Children of Crisis

by Robert Coles

  John, after all, came from a very grim home, psychiatrically speaking. Both parents have serious mental disorders, the father at the very least a heavy drinker, the mother at the very least subject to distracted, suspicious fits of not very coherent religious preoccupations. John’s childhood was characterized by poverty and what we now call “cultural disadvantage.” He had a mediocre early education. When he decided to apply for an education at a white school he was not deeply or specially involved in the civil rights struggle. He belonged to no organization working for desegregation. He was not “enlisted” or encouraged to seek an application form; it was almost a matter of a moment’s whim, a teen-ager’s dare, a response to the company he kept, to their collective teasing of one another — fear and desire blended into a challenge.

  Yet, this rather “ordinary” youth survived handily two years of an academic schedule far more burdensome and severe than any he had ever been taught to expect or endure. He also survived the daily loneliness and fear of his special position at school. Finally, he survived the ugliness and nastiness of threats, foul language, even some shoves and pokes in the corridors and corners of the school and in the streets nearby.

  What accounts for such durability, such a hardy spirit against such odds? Where did John find his strength? Is his case an exception that proves nothing? It certainly is not an unusual story. John’s life is not unlike many others I have encountered in Little Rock, Arkansas, in Clinton, Tennessee, in Asheville, North Carolina, in New Orleans, Atlanta and Jackson. Many of these pioneer children have not been hand-picked or particularly able and bright — not natural leaders, chosen for that reason to lead their race into white schools. Whatever has enabled them to get along as well as they have is no mysterious and rare gift of intellect or “personality development.”

  John’s family life — seen by itself — simply does not explain his capacity to deal with the problems confronting him while I knew him. What, after all, in his childhood, in the personality of either of his parents, can account for this boy’s sound mind, his strong will, his competence in the face of a stiff academic challenge, his survival in the face of a severe (and threatening) social challenge? His mother received a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia when in a mental hospital. His father, as I have said, is an alcoholic. Were John’s case presented at a clinical conference, few psychiatrists would deny the ominous quality of a “family history” such as John’s — unless, that is, we called upon Erik Erikson’s work in showing the many influences, public as well as private, that combine to make us what we are.

  In point of fact, John — and his brothers and sisters — had learned both the melancholy and the strength in their mother’s personality. She is full of doubt, hesitation, anxiety, vacillation, religious fanaticism — yes, all of it and upon occasion more. She also can be a stern, tough woman, and a very determined one. She can pray and sing; what is more, she can dissolve many of her tensions in prayer and song, in faith and in hard work. When John was under pressure he could fall back on her ability to wave aside pain, concentrate hard on the intense moment — and the distant future’s promise.

  Likewise John could fall back on some of his father’s characteristics as well as find them a burden. His father was more to him than an “alcoholic” or an illiterate, unemployed, “severely disturbed” man — what I regret to say people like me all too often have to say, and only to say, about men like him. To weigh the “effects” of Mr. Washington’s illiteracy (or alcoholism) on his children, we must concede right off that different effects (from parental behavior) can emerge at different times in a child’s life, in anyone’s life. I am convinced, for example, that in his worst (that is, most fearful) moments, John drew upon some of his father’s capacity to shrug his shoulders at the world, to avoid looking at it too clearly. John shrugged off cannily the useless baggage of anxiety a fear-ridden world gave him. He had reason to do so; he had a chance — to become more than he ever was by making all that he was somehow work and work not only for himself but for everyone he knew, for history.

  Finally, John received attention and honor, from others — and himself, too. The tough side of his personality, the stubborn, crafty, inventive qualities that poor and persecuted people often develop simply to survive, found an event, a challenge that could draw upon them — make them qualities that could guarantee success rather than, as before, keep chaos at arm’s length.

  John went on to college, to do quite well there. “That high school became my life,” John told me the day after he graduated from it. It was his answer to my curiosity about “what enabled him to do it.” “That school glued me together; it made me stronger than I ever thought I could be, and so now I don’t think I’ll be able to forget what happened. I’ll probably be different for the rest of my life.”

