While the World Watched

by Carolyn McKinstry

  But the state of Alabama chose not to cooperate with the Supreme Court decision. Alabama’s public schools and facilities remained strictly segregated. Powerful white men—state and city leaders, as well as the Klan-infiltrated police department—used intimidation and bombs to keep blacks and whites separated. Segregation was also enforced by law, and a breach could result in fines or time spent in jail. Governor Wallace was one of the state’s most vocal proponents of segregation, and the way things were going, it seemed that nothing and no one would be able to prevail against him.

  Unless things changed within the next few years, when it came time for me to choose a college, I felt sure I would be confronting Governor Wallace himself, as he personally barred the front door of any all-white state university in Alabama.

  * * *

  As a youth, I spent as much time in the church library as I could, especially since blacks weren’t allowed to use the Birmingham Public Library. I often manned the church library, checking out books to members, stamping the due dates on the cards inside, and making sure the borrowed books were returned on time. During the slow times I sat in the quiet room and read books about our church’s history. Dr. Charles Brown, our unofficial church historian, had recorded stories about the church and had compiled photos taken throughout its many years. As an educator and a teacher, Dr. Brown loved history, and he somehow sensed that these records from the first black church in Birmingham would be significant someday. I devoured those history books. The church library sparked a love in me for reading at home, too. I enjoyed reading the encyclopedias Mama had bought us. One day I read through the S volume, another day through L. Granddaddy had given me The Prayers of Peter Marshall, and I read it again and again. It proved to be my favorite book. I still use those prayers today.

  One year Sixteenth Street Baptist Church formed a church tennis team. I immediately joined. Miss Effie Jewett McCaw, a single woman who taught school and later became a principal, served as our first tennis coach. The YMCA on Eighteenth Street South, although segregated, allowed us to practice on its tennis court. My tennis partner, Richard Young, and I, as well as other church youth, took tennis lessons there from Miss Effie.

  Miss Effie loved the church children. A woman full of fun and life, she sat in the back pews of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church congregation on Sunday mornings and whistled the hymns while everybody else sang them. She reminded me of a little canary back there, her gentle whistle rising above the voices, organ, and piano. I have never known anyone since who could rival her “gift of whistle.” I adored Miss Effie. She never married or had children of her own; maybe that’s why she took such a genuine interest in us.

  I also looked up to Mr. John T. Smith, another church member at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Mr. Smith managed the public swimming pools in Leeds, Alabama, a small city about twenty miles east of downtown Birmingham. At that time, swimming pools, like everything else, were designated “whites only” or “coloreds.” Rather than fight the desegregation battle, Birmingham closed all its downtown city pools—both black and white. Even Memorial Park on the south side closed its “all black” pool, so during the hot, steamy Birmingham summers, children had no place to swim.

  The whites-only swimming pool in Leeds remained open during those long, hot days when most neighboring cities had closed their public pools. For one week in June and the last week in August, Mr. Smith, the pool’s black caretaker, closed the Leeds pool for cleaning, maintenance, and repairs. During those weeks, the church filled up its bus with children and drove us to the Leeds pool, where Mr. Smith met us and allowed us to swim. We’d arrive at the pool around nine o’clock in the morning and stay till four o’clock in the afternoon. Church mothers packed a bunch of food for us to eat—sandwiches, chicken, fruit, and cold drinks. Moms sat on the edge of the pool while their youngsters splashed and played in the cool water, keeping a close eye to make sure no youngsters drowned. The adults from church took every opportunity to encourage and compliment us. I can still hear them happily calling to us, “Oh! You do such a good job diving off the high diving board!” “Why look, Carolyn’s not afraid to jump off.”

  I often wondered about Mr. Smith and “his” swimming pool. Do the white people of Leeds know that colored children from downtown Birmingham are splashing around in their swimming pool? Did Mr. Smith get special permission for us to use the pool those weeks? I’ll probably never know, but some of my most wonderful summertime memories happened at the “whites only” swimming pool in Leeds, Alabama.

  As a child and youth, I had little contact with white people. Sometimes a white inspector came to our school and filled out a report sheet, or I might see white department store clerks when we bought various items. But it wasn’t until I went to college that I actually had a conversation and interaction with a white person. Blacks and whites lived together in the same city, but we truly lived in separate worlds. As Eugene “Bull” Connor said in one of his classic malapropisms, “White and Negro are not to segregate together.”[5] I never questioned the Birmingham laws that illegally enforced segregation of public facilities—facilities that both black and white citizens paid tax dollars to build and support.

  In reality, I was much more aware of places that were off-limits by Daddy’s orders than by state mandate. Daddy made sure we obeyed his rules, but I don’t remember his ever speaking about Birmingham’s Segregation Racial Ordinances, let alone bringing a copy into the house. His strict rules were designed as an invisible form of protection for us, and in many ways they reflected Birmingham’s segregation laws. For instance, he wouldn’t let us ride the city bus. We did ride the school bus, but if the six of us needed to go anywhere else, either Mama or Daddy drove us.

