Actually there wasn’t much else she could do to make a living, because she had no other skills. She gained a lot of commonsense education on these jobs, because she was clever and alert. As she worked, she carefully observed everything around her.
She was especially interested in the people, because most of the time she worked for the wealthy. She’d come home and tell us, “This is what wealthy people do. This is how successful people behave. Here’s how they think.” She constantly drilled this kind of information into my brother and me.
“Now you boys can do it too,” she’d say with a smile, adding, “and you can do it better!”
Strangely enough, Mother started holding those goals in front of me when I wasn’t a good student. No, that’s not exactly true. I was the worst student in my whole fifth-grade class at Higgins Elementary School.
My first three years in the Detroit public school system had given me a good foundation. When we moved to Boston, I entered the fourth grade, with Curtis two years ahead of me. We transferred to a small private church school, because Mother thought that would give us a better education than the public schools. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way. Though Curtis and I both made good grades, the work was not as demanding as it could have been, and when we transferred back to the Detroit public school system I had quite a shock.
Higgins Elementary School was predominately White. Classes were tough, and the fifth graders that I joined could outdo me in every single subject. To my amazement, I didn’t understand anything that was going on. I had no competition for the bottom of the class. To make it worse, I seriously believed I’d been doing satisfactory work back in Boston.
Being at the bottom of the class hurt enough by itself, but the teasing and taunting from the other kids made me feel worse. As kids will do, there was the inevitable conjecture about grades after we’d taken a test.
Someone invariably said, “I know what Carson got!”
“Yeah! A big zero!” another would shoot back.
“Hey, dummy, think you’ll get one right this time?”
“Carson got one right last time. You know why? He was trying to put down the wrong answer.”
Sitting stiffly at my desk, I acted as if I didn’t hear them. I wanted them to think I didn’t care what they said. But I did care. Their words hurt, but I wouldn’t allow myself to cry or run away. Sometimes a smile plastered my face when the teasing began. As the weeks passed, I accepted that I was at the bottom of the class because that’s where I deserved to be.
I’m just dumb. I had no doubts about that statement, and everybody else knew it too.
Although no one specifically said anything to me about my being Black, I think my poor record reinforced my general impression that Black kids just were not as smart as White ones. I shrugged, accepting the reality—that’s the way things were supposed to be.
Looking back after all these years, I can almost still feel the pain. The worst experience of my school life happened in the fifth grade after a math quiz. As usual, Mrs. Williamson, our teacher, had us hand our papers to the person seated behind us for grading while she read the answers aloud. After grading, each test went back to its owner. Then the teacher called our names, and we reported our own grade aloud.
The test contained 30 problems. The girl who corrected my paper was the ringleader of the kids who teased me about being dumb.
Mrs. Williamson started calling the names. I sat in the stuffy classroom, my gaze traveling from the bright bulletin board to the wall of windows covered with paper cutouts. The room smelled of chalk and children, and I ducked my head, dreading to hear my name. It was inevitable. “Benjamin?” Mrs. Williamson waited for me to report my score.
I mumbled my reply.
“Nine!” Mrs. Williamson dropped her pen, smiled at me, and said with real enthusiasm, “Why, Benjamin, that’s wonderful!” (For me to score 9 out of 30 was incredible.)
Before I realized what was going on, the girl behind me yelled out, “Not nine!” She snickered. “He got none. He didn’t get any of them right.” Her snickers were echoed by laughs and giggles all over the room.
“That’s enough!” the teacher said sharply, but it was too late. The girl’s harshness cut out my heart. I don’t think I ever felt so lonely or so stupid in my whole life. It was bad enough that I missed almost every question on just about every test, but when the whole class — at least it seemed like everyone there— laughed at my stupidity, I wanted to drop through the floor.
Tears burned my eyes, but I refused to cry. I’d die before I let them know how they hurt me. Instead, I slapped a don’t care smile on my face and kept my eyes on my desk and the big round zero on the top of my test.
I could easily have decided that life was cruel, that being Black meant everything was stacked against me. And I might have gone that way except for two things that happened during fifth grade to change my perception of the whole world.
CHAPTER 4
Two Positives
I don’t know,” I said as I shook my head. “I mean, I can’t be sure.” Again I felt stupid from the top of my head to the bottom of my sneakers. The boy in front of me had read every single letter on the chart down to the bottom line without any trouble. I couldn’t see well enough to read beyond the top line.
“That’s fine,” the nurse said to me, and the next child in line stepped up to the eye-examination chart. Her voice was brisk and efficient. “Remember now, try to read without squinting.”
Halfway through my fifth grade the school gave us a compulsory eye examination.
I squinted, tried to focus, and read the first line—barely.
The school provided glasses for me, free. When I went to get fitted, the doctor said, “Son, your vision is so bad you almost qualify to be labeled handicapped.”
Apparently my eyes had worsened gradually, and I had no idea they were so bad. I wore my new glasses to school the next day. And I was amazed. For the first time I could actually see the writing on the chalkboard from the back of the classroom. Getting glasses was the first positive thing to start me on my climb upward from the bottom of the class. Immediately after getting my vision corrected my grades improved—not greatly, but at least I was moving in the right direction.