  The Teachers

  Teaching the Teacher: Miss Lawrence

  Alabama is her native state. She is a high school teacher, a middle-aged, buxom woman whose blond hair has effectively concealed some white for several years. She teaches English, and considers herself a hard teacher, determined to enforce grammatical rules and correct imprecise language. Though not very trim, she is neat. With her clear complexion and her hair worn nicely waved and cut fairly short, she presents a fresh appearance. She favors colorful dresses, too; when my wife complimented her on one of them she explained that the world is dreary enough, and so every little bit of “glow” counts. If there is any underlying sadness in her, it is well hidden.

  Though she lives alone in Atlanta, she has several brothers in Alabama and a sister in Mississippi, all with children; and she is an adoring aunt. She admits to favorites among her four nephews and three nieces, but she manages to keep all of their pictures in her wallet.

  In class she is thoroughly impartial. She combines her harsh demands in composition with a usual willingness to let the children write about anything they desire. She encourages her children to read widely. If her reputation is to be believed, she is popular but strict. A pupil said to me, “Miss Lawrence, she makes everyone work hard, but she’s a nice lady, too.”

  Miss Lawrence went to college, in Atlanta, and started teaching there upon graduating. She liked teaching in high school because she liked awakening minds, with whom she could converse and share many of her own thoughts and feelings. She particularly liked teaching juniors and seniors in high school. She could send young people into the world more sensitive and thoughtful. Sensitivity concerned her; she used the word often. She called it “the chief virtue” and she worked hard for it in all of her pupils by correcting their errors and pointing out the many shades of meaning in the books they read. “This is your last chance,” she told every graduating class, “your last chance to learn English well, to be sensitive to its possibilities.” As a result, a tradition had grown in the school: she was called “Last Chance Lawrence.”

  Years ago she had gone North to get some additional education herself. More recently she had studied at a Southern university. In both cases Negro graduate students were in attendance. She never cared much about political affairs. She would scan the paper very lightly, picking up the gist of the news but not getting into it. She preferred to read short stories, even at breakfast. While others became increasingly involved in the issue of desegregation as it was slowly fought for many years of her life, she kept her attention on Galsworthy and Dickens. She was a Southerner, though. She had never liked Northern cities. They were big and rude places, and frankly — she was shy about saying it — she found the Northern Negroes harsh and discourteous, a poor comparison to their Southern relatives. She had gone through a crisis or two in the North about race and she had learned from the experience, but she was grateful for the quiet and civility of the South: “I learned a lot about Negroes while in the North, but I think the South has some lessons in personal dignity to teach the rest of the country.”

  What she had learned in the North had not come so easily. She left Georgia for the North because she was an educated,
sensitive Southern lady who wanted to do graduate work in education. Negroes were her last concern when she arrived in New York City. She was interested in her courses and in the city’s cultural life. She lived in a graduate dormitory. She found it convenient and in addition she felt sheltered from the unfamiliar and sometimes overpowering ways of the city. She had her own room and shared a bath with several others on her floor.

  “It may seem strange to you,” was the way she began to tell me about an episode of her life that had happened long ago, fourteen years to be exact. She paused, then she started again. “It may seem strange to you that a teacher like me would react to a nigra woman like I once did, but since then I’ve talked with a lot of people about it, and it’s a more common occurrence than you’d think. I’ll never quite forget the second it took place. It was an ordinary morning and I was coming out of the shower when suddenly I saw that nigra woman. There were several showers and she was standing there, drying herself. She had just come out herself (I thought about that later, you know) and we were probably taking showers at the same time. Anyway, she came out of hers just a few seconds before I came out of mine. When I saw her I didn’t know what to do. It was as if I’d seen the Devil himself, or I was about to face Judgment Day. I felt sick all over, and frightened. What I remember — I’ll never forget it — is that horrible feeling of being caught in a terrible trap, and not knowing what to do about it. I thought of running out of the room and screaming, or screaming at the woman to get out, or running back into the shower. My mind was in a terrible panic; I thought of everything I could do at once, but I felt paralyzed. I felt like fainting, and vomiting, too; it was shock, like seasickness; it took hold of me all over and I wondered whether I was about to die. My sense of propriety was with me, though — miraculously — and I didn’t want to hurt the woman. It wasn’t her that was upsetting me. I knew that, even in that moment of sickness and panic. Then I came to my senses. I realized I had to do something; but all I could do was just stare at her I must have looked as pale as a sheet. It seemed like an eternity, though it probably was only a few awkward seconds. Finally, I jumped back into the shower and stayed there, listening for her to go and thinking about it all where I could, because I felt safer. It was awful.