  Daddy told us never to cross the railroad tracks that led into North Birmingham. He gave us no reason, but he no doubt knew that Klan members such as Robert Chambliss and Bob Cherry lived in that part of town. I always suspected that Daddy, as an “invisible” waiter, learned more at the Birmingham Country Club about Klan activities than he ever wanted to know.

  When Mama took us to the bargain basement sales in the Loveman’s and Pizitz department stores, we never asked why we couldn’t try on clothes. Mama would hold up a pair of jeans marked “irregular” to a brother’s hips and try to ensure that each pair had enough leg length to last through the whole school year. She knew she couldn’t return the jeans if they didn’t fit. When we walked into Pizitz, we could smell the food and see the grand spiral staircase that led to the whites-only mezzanine café. We watched white people eating in the mezzanine, but we never asked why we couldn’t go up those stairs. It was just the way things were.

  Mama became acquainted with a kindhearted white woman who worked at the Parisian Shoe Store in downtown Birmingham. Mama watched for the sales and then gathered all us children every so often to buy shoes there. The salesclerk allowed my brothers, my sister, and me to actually try on new Sunday shoes, as well as Hush Puppies and penny loafers for school, before we bought them. When we went shoe shopping at Parisian’s, Mama packed each one of us a freshly laundered pair of white socks. The white woman purposefully watched Mama take off our socks and slip a clean pair on our feet before we tried on the shoes.

  When the new Jack’s fast-food restaurant opened near our home, we begged to go there to buy French fries. My greatest desire was to walk into Jack’s, sit down at the lunch counter, and order French fries with ketchup. Mama never told us that only white children could do that. She just said, “Children, we don’t have money to spend on French fries! I can buy a week’s worth of groceries for what we’d pay for those fries!” We took her at her word, and we hushed about it.

  During those days I didn’t think much about the signs that hung above water fountains, toilets, bus station waiting rooms, restaurants, theaters, and other public places. The truth is, our parents kept us close to home so we would have minimum exposure to the signs and to white people. By the time I could read, I learned I could use any thing
s or places marked “coloreds,” and I could not use those things or places marked “whites only.” What I had not yet learned was the depth of hatred that mandated those segregation laws. It seemed that what people learned at their churches on Sundays about unity and love they placed on the shelf during the remainder of the week. We were engaged in a no-win hate war. But as long as we black people “stayed in our places,” our community was relatively safe.

  One day while my mother shopped at Pizitz during a bargain basement sale, my little brother, Kirk, stood on his tiptoes and drank from a whites-only water fountain. A white man approached Kirk and told him he could not drink water from that particular fountain. My mother overheard the scolding and stood up to the man. “He can’t read the ‘whites only’ sign,” she said. “He’s only five years old!”

  I was aware of the signs, but my family never talked about them. I didn’t feel angry or inferior because I had to use the toilets that were marked “coloreds.” Not until Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. came to our church and called the signs and other inequalities to our attention did I really start to notice them and their underlying message. Dr. King pointed to the drinking fountains and said, “See these signs? They shouldn’t be here. These are the things we’re trying to change.” Dr. King told us that we ought to be able to use the public water fountains in the city because “all water is God’s water.” I couldn’t have understood at the time that the signs were symbolic—and symptomatic—of deeper issues within our society. I would soon have a rude and painful awakening.

  * * *

  Being born halfway in and halfway out of the Civil Rights movement, I had questions: Was it an advantage or a disadvantage? Did God intend for me to be in the middle of the vicious struggle between blacks and whites during the 1960s? And if so, for what reason? At the time I couldn’t see any blessing in those closed doors, but in the years since, I have learned that God makes no mistakes. All the things that happened to me were working together for good. I was caught in a particular moment of national history, smack in the middle of a city known as the nation’s hotbed of racial injustice and violence. But even as young as I was, I felt that God was watching and that he would, indeed, bring good out of this situation. No matter how bleak things looked to me, I trusted God to work this out for the good of my community. I had to trust.

  In the midst of everything, I had a strong fortress, a refuge from the violent world around me—Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, the sanctuary where I could freely worship God and find peace, safety, and security within its strong, comforting, brick walls. And I had the stained-glass face of Jesus in the window looking down upon me with his love, approval, and assurance of protection against the hostile world outside.

  That is, until the morning of September 15, 1963.

  Chapter 3

  The Strong One

  * * *

  Carolyn . . . your name means “strong one.” Whenever you are called by your name, Carolyn, the person is also calling into your life the strength you own through your name.

  My grandfather, Reverend Dr. Ernest Walter Burt

  Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.

  Robert F. Kennedy

  “Three minutes,” the mysterious caller had said. As I placed the receiver back in its cradle, I pondered the call for a few seconds. Then I remembered I had not yet collected the adult Sunday school reports.

  * * *

  I took seriously my responsibilities at church. Reverend had entrusted me with adult-size jobs, and my grandfather had instilled within me long ago a deep sense of sacred honor in doing God’s work. My grandfather’s confidence in my abilities made me hold my head a little higher. Whenever my grandfather came to Birmingham, my bedroom became the guest room, and I gladly gave it up for him. He loved the lunches I prepared for him—usually tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. He would compliment me as though I had prepared a gourmet meal.

