We had a cast-iron black stove with a pot belly that was located in the center room of our shack. Dad alternated putting wood and coal in its bulging midsection. In the late fall and winter, we loved to sit around the stove and listen to the flames crackle the dry wood. The warm fire …
Even though we were economically poor, I was happy and eager to enter my first year of junior high school. I was blooming! I had friends at school and friends in the neighborhood. My best friend BB invited me to go with her to a girl’s summer camp for vacation Bible school. The camp was …
Black people didn’t have a reprieve from the discrimination and violence going on in the United States. By now, four young girls were killed in a Birmingham church that was bombed by segregationists. Other young people were injured. Dr. Martin Luther King had written his famous letter from the Birmingham jail. Later that year, he …
Our teachers were nurturing and insightful. Most of them lived in Memphis and drove to our school in Arlington. Their children also attended the same school. As the years passed, I learned to spell well. Every night, I practiced my spelling words by the dim light of the coal-oil lamp. Toward the end of the …
The city of Millington was located approximately ten miles from where we lived. The downtown area was populated with a large grocery store, businesses, doctor’s office, retail shops, tattoo shops, and a movie theatre. There was a large elementary and high school located on Navy Road on the outskirts of downtown, but only white students …
When we moved to the military community, the children and some adults stared at us like we were ghosts. We were a family of curly haired children with dark black hair described as “blue black.” The neighborhood people were used to seeing one or two curly haired children in a family but not an entire …
MaDear and Dad believed in keeping in contact with family. We did not have a telephone or a vehicle, but they found a way. Letter writing was a common way to communicate. The stamps cost about three cents. Sometimes, three cents was hard to get. Poppa’s sister moved from Mississippi to New York City many …
MaDear and Dad were my first mentors and teachers. I’m grateful to them for their wisdom, nurturing guidance, and for teaching us our history. MaDear and Dad were both Christians, intelligent, hard workers, and ethical. They helped develop my value system and helped me build a solid foundation early in life. I was on the …