  “When I came back to my room I felt as if I had been through a terrible nightmare. I felt exhausted; and then I actually found myself crying. It wasn’t the way you cry when you think about something or somebody, and then get sad and cry about it; it was just a flood of tears that suddenly came upon me. I only realized I was crying when I started feeling the tears on my face.”

  She apparently was shaky for hours after the incident. Even today she can recall the emotions — disgust, anger — she initially felt toward the Negro woman for causing the crisis. Those emotions were soon followed by shame: that she, an educated woman, had behaved so irrationally. She eventually concluded that the reason she didn’t say anything to the Negro but fled was that words were irrelevant, whereas action at least extricated her from an “ugly situation.” It was an explanation suited to her longstanding belief, held before she ever left Georgia and still very much in her mind, that feelings about race are deep and silent parts of a person. They do not respond to laws, but only to new experiences. “Words and explanations about race don’t mean much,” she explained to me. “It’s what the person’s life has been over the years. I was almost trembling then, and nothing a rational mind could offer — to myself or that Negro woman — would really have made sense of it to either of us.

  “Of course, over the next few days I became more and more ashamed of myself. Finally I tried to put myself back in the shower room, but I promptly became clammy again. I was sure that if that nigra lady came in I would do the same thing again — flee. Mind you, I don’t think I was prejudiced then, any more than I really am now. We grow up with certain ideas, and you can’t shake them in a second.”

  Though she found it difficult to go back into the bathroom at all, she did, every day. She found herself dreading the time the Negro would return. She would be washing her face, and might picture the Negro staring at her after she cleared her face of soap. She would be in the toilet closet and think of the Negro opening the door and confronting her. For the first time in her life she found herself looking at Negroes more closely on the street. She noticed the clothes they wore, or whether they appeared in a movie or restaurant. “You never give some things a thought until you’ve gone through something like that, then you find yourself suddenly aware, even if it’s out of fear.

  “I can’t tell you how much that split second in my life affected me. Sometimes I have to remind myself that it was only a split second, because it’s lasted forever, in a way.” She told me that one day when we decided to resume talking about her experiences in the North. “I didn’t actually see the woman so that I could recognize her, though I kept on thinking that she would remember me and somehow catch up with me. I knew I wouldn’t be able to pick her out in a crowd. To be honest they all look alike to me, unless I know a particular one. For a while I thought of going to a hotel or getting an apartment, but I knew that was absurd; and besides, I was more ashamed of myself than anything else.

  “After a while I realized that there was more than one Negro in that dormitory; and so I’d better gird myself or do something to settle the matter once and for all, though I didn’t know exactly what. I noticed them in the cafeteria. I looked at each of them — there were five or six, I think — wondering which one was the one. Of course, none paid me the slightest attention. I kept waiting for some trouble to happen, some scene to occur suddenly. It was ridiculous, I know. After several days I could sit in the cafeteria and watch them calmly. I seemed to be getting it into my system that they were just like anyone else. I had just about convinced myself of that fact when two of them came from the cafeteria line one day and sat down opposite me. I can remember the meal to this day. I had veal — breaded veal cutlets, some lima beans and mashed potatoes and rice pudding. I looked at them, and I thought I was going to have to get up. I felt sick again, really just like before. I tried to turn away. I was afraid — not only of what I felt, but afraid for them to see me. I don’t think they ever had any idea what was happening, and I’m not sure I did for a while. I just sat there for a few minutes. Then I realized I couldn’t eat to save myself. So I got up and left. I think I turned and smiled at them, though, almost as if I were excusing myself from the table to them. It was terrible. I was shaking all over inside; and most of all for fear they’d know what was happening. But I knew after I had left that they couldn’t have noticed anything. It had all happened inside me.”

