I Will Not Fear

by Melba Pattillo Beals

  From that moment forward, people treated me with a different attitude. They no longer brought over pictures of stars eating watermelon and asked me what clubs they belonged to, no longer made any joke that was inappropriate. They knew that although I had not responded to their pranks in the past, I was prepared to do so from now on. I would not be a punching bag or a deposit for their insensitive or off-color jokes.

  Had I mistaken the comfort of a good salary, a super job, and public fame for God’s mission? Had I really taken my church membership seriously and kept my commitment to the Lord Jesus, or was I substituting worldly comfort? I began asking myself many questions.

  As time passed, I began to feel that maybe my heavenly assignment was to break down walls of segregation with dignity. I continued to find myself as the first person of color in various positions, meeting face-to-face with bully racists determined to derail me. Over and over again, as I sought careers as a public relations specialist, a professor, and a businesswoman, the same issues arose. Over and over again, my grandmother’s words came to me: “Why go where you’re not welcome? Because if you go only where others welcome you, you are confined to surrender to the choices of others. Claim what you want to belong to first.”

  I now realized that segregation, separateness, and oppression were not things I was going to erase immediately, no matter the location. Changes would come about in God’s time. However, with that understanding came a reflection of my experience of racial prejudice in its interwoven, complex layers in socializing, assignments, amenities, promotions, real friendships, and recognition for a job well done. These instances had to be assessed carefully. I did not want to become paranoid nor be accused of “playing the color card,” a victim whom white folks labeled a constant complainer.

  At first, it was disappointing and heartbreaking to realize that each and every wall of prejudice would take time to come down. There were no instant solutions. I thought to myself that my assignment from God seemed to be a lifelong project. Indeed, protection and equality could not always be found even in California, at least not in my experience.

  Nevertheless, with faith and prayer, I braced myself and proceeded to carve a path that would hopefully leave a trail for others of color to follow—Central High had been a good lesson. I had to count my blessings and recognize the progress made. As Grandma advised, I had to keep my eyes on the prize—to define my purpose and my assignment from God!

  Faith must be sustained, especially through disillusionment and delayed outcomes hoped and prayed for: “In God’s time, only in God’s time.”

  Twelve

  Turning the Other Cheek

  As a Christian who is often taunted and excluded by folks who set up categories of “other” for the people who are different, I have had to learn specific skills to know how and when to respond so that I can live in peace as Jesus would have me live. Whether the labeling is based on appearance, language, culture, religion, age, or gender, it takes a special set of skills to respond only when absolutely necessary. For me, exclusion is most often because of the color of my skin. That means for those who see “other” as a category, I am always labeled because my difference is so apparent.

  I believe that among those skills one must learn, the first is the art of turning the other cheek. This process, which is explained in the Bible, is essential to healthy survival. I am unable to always be a warrior in the ready-to-attack mode. That would take much time away from prayer and study.

  The second skill is the practice of gracefully sinking into golden silence when need be and identifying when it is time to speak up. Grandma said, “Jesus was never a wimp. He faced enemies and negative situations when need be—always obeying the instruction in the Bible to do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

  There is no need to loudly announce one’s strategy as a way of threatening one’s opponent. The best solution of all is to smile and walk away in silence, wishing your would-be attacker the best of everything, thus employing the third skill—which is patience.

  When properly used, all these skills are seated in the basic trust that God is stronger than any enemy and will resolve the issue in time. Having faith in God let me consistently work at developing these skills so that I could grow an antenna to guide me in discerning whether using my energy to defend myself is tantamount to my survival or a waste of my time and energy. I must always ask myself, “Is fighting back in this particular instance, even in the face of inappropriate words or violent action, in compliance with God’s request to do unto others as you would have done to you?” Of course, it is important that I follow God’s words to treat others as equals; seeing equal is an essential quest for being seen as equal.

  Today, the most intense periods in which I get to use these skills of turning the other cheek and patience are when I go house hunting. My patience is often worn thin, and I become anxious to conclude the tedious process in order to settle into what is to become my next home.

  I have concluded that house hunting is still an area of challenge despite the progress we’ve made in human rights. It remains a horrible reminder of bias for many people of color, the elderly, the LGBT community, or the disabled, who are all victims of labeling for one reason or another. House hunting is a heartbreaking chore. It leaves me feeling powerless and less valued or unequal because my home is the center of my stability.

  Living in California in 2017, I like to feel all should be well and that I am just another Christian American, “free at last” from the confines of the South. Having recently moved, I was jarred into realizing that all is not well—in fact, I am still “other.” I must continue to trust Jesus as my home because of his biblical promise: “In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?” (John 14:2 ESV, emphasis added).

  Just now, after some sixty years of living in California on the opposite side of the country from the oppression I grew up in, I find I must still be patient. There has not been a lot of progress in the granting of rights about who will accept whom as a next-door neighbor.

