First Class

by Alison Stewart

  One Dunbar/M Street graduate thought colors lines were a farce, making him “post-racial” long before it became the buzzword of the twenty-first century. Jean Toomer became a well-known writer and philosopher who was part of the Harlem Renaissance. As a child he had lived a racially multilayered life in the nation’s capital. He lived with his grandfather P. S. B. Pinchback who, when he was in Louisiana, had been the first colored governor in the United States. In DC they lived in a white neighborhood, but Toomer always attended black schools, including M Street.

  When Toomer graduated from high school in 1914, he traveled across the United States, attending different colleges. He taught in a Negro school in the South. As an adult he decided to renounce the idea of confining racial labels. Sometimes on legal documents he is referred to as Negro, other times he is listed as white. Was he passing? Was he unaware of some of the designations? Did he even care about racial identification? At some point he stopped racially identifying himself at all. He said he was an American. He wrote of his choice:

  I wrote a poem called “The First American,” the idea of which was that here in America we are in the process of forming a new race, that I was one of the first conscious members of this race…. I had seen the divisions, the separatisms and antagonisms … [yet] a new type of man was arising in this country—not European, not African, not Asiatic—but American. And in this American I saw the divisions mended, the differences reconciled—saw that (1) we would in truth be a united people existing in the United States, saw that (2) we would in truth be once again members of a united human race.11

  8 COMING OF AGE

  THE CLASS OF 1946 had a special theme for its yearbook. The book included the standard letter from the editor, but this one looked a little bit different. It was part of a black-and-white pen illustration of a parchment scroll placed in front of a treasure chest dripping with gems. The title of the introductory essay was “Glimpses of the Jewel.”

  Open the lid. Behold! Among the jewels of the world, The Diamond Dunbar. Over seventy-five years ago, this jewel came into being in the nation’s capital. The keepers of this jewel during these years have polished it so that now its brilliance is widely known. Many have sought and found this gem; others will continue to seek it.

  The diamond metaphor is as an apt one. Diamonds are the hardest known natural material. They start as rough carbon that changes structure after long periods of intense pressure and high temperatures. Those rough diamonds are pushed and pulled to the surface where they can be cut and finished into sparkling jewels. It sounds not unlike the educational process at Dunbar. Seventy-five years after that first class met in a rough church basement, through hard times, hard work, and a lot of pressure—both self-imposed and societal—Dunbar was a true gem.

  The class of 1946 has an active alumni group. Throughout the year, newsletters are mailed out full of updates and whereabouts, with sweet bits about travels and sad bits about classmates who have passed. Each year, those who are able meet for a mini-reunion lunch, but the sad truth is that the number of attendees gets smaller and smaller. While the classmates all share similar recollections of daily life at Dunbar—challenging classes, high expectations, motivating teachers, crowded rooms, race pride—the details of their personal lives are incredibly different. The funny thing is, many of them still live up to their earned class superlatives from a yearbook list stating the class’s best, biggest, and most of something or another.

  During a recent gathering, James Grigsby, who was voted “Most Loquacious,” said grace over the buffet luncheon: “Serious thanks, Heavenly Father, for your goodness and for your mercy. We are thankful, Dear Lord, for your goodness to us and for your mercy, help us to do a good job in whatever we say and do. Help us to be pleasing in your sight. Now, Lord, we ask to bless the food that has been prepared for nourishment, help it to strengthen us so that we can serve you in a greater way. We would not forget those who are less fortunate, bless them, for we pray these prayers in your name. Amen.” Grigsby, who is known to friends as Buddy, is quick with a laugh and always has a friendly word. He lived up to his loquacious attribution in the kindest way when he approached a classmate sitting in a wheelchair. Wearing a white guayabera shirt and a big smile, he leaned down to kiss his classmate and exclaimed, “You sure do look pretty!” She had suffered a severe stroke, and Buddy continued to hold her hand and talk to her even though she could not say anything back.