When the mid-term report cards came out, Mrs. Williamson called me aside. “Benjamin,” she said, “on the whole you’re doing so much better.” Her smile of approval made me feel like I could do better yet. I knew she wanted to encourage me to improve.
I had a D in math—but that did indicate improvement. At least I hadn’t failed.
Seeing that passing grade made me feel good. I thought, I made a D in math. I’m improving. There’s hope for me. I’m not the dumbest kid in the school. When a kid like me who had been at the bottom of the class for the first half of the year suddenly zoomed upward—even if only from F to D—that experience gave birth to hope. For the first time since entering Higgins School I knew I could do better than some of the students in my class.
Mother wasn’t willing to let me settle for such a lowly goal as that! “Oh, it’s an improvement all right,” she said. “And, Bennie, I’m proud of you for getting a better grade. And why shouldn’t you? You’re smart, Bennie.”
Despite my excitement and sense of hope, my mother wasn’t happy. Seeing my improved math grade and hearing what Mrs. Williamson had said to me, she started emphasizing, “But you can’t settle for just barely passing. You’re too smart to do that. You can make the top math grade in the class.”
“But, Mother, I didn’t fail,” I moaned, thinking she hadn’t appreciated how much my work had improved.
“All right, Bennie, you’ve started improving,” Mother said, “and you’re going to keep on improving.”
“I’m trying,” I said. “I’m doing the best I can.”
“But you can do still better, and I’m going to help you.” Her eyes sparkled. I should have known that she had already started formulating a plan. With Mother, it wasn�
�t enough to say, “Do better.” She would find a way to show me how. Her scheme, worked out as we went along, turned out to be the second positive factor.
My mother hadn’t said much about my grades until the report cards came out at mid-year. She had believed the grades from the Boston school reflected progress. But once she realized how badly I was doing at Higgins Elementary, she started in on me every day.
However, Mother never asked, “Why can’t you be like those smart boys?” Mother had too much sense for that. Besides, I never felt she wanted me to compete with my classmates as much as she wanted me to do my best.
“I’ve got two smart boys,” she’d say. “Two mighty smart boys.”
“I’m doing my best,” I’d insist. “I’ve improved in math.”
“But you’re going to do better, Bennie,” she told me one evening. “Now, since you’ve started getting better in math, you’re going to go on, and here’s how you’ll do it. First thing you’re going to do is to memorize your times tables.”
“My times tables?” I cried. I couldn’t imagine learning so much. “Do you know how many there are? Why that could take a year!”
She stood up a little taller. “I only went through third grade, and I know them all the way through my twelves.”
“But, Mother, I can’t —”
“You can do it, Bennie. You just have to set your mind to concentrating. You work on them, and tomorrow when I get home from work we’ll review them. We’ll keep on reviewing the times tables until you know them better than anyone else in your class!”
I argued a little more, but I should have known better.
“Besides”—here came her final shot — “you’re not to go outside and play after school tomorrow until you’ve learned those tables.”
I was almost in tears. “Look at all these things!” I cried, pointing to the columns in the back of my math book. “How can anyone learn all of them?”
Sometimes talking to Mother was like talking to a stone. Her jaw was set, her voice hard. “You can’t go outside and play until you learn your times tables.”
Mother wasn’t home, of course, when school let out, but it didn’t occur to me to disobey. She had taught Curtis and me properly, and we did what she told us.
I learned the times tables. I just kept repeating them until they fixed themselves in my brain. Like she promised, that night Mother went over them with me. Her constant interest and unflagging encouragement kept me motivated.
Within days after learning my times tables, math became so much easier that my scores soared. Most of the time my grades reached as high as the other kids in my class. I’ll never forget how I felt after another math quiz when I answered Mrs. Williamson with “Twenty-four!”
I practically shouted as I repeated, “I got 24 right.”
She smiled back at me in a way that made me know how pleased she was to see my improvement. I didn’t tell the other kids what was going on at home or how much the glasses helped. I didn’t think most of them cared.
Things changed immediately and made going to school more enjoyable. Nobody laughed or called me the dummy in math anymore! But Mother didn’t let me stop with memorizing the times tables. She had proven to me that I could succeed in one thing. So she started the next phase of my self-improvement program to make me come out with the top grades in every class. The goal was fine, I just didn’t like her method.
“I’ve decided you boys are watching too much television,” she said one evening, snapping off the set in the middle of a program.
“We don’t watch that much,” I said. I tried to point out that some programs were educational and that all the kids in my class watched television, even the smartest ones.
As if she didn’t hear a word I said, she laid down the law. I didn’t like the rule, but her determination to see us improve changed the course of my life. “From now on, you boys can watch no more than three programs a week.”
“A week?” Immediately I thought of all the wonderful programs I would have to miss.