  Any decision to take up house hunting includes a decision to be patient and to turn the other cheek. My rule for myself is that if the potential landlord shows me any unwelcome signs, I turn and rush for the car. My conclusion is that house hunting does not leave me the energy to change people’s minds and help them face their evolution into civility. I am not there to instigate civil rights upgrades or to create integration in housing. That is a task for another time and another place.

  I’ve run into Christian Americans labeled “other” who said they have felt the sting of exclusion when the owner or renter merely suspected they were black. Take the experience of my white colleague who said she was attempting to rent in Philadelphia. When she phoned for an apartment, the owners turned her down because, as they later said, they believed she was black. When her white-sounding husband phoned about the same apartment, they welcomed him to come and see it and were happy to offer him a rental contract.

  As I begin this task, I know that I am going to collect enough mysterious experiences to rattle my nerves. Let’s start with a memory that demonstrates exclusion can be fun. About twenty years ago when my network news cameraman Billy and I were covering a story, we drove slowly down the street of an upscale San Francisco neighborhood looking for the location of the story. We parked in front of a beautiful house and looked at our notes to determine the specific address. At first, we did not notice the For Sale sign.

  The moment we parked, however, the man across the street, who was running his lawn mower, cut the engine and rushed across to talk to us. His flushed red face and lined expression let me know he was anxious and angry. His words confirmed my suspicion. He began, “Are you house hunting? Don’t stop here. . . . You’re not trying to buy this house, are you? It’s not really available, you know. You should keep looking, but not in this area.”

  “What do you mean, not available to me?” Billy said w
ith anger crowning his voice.

  “Well, you won’t be happy here. It’s not for you. There are none of your people living around here.”

  We smiled, and that’s when Billy nudged me in the side to indicate we could have a little fun.

  “Yeah, tell us about the neighborhood. We’re here to get a house,” Billy said.

  We looked at each other and said, “Let’s go for it,” as the man’s face turned absolutely bright red. We quickly got out of the car and headed for the front lawn.

  Billy said, “Do you think we can put the barbeque right here on the front lawn, darling?”

  The red-faced man replied, “Oh my God, are you kidding?” He suddenly donned the role of the hostile plantation owner. “Oh no, we don’t barbeque on the front lawn. Who would barbeque in the front yard? I tell you. You really can’t afford this place.”

  “Oh yeah, haven’t you seen her on the news?” Billy turned me around to face the man.

  “They’re determined to get top dollar, you know. There’s a lot wrong with the house.”

  I took a tape measure and began stretching it from the edge of the porch to where the barbeque would go. We continued our conversation with comments like, “We could put the lawn chairs there on the left. The green ones, honey.”

  “Yup, the green ones,” Billy said.

  The more intense we got with our fictitious decorating plan, the angrier our hostile advisor became and the more reasons he came up with as to why we couldn’t have the house. We let him rev himself into a lather before we finally told him we could afford the house, but we were not interested in it. We were actually looking for Mrs. Covington because we were reporters looking for her story.

  That’s when he started to clasp his hands, bow, back away with a smile, and feign an apology. “Of course, I’d never want to keep you out,” he said.

  “Of course not.” We bid him adieu. I couldn’t help remembering all the times I had been house hunting and run into scenes like that with homeowners trying to fend me off.

  Many dramatic scenes return in memory each time I go out to chase a new home, along with a bundle of apprehension in my stomach. Several times, the realtor would take my paperwork with the statement that I ranked high among the applicants and with a certainty I would get the place. A few hours later, she would call back and let me know I didn’t get it but didn’t say why.

  Several instances stand out in my mind, particularly because the agent or owner hurt my heart and made me angry and frightened because they made me feel powerless. There was never anything I could do, short of hiring an attorney and suing. That takes a modicum of energy and mental focus—it drowns one.

  Just last year, my daughter and I looked at nearly a hundred houses. I also had friends and coworkers looking on my behalf. I would be remiss not to mention that with the internet and social media, house hunting for “others” has improved over the years.

  One of my finds was a beautiful house on the edge of the bay, which I approached on the arm of my son. “Oh, you must have the wrong address,” the older, gray-haired man said in a tone so insolent I couldn’t get past it. “We don’t rent to your kind here. You know, it’s just not for seniors. Living with the chill of the water exacerbates arthritis.” When I plowed my way through his physical excuses, he went to “Well, you know, there really are none of your people out here. You’d probably get lonely!”

  In that moment, I thought lawsuits, shotguns, someone to beat him up—and then the lines that have sustained me throughout my adulthood came to me: “I go before you . . .” I don’t want to be where I am unwanted. I don’t want to fight for the privilege to be in my own home. I know that a really nasty landlord can make a torture chamber of your home because I have experienced it. Indeed, there have been times when I have been told a place was not available and called back in another voice, only to be told, “It’s available. Come right over.”