  Wilma Welch was voted the “Most Popular” girl in her class and still has the lovely manner of a southern lady who makes everyone feel welcome. She puts together the class newsletter and is always eager to make sure everyone has a chance to share a story. She married James Wood, voted the “Most Popular” boy, but they divorced long ago. She spent her adult life as an elementary school teacher in the District. Her love of Dunbar has not waned in sixty-five years: “I really cried when I graduated because I really didn’t want to leave. It was just a wonderful experience, and you didn’t have any fear. Any problems like that. You were happy to report to school every day.”

  Wilma’s father was a Dunbar graduate in the 1920s, but died when she was a baby. Her mother raised her alone, so Wilma learned to be fairly self-sufficient. She took the streetcar to school every day, and when operators went on strike, it was no matter—she walked the whole way. “When I got to Dunbar, it was just like, ‘Ahhh …’ ” Wood said as she exhaled, not dramatically, but with Zen-like composure. She just wanted to get to school, to be with her friends in the armory, to be in class.

  “The armory was the best place in the world,” Wilma recalled. “That’s where the cadets practiced. But lunchtime, that’s where everybody came. That’s the place to meet.” When asked if she remembered how Dunbar compared to the white schools in the District, Wilma replied, “I never gave it a thought.”

  Vashti Atkins, editor in chief of the yearbook, was voted “Busiest.” In one photograph, an action shot of her correcting copy, she looks pensive. As she stares off into space, the expression on her round face is that of someone who really does not want her picture taken. “I was just more serious because I was older, and I’ve been through so much.”

  Vashti chose not to attend the most recent class of 1946 get-together. She is still quiet and likes being home with her husband, Stewart. Slowly, over a lunch of pizza and ice tea, she revealed why her high school years were not full of dances and dates. By the time the picture was taken for the yearbook, Vashti was twenty years old. Her first day at Dunbar was seven years before she graduated. “I entered Dunbar in 1939. I finished the freshman year … started sophomore year; that was the fall of 1940. In December 1940, I was diagnosed with tuberculosis. I was put in the hospital, of course, which was the Glendale Hospital. At that time all— [it] had all tuberculosis patients. I was in the hospital three years and eight months.”

  Glendale was a tuberculosis sanatorium in Maryland where patients and potential carriers were quarantined and put on long-term bed rest. According to Vashti, her condition wasn’t serious, but her treatment was invasive.

  At that time there was no medication for tuberculosis. It was bed rest or—I’ve forgotten the name of the thing—but air was pushed into your lungs so that your lungs rest and it gave the chance to heal.

  Yeah, I was put on bed rest for some time. I can’t remember that well now, but for some time, and it didn’t heal. So then they gave me an operation which was what they call a phrenic, and we were told there was a phrenic nerve, right, that will be in some place which would make the lung rest. So they tried the phrenic nerve operation and—well, over time, that took a lot of time. That didn’t work. So, finally they gave me this pneumothorax. That’s what is what it is called.

  Surgery to move a nerve that controls the diaphragm, artificial inflation of the lungs, and isolation was a lot for one teenage girl. She was the youngest of nine children, but by her high school years it was just Vashti and her mom on their own.

  One day at the hospital she looked up and
saw that her new roommate was a girl who had been in her homeroom that first year at Dunbar. They bonded over their shared experience and remained friends when they were both allowed to return to school, older and wiser than most of their classmates.

  “Vivian Stark. Vivian was my best friend and we ate outside sometimes on the front [steps]. I don’t remember the cafeteria because you know, I took my lunches. All those poor kids did take their lunch. I remember eating outside on good days. Me and my good friend Vicky.” Vashti went to college because of someone’s profound generosity. Somebody—to this day, she doesn’t know who—arranged a scholarship for her to go to college. She was the only one of her nine siblings who did so.