Despite our protests, we knew that when she decided we couldn’t watch unlimited television, she meant it. She also trusted us, and both of us adhered to the family rules because we were basically good kids.
Curtis, though a bit more rebellious than I was, had done better in his schoolwork. Yet his grades weren’t good enough to meet Mother’s standards either. Evening after evening Mother talked with Curtis, working with him on his attitude, urging him to want to succeed, pleading with him not to give up on himself. Neither of us had a role model of success, or even a respected male figure to look up to. I think Curtis, being older, was more sensitive to that than I was. But no matter how hard she had to work with him, Mother wouldn’t give up. Somehow, through her love, determination, encouragement, and laying down the rules, Curtis became a more reasonable type of person and started to believe in himself.
Mother had already decided how we would spend our free time when we weren’t watching television. “You boys are going to go to the library and check out books. You’re going to read at least two books every week. At the end of each week you’ll give me a report on what you’ve read.”
That rule sounded impossible. Two books? I had never read a whole book in my life, except those they made us read in school. I couldn’t believe I could ever finish one whole book in a short week.
But a day or two later found Curtis and me dragging our feet the seven blocks from home to the public library. We grumbled and complained, making the journey seem endless. But Mother had spoken, and it didn’t occur to either of us to disobey. The reason? We respected her. We knew she meant business and knew we’d better mind. But, most important, we loved her.
“Bennie,” she said again and again, “if you can read, honey, you can learn just about anything you want to know. The doors of the world are open to people who can read. And my boys are going to be successful in life, because they’re going to be the best readers in the school.”
As I think about it, I’m as convinced today as I was back in the fifth grade, that my mother meant that. She believed in Curtis and me. She had such faith in us, we didn’t dare fail! Her unbounded confidence nudged me into starting to believe in myself.
Several of Mother’s friends criticized her strictness. I heard one woman ask, “What are you doing to those boys, making them study all the time? They’re going to hate you.”
“They can hate me,” she answered, cutting off the woman’s criticism, “but they’re going to get a good education just the same!”
Of course I never hated her. I didn’t like the pressure, but she managed to make me realize that this hard work was for my good. Almost daily, she’d say, “Bennie, you can do anything you set yourself to do.” Since I’ve always loved animals, nature, and science, I chose library books on those topics. And while I was a horrible student in the traditionally academic subjects, I excelled in fifth-grade science.
The science teacher, Mr. Jaeck, understood my interest and encouraged me by giving me special projects, such as helping other students identify rocks, animals, or fish. I had the ability to study the markings on a fish, for instance, and from then on I could identify that species. No one else in the class had that knack, so I had my chance to shine.
Initially, I went to the library and checked out books about animals and other nature topics. I became the fifth-grade expert in anything of a scientific nature. By the end of the year I could pick up just about any rock along the railroad tracks and identify it. I read so many fish and water life books, that I started checking streams for insects. Mr. Jaeck had a microscope, and I loved to get water samples to examine the various protozoa under the magnified lenses.
Slowly the realization came that I was getting better in all my school subjects. I began looking forward to my trips to the library. The staff there got to know Curtis and me, offering suggestions on what we might like to read. They would inform us about new books as they came in. I thrived on this new way of life, and so
on my interests widened to include books on adventure and scientific discoveries.
By reading so much, my vocabulary automatically improved along with my comprehension. Soon I became the best student in math when we did story problems.
Up until the last few weeks of fifth grade, aside from math quizzes, our weekly spelling bees were the worst part of school for me. I usually went down on the first word. But now, 30 years later, I still remember the word that really got me interested in learning how to spell.
The last week of fifth grade we had a long spelling bee in which Mrs. Williamson made us go through every spelling word we were supposed to have learned that year. As everyone expected, Bobby Farmer won the spelling bee. But to my surprise, the final word he spelled correctly to win was agriculture.
I can spell that word, I thought with excitement. I had learned it just the day before from my library book. As the winner sat down, a thrill swept through me—a yearning to achieve—more powerful than ever before. “I can spell agriculture,” I said to myself, “and I’ll bet I can learn to spell any other word in the world. I’ll bet I could learn to spell better than Bobby.”
Learning to spell better than Bobby Farmer really challenged me. Bobby was clearly the smartest boy in the fifth grade. Another kid named Steve Kormos had earned the reputation as being the smartest kid before Bobby Farmer came along. Bobby Farmer impressed me during a history class because the teacher mentioned flax, and none of us knew what she was talking about.
Then Bobby, still new in school, raised his hand and explained to the rest of us about flax—how and where it was grown, and how the women spun the fibers into linen. As I listened, I thought, Bobby sure knows a lot about flax. He’s really smart. Suddenly, sitting there in the classroom with spring sunshine slanting through the windows, a new thought flashed through my mind. I can learn about flax or any subject through reading. It is like Mother says—if you can read, you can learn just about anything. I kept reading all through the summer, and by the time I began sixth grade I had learned to spell a lot of words without conscious memorization. In the sixth grade, Bobby was still the smartest boy in the class, but I was starting to gain ground on him.
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