  For that one moment, once again, I considered a lawsuit for the benefit of others, but it takes time and energy that I didn’t have. What fascinated me most was how gut-wrenching the dramatics could be and the very different ways used by unwelcoming people to disenfranchise you, to convince you that you don’t really want it: you don’t know your own feelings, it’s not appropriate for you, it’s unsafe for you to be there, this is not your kind of neighborhood, there’s a bear in the bushes. They would go to any lengths to convince you that you don’t want the place.

  They were unimaginable scenarios. One summer afternoon, as a single empty nester at about age fifty, I went house hunting in beautiful, hillside Sausalito, California, where I always wanted to live. Everyone said it was the place God sent people when there was no room in heaven. This coastal village is cozy, elegant, and beautiful—a tourist favorite and where families feel safe to rear children.

  I knocked on six doors listed; each time, I was told that if only I had arrived a few minutes earlier I could have had the place, but it had just been rented. “I’d better take the sign down,” the landlord would say.

  If I drove away and then returned a little while later, the sign would be back up. In one case, I knocked on the door again and asked if the possible renter had let the place go and if it was available as the sign was back up. I was told, “Oh, is that sign back up? It must have walked out there on its own. I’d better get it back again.”

  “May God bless” were words I walked away saying.

  Living in a world in which we stand out for one reason or another requires us to be even closer to God and have the faith to know that we are not required to fight every battle.

  Thirteen

  God Is My Employer

  By 1975, the feeling of stability I had experienced at the McCabes and the brief feeling of comfort I had felt as Jay’s wife and the triumph I had enjoyed on my television job began to disappear within a dust cloud of Little Rock panic. Again, it was clear I had to function in warrior mode. I could not lay down my Little Rock, Arkansas, suit of armor. This was just a different battle.

  My heart ached. Each day that passed, I could see more of what was going on around me. I allowed myself to face reality. I experienced opportunities each day to ignore hints of racism and sexism on my job. I had to admit that California was not the promised land. Rather, God had presented a new type of challenge. I assumed this must be a test of some kind that I could not afford to fail for my sake and the sake of those who came behind me!

  As a news reporter, I played a double role in the pool of “other”: the first as an African American and the second as a woman. In the beginning, I smiled and watched as the assignment editor presented the real, hard news stories to the men while I and the one other staff female were both assigned the fluffy stories, such as the crocheting festival for a charity fund-raiser, allowable fashions for the university, or household products detrimental to the body. When the news came on at 5:00, the stories we were assigned ran either at the end of the program or not at all because they had been dumped. I was quite restless, wondering if I would ever get a story with teeth in it. Then one day, an urgent call came on the radio while I was in the field covering a nonsense story. I was directed to turn around and go to a nearby location.

  The assignment editor said, “You are the nearest, and we will send a male to follow up because this appears to be a grisly story.” I made my way to the scene praying out loud that this would be a chance to prove my reporting skills. The cameraman responded, “This, in the year of our Lord 1975, when women are supposed to be equal, especially in this business.”

  As I drew near to the car, I could see there was blood dripping out of the trunk and blood smeared all over the car. Almost immediately, three male reporters from a competing station gathered around me and began treating me as though I was the little woman.

  “Let us handle this for you, Melba. Just step back and we’ll do the work for you.”

  “Do you want to go back to the car? We’ll come over with all the details.”

  “Get her so
me water.”

  Five uniformed policemen approached with lots of equipment, cameras, and plastic bags with which to gather evidence. The tall, red-haired one spoke to me.

  “Listen, little lady, what are you doing? Who do you represent?” I showed him my credentials. “We’ll get you a chair, and you sit over here, as we think there are bodies in that car.”

  It was then that I gathered all my spiritual strength and determined I had to behave with dignity for myself and all the other women in the field. I didn’t want to do anything that would justify unequal assignments. I lowered my head and said the Lord’s Prayer and prayed, “Please, God, give me the strength to show them who I am.”

  The policeman shrugged and went to the scene. As his colleagues took fingerprints off the back of the car, I became overcome by the stench of the bodies and the sight of the blood and was only seconds away from passing out on the ground. Suddenly, the policeman who had been taking fingerprints turned the key in the trunk lock and started lifting it up. I was no more than three feet away and felt my head reeling. I prayed, “God, I am Your child, and I know that You are here with me no matter what my mind sees.”

  Then I stiffened my knees and looked at the rim of the trunk, knowing that those bodies were God’s children too, and He would take care of them as well. At that moment, the camera light started to flash and the cameras started to spin. The moment the trunk opened, the male reporters all gasped. The man to the right of me put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me closer. I stiffened my body and thanked him and continued to keep the look of a professional reporter. When we had our information, we all turned and moved over to get details from the policeman in charge.

  I felt gratitude in my heart because, with the help of Christ Jesus, I had made it. The men around me began to compliment me for being that strong. They hadn’t thought a woman would be able to do it. They said they knew I was new onboard and now realized I was going to be real competition. I had proven myself and climbed out of the “other” category. It would take another two years before I would win awards and become known as an excellent hard-news reporter, proficient at everything from murder trials to on-site crimes.