamboree at Zembo Shrine. All-you-can-eat pancakes and sausage and Aunt Jemima herself (or so I was told) wandered around and greeted everyone.
My other favorite was Little Black Sambo.
I loved that book. Of course, it’s not considered to be politically correct, so you won’t find it in stores any more.
Moving on. . .
I said that we were actually progressive, even though we were prejudiced. Remember, this was the late 1950’s and early 1960’s — before the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Apparently it was common to see signs like this:
And this:
But not in Middletown. The public pool wasn’t segregated. The private pool, the Swim Club? That was a different story.
Anyhow, the following was a common sight:
But that’s not the way I remember it, at least not at the school I attended. Emaus Street School. I tried to locate a photo of it but the only one is on a site that does not allow sharing and is not easily linked. It was a small school, built in 1863. I remember that because it said so above the main door. It was located on Emaus Street — thus the name — which is just this side of the railroad tracks. However, this was an integrated school, even in the late 50’s. We shared classrooms, bathrooms, and drinking fountains, and we even played together on the playground.
Of course, after school we went home to our own neighborhoods.
And Emaus Street School wasn’t completely “we all love each other.” Not by a long shot. My first grade teacher was one of the strictest that I had. She was old. Really old — at least by barely six-year-old standards. Her classroom was arranged with desks in two rows, facing each other, with her desk between them. On one side were the white kids and on the other side were the colored kids, so I guess a form of segregation did occur.
Then again, who knows what was going on in that woman’s mind. Each of the rows of desks was also arranged by smartest to dumbest. During the course of the year, that order changed, though never crossing lines from colored to white. The “bad” kids earned desks in the front next to the teacher’s, facing the rest of the class. I did one stint there — for talking too much during class — and didn’t like it. Not at all.
Ok, time to wrap up. I grew up in the North, in Pennsylvania, and though we were racist, we (the kids) didn’t really understand what that meant. It was just the way it was. I guess that’s how prejudice starts. That doesn’t make it right, not by a long shot, but it’s the way it was. Now I live in the South — not the deep south, but south by virtue of being south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Prejudice still exists: prejudice of all types and in almost all places, some worse than other. However, I think — hope — that in some way, in at least some small way, things are better.
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