  My grandfather was an amazing man. He believed in giving his children and grandchildren names that meant something, like parents did in biblical times.

  “Names have a purpose,” he explained. He told me that every time a person says my name, he or she is recalling the attributes of my name into my very lifeblood.

  I later found out that Carolyn also means “little champion.” My schoolteachers and some family members referred to me as “stubborn.” But I like “little champion” (or perhaps “determined”) much better.

  I didn’t understand the full meaning of my grandfather’s statement about the power of names until I grew up. And in remembering his words, I saw another aspect of who my grandfather was—a person who used every means possible to bring something positive and admirable into the life of a little girl of color who lived in the heart of racially segregated Birmingham. True to his occupation, he created teaching moments in everything he did.

  * * *

  Several years earlier, my “strong one” name had been severely challenged. It was August 1957, and I was nine years old. For the first time in my young life, I didn’t feel very strong. My grandfather pulled his car into our family’s front yard and honked the horn. Mama and I and the rest of the children ran outside. I peeked in the car’s backseat and saw my grandmother, Mama Lessie. Grandfather had placed her head on a bed pillow and wrapped her frail body in blankets. In the August heat, she lay very still, and I saw pain written across her face.

  “I think it’s time we took Lessie to the hospital,” Grandfather whispered to my mother. “She’s been hurting and bleeding for a while now. I fear something bad is wrong with her.”

  Grandfather and Daddy lifted Mama Lessie in their muscular arms, took her inside the house, and laid her on Mama’s bed. Not long after, Mama told them she felt we needed to call an ambulance. The ambulance took my grandmother to nearby Princeton Hospital, and we followed by car. I expected the nurses to put her in a clean room in the main hospital ward, where doctors could treat her and make her well.

  They didn’t. They took Mama Lessie down the back stairs into the bowels of Princeton Hospital and placed her on a small bed. Other people of color lay down there, too, moaning and groaning in unrelieved pain.

  “Why are they putting Mama Lessie in the basement?” I asked Mama.

  “Never mind, Carolyn,” she said. “Just help us get her settled.”

  I looked around the basement where my beloved grandmother lay on her back, still and quiet. It was a small, closed-in space, with sweating water pipes climbing across the walls and ceiling. Big drops of water fell onto the cold, brick-and-cobblestone floor.

  “Carolyn, you’ll be staying here with Mama Lessie and taking care of her while I’m at work. After I get off, I’ll bring her supper, and you can go home and rest. But she needs someone to stay with her all the time down here, and since you are the girl-child . . . well, it’ll be your job.”

  “Will we have to stay down here in the basement?” I asked.

  “Yes, Carolyn, and I’ll depend on you to take care of her while she’s here in the hospital.”

  It was a tremendous responsibility for a nine-year-old. I felt like a big girl, and I was proud I’d been asked to help. But I also felt afraid. I loved my grandmother. I wondered what the future held for her. And for me.

  My hope for my grandmother’s recovery faded day by day as I sat in the basement of Princeton Hospital and watched her suffer. I sang the song I had heard so many times before at my grandfather’s church. The words always gave me strength and courage:

  All along this Christian journey,

  I want Jesus to walk with me.

  I want Jesus to walk with me.

  All along this Christian journey,

  I want Jesus to walk with me.

  In my troubles, walk with me.

  When I’m dying, walk with me.

  All along this Christian journey,

&nb
sp; I want Jesus to walk with me.

  I want Jesus to walk with me.

  I had never seen Mama Lessie like this. She was only fifty-four years old, but she looked much older. To pass the hours, I counted the beads of water as they dropped from the pipes. Then I counted the redbrick squares on the floor and thought about my life with Mama Lessie and all the wonderful things I’d done with her and learned from her. I didn’t want any of that to end.

  * * *

  Born in Columbiana, Alabama, my grandmother had a gentle nature and soft-spoken ways. She never yelled at me—not once. She never punished me either. When I needed correction, she instructed me in a gentle and loving way, always teaching me lessons about life and love and God as she disciplined me. Mama Lessie was a good writer and organizer. She had the ability to sound out words and then write them down correctly. I have been told by family members that I inherited my gift of spelling from my grandmother.

  My grandmother had told me I was precocious. I had no idea what that meant, but she said it with a smile on her lips and a twinkle in her eye. I spent most of the summers at my grandparents’ house while my mother took classes. Together each summer, Mama Lessie and I worked at the vacation Bible schools in Granddaddy’s two churches, as well as other churches that had only occasional guest pastors and no full-time pastors. We taught the children how to make pot holders out of yarn and how to glue rice, glitter, and tinsel to paper plates to make collages for their folks. We also created the final programs, held after each session.

  When all the vacation Bible schools ended, I would watch Mama Lessie sew at her old sewing machine. She made clothes for her five daughters throughout their lifetimes, and she also made curtains for the windows and sewed quilts for the beds. Afternoons with my grandmother meant picking greens, cabbage, okra, and tomatoes in the small garden my grandfather planted in the backyard each spring.