  What she eventually learned to do that summer was sit with Negroes and eat with them, and shower in the full knowledge that next to her, in the very next stall, there might be one. “It was hard for me myself to believe that I’d clone it by the end of the summer, but I had. When I came home I wouldn’t tell anyone. I didn’t think they would understand. At that time people would have thought one of two things: I was crazy (for being so upset and ashamed) or a fool who in a summer had become a dangerous ‘race mixer.’ (Things may have changed here in the last few years, but it’s only in the last few years.) When I came back I felt as lonely as I felt up there. Oh, today it’s almost fashionable to talk about Negroes, at least among some of the middle-class people here. We’ve become such a Northern city, with business moving down and all those companies and their employees. In a way this is New York for all the country people who move in here from south Georgia or Alabama. They try to become sophisticated, if they make some money. They try to be like they think ‘everyone’ is. I don’t mean to criticize them too harshly, though it does trouble me at times. I just don’t approve of attacking our region, the way some of our own Southerners do now. They all laugh at what they call the ‘rednecks’ or the ‘poor whites.’ Well, I think we’ve all shared in this problem and done our share of wrong — so we’ve all got to take the blame for the wrongs done. I think t
he way to start is to be positive, accept the best of our Southern kind of relationship with nigras, then work to change all the negative things.

  “Most of the children I teach come from well-to-do families, and they’ve been brought up to say the ‘right’ things about tolerance, but I wonder if they really believe their own words. I know children in the poor sections of the South who don’t say the right things, but they are capable of real softness and kindness to nigras when they’re not in school with them, in their [white] school. I don’t mean to be hard on our middle class here, but sometimes I fear we’ll lose the best in the South, and end up with another Northern climate, where people don’t care about one another, regardless of race. I’ve seen whites ignore and insult Negroes up North the way many segregationists down here would never think of doing. I know we’re paternalistic, but we do care for one another. We’ll have to learn to have different kinds of caring, but I hope when we do it will be our very own kind.”

  When desegregation was imminent she indicated, discreetly but firmly, her interest in teaching a desegregated class. Those who could not do so, who would not do so, had been given a chance to say so. Their superiors did not wish to enforce a collision of reluctant, angry or fearful teachers with nervous children, whites for the first time with Negroes as well as Negroes with whites. “I had my doubts about integration,” Miss Lawrence recalled. “Not because I didn’t favor it, but I think I tend to be cautious, and I felt that perhaps we should wait a while, and educate our nigras more fully, and prepare our white people, too. I suppose I was still reacting to the experience I had up in New York. I kept on wondering what I would have done had those Negro women I finally got to know been different. What if they had been less tactful and understanding; I could have become annoyed and angry with them, instead of being ashamed at myself. When people are tense, their minds do funny things. I’m setting up a double standard, I know. I’m asking the nigra to be better than we often are. Isn’t that part of the problem, though, to get us to understand one another? We made them worse, and now we expect them to be better. Yet, you have to start with human nature somewhere when you’re planning a change like this. I don’t think it’s realistic to assume that all people are going to be able to deal with their emotions so intelligently that they can cope with some of these things easily. That’s why I was so much in favor of going slowly, and carefully educating both us and the nigra for change. On the other hand, once I actually started teaching a desegregated class I wasn’t so sure. I came to disagree with my own earlier attitudes.” The two Negro children learned from her, one for a year, one for two years. They were the first Georgians of their race to study with a white high school teacher in a white school.