  Vernon Tancil was voted “Most Sophisticated.” He went on to travel the world and then settled on the West Coast to become a park ranger. James Bruce was voted “Most Energetic,” which still fits to this day. Over breakfast at the ornate Palmer House in Chicago, where they know his order, he told me of his amazing life in Japan. Enid Tucker was the “Most Pleasant” girl in the class and true to form, likes to discuss family and friends. Jeannine Smith (Clark) was voted “Most Attractive.” In her eighties she can still turn heads driving her zippy little Mercedes over to the Cosmos Club for crab cakes and a little political discussion (“I tell you, that man, Mr. Obama, is not a real black American!”).

  Back at this particular small class lunch, the friends made jokes and swapped the kind of stories that begin, “Girl, you got that Benjamin Buttons thing going on … you look good.” They shared stories about old times, but not many of them included Jo-Jo Stewart, a tall member of the track team. He’d been close to only a few classmates, including Louis Campbell, voted “Biggest Jiver,” and Leon Ransom, “Most Witty” and “Noisiest.” Jo-Jo wasn’t on the list. Most said he was a nice fella, but they didn’t know him well. Smart. Graduated midyear. But one man offered his unvarnished opinion of Jo-Jo: “Joe Stewart, aw … he thought he was white.”

  Left to right: LaVerne Clark, Joyce Meadows, Mary Dixon-Queen, Helen Saunders, and Dolores Collins.

  Dunbar High School Yearbook, 1946

  Joe Stewart thought he was from New York City. He knew he was from New York City. Home for him was 143rd Street with his pals Val and Rudy. “All we needed was a nickel, a jar of Vaseline, a towel, and a comb …” In the last weeks of his life, he recalled his earliest memories of life in NYC. The nickel was to get on the subway to Coney Island, the Vaseline was to put on their bodies so they wouldn’t get cold jumping in the water, the towel was to dry off, and the comb was get their hair looking right so they would look good on the way back uptown. Jo-Jo and his friends ran around the streets of Harlem and Washington Heights and explored Brooklyn and Queens. He lived in a melting pot of Irish, Italian, Jewish, and Negro New Yorkers.

  By 1943, the United States had survived the Depression but was deeply involved in World War II. Jo-Jo’s future did not look bright. This was largely because Jo-Jo was bright—but highly unmotivated. He was not old enough to enlist, and he had only an intermittent interest in school. He got As in the classes he liked, and Ds in the classes that bored him. He described his young self this way: “Getting me to study was like putting cooked spaghetti through a keyhole.”

  It wasn’t that his mother didn’t try. Education on all levels was valued in his home. Edna Pride graduated from Scotia Women’s College in Concord, North Carolina, one the first colleges established for Negro women after the civil war. Edna worked as a schoolteacher in North Carolina. When she became a stay-at-home mom, she was still always learning new things. One day Jo-Jo came home and found that the southern food of his youth would be prepared for special occasions only. Edna had taken a course on nutrition and wanted a healthier lifestyle for the family. That didn’t keep Jo-Jo from enjoying the chocolate cake she made every week. He would come home, make two parallel cuts across the circular cake, about an inch apart and then lift the large rectangular chunk of cake straight up from the center of the round. He would place the long rectangular slice of cake on a plate for immediate consumption. But before digging in, he would gently press the two sides of the cake together and doctor up the icing a bit, thereby reducing a ten-inch diameter cake to a nine-inch cake.

  Jo-Jo’s people were of tough stock. His paternal grandfather, Samuel Banks Pride, was a professor of mathematics at Biddle University in North Carolina, now the HBCU Johnson C. Smith University (The acronym HBCU refers to historically black colleges and universities). His wife, Jessie Houston Pride, was an elementary school teacher. Professor Pride was also known to stay up all night on the family porch because some local KKK members let it be known that they did not appreciate the fact that he and some like-minded individuals helped establish a high school for colored children in Charlotte. Second Ward High School stood until the mid-1960s.

  Originally from DC, Jo-Jo’s father, Joseph Turner Stewart Sr., was a song-and-dance man at heart. That’s how he had ended up in New York, where he met Edna. She’d gone to Manhattan for a vacation and wound up with a husband. Joe Sr. was employed by the post office and had worked his way up to clerk. His son was noticeably impressed one day when he accompanied his father to work and saw his dad strap on a .45 pistol. In those days, if you supervised the shipping deck, even for mail, you were armed.

  As far as he was concerned, Jo-Jo had a pretty good life in New York City. He attended a public elementary school, then entered George Washington High School. It was a good school—the alma mater of Henry Kissinger and Alan Greenspan—but Jo-Jo Stewart was slipping through the cracks. Keeping him in school was a battle, and as he remembered it, the school didn’t really help. “People were not interested in African American kids being in academic classes, and I didn’t pay attention, so the combination was not good.”

  In the early 1940s, Edna Stewart pointed out to her husband that no one was saying Jo-Jo Stewart and college in the same sentence, and asked what were they going to do. Joe Sr. had a good job for a Negro in NYC, but Joe Jr. was on the edge, an especially dangerous place for a smart kid with a fast mouth. The answer became clear: send Jo-Jo to the same high school his father had graduated from on June 23, 1915—M Street School, now Dunbar.

  The Stewarts’ new homestead was with Ma and Pa Stewart in Southeast Washington. Joe Sr. would stay in New York. He repeatedly tried for a transfer, but a job in Washington never materialized, so his parents took in his son and wife. But that didn’t mean he was absent from his son’s life.

  “Pop used to chew on my ear by telephone and when he came down. He would be down about every other week. As you may remember,” my father said to me, “your grandfather was relatively small, but he weighed ten tons when he stood on your chest.”

  Ma Stewart and Pa Stewart were both short and stout in old age. Together they resembled a salt and pepper set, in that order. Walter Colfax Stewart—Pa Stewart—was a deacon in the Episcopal Church, fond of opera and a taste of liquor now and again. An average Saturday afternoon went like this: Pa Stewart would sit down at the table. He’d call over his grandson. “Ah, Jody,” he would say. “Go get me my forty drops.” Jo-Jo, whom he called Jody, would fetch a glass and a bottle of whiskey and bring it to Walter. Ma Stewart—Lillian—would sit at the other end of the table with her hands folded, lips pursed and growing tighter because she was horrified that her grandson was carrying liquor. Ma would stay quiet until she could take it no more.

  “Walter, that boy should not—”

  “Aw … woman!” was Pa’s response. He’d have his drink, it would be over, and then it would happen again the next week.

  Once Jo-Jo moved to Washington and was ready to enroll midyear at Dunbar, he realized something strange. He was passing three high schools every day to get to the one high school where he could go. “Funniest thing about it, I don’t think anyone ever mentioned to me it was a segregated high school.” He had been to Washington many times but just to see family. “Washington was a segregated city, but it wasn’t southern Alabama, for examp
le. There wasn’t segregating on public transportation, but we knew we weren’t going to go downtown to the movies. I was the new kid in town, so I went along with the flow. But I remember being truly offended by the idea that you had that kind of system in the capital of the land of the free and the home of the brave, and I was mildly pissed off about it.”

  So he did something about it.

  “What are you boys doing?” a white police officer asked the two teenagers collecting signatures outside a grocery store. It was a normal afternoon in Washington, DC, except that fifteen-year-old Jo-Jo and his pal Leon were protesting a major food chain’s hiring practices. They were a bit of a sight. Leon was short; Jo-Jo was tall. Leon was a little thick, and Jo-Jo was lean. Leon, voted the wittiest and the noisiest in the class, was popular; Jo-Jo was a bit more of a loner. But they had this in common: they liked to make waves.

  “Safeway was a sizable supermarket chain in DC, and they didn’t have—even in African American neighborhoods—they didn’t have any black cashiers.” The two teens were collecting signatures on a petition to allow Negroes to work where they lived. And someone had called the police.