With the band, the excellent choirs and glee clubs, plays, and variety shows, students in Birmingham’s black schools had many opportunities to perform. The music teacher was always one of the best-known and most-valued members of the faculty. In some cases they were legends, such as Mrs. Gregory Durr White at Ullman High, who also taught many of the neighborhood’s piano students. No one saw these activities as extracurricular or add-ons. They were an essential part of transforming students into more cultured people with well-developed artistic talents.
The performances were also occasions for the community to come together. A play or concert at one of the high schools was a highly anticipated social event. So too were the periodic visits of acclaimed choirs and bands from the historically black colleges. The best-known choir was the Fisk Jubilee Singers, but almost every college had one. We’d travel to Stillman College in Tuscaloosa for special performances from artists such as the great black opera singer Marian Anderson in 1964. These activities were a key part of our social life at a time when it wasn’t possible to go to a concert downtown or even to a proper movie theater. They were an important and satisfying element of our parallel universe in segregated Birmingham.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Something in the Water
THE OTHER great social outlet was the church. My father’s church, Westminster Presbyterian, was centrally located on Sixth Avenue not very far from downtown Birmingham. The neighborhood was solidly middle-class, and this was reflected in its congregation. There was one doctor and one lawyer, but the bulk of the membership consisted of teachers.
Services were formal and short, no more than an hour. Black Presbyterian services were a world apart from the emotional and high-energy services of the Baptist churches. The term sometimes applied to Presbyterians, “frozen chosen,” would have described black church-goers as well as their white counterparts. Gospel music was rare, replaced with anthems written by composers from Bach to the modern, mostly white ones. There was no “call and response,” where the preacher would say, for instance, “Do you hear me?” and the congregation would reply, “I hear you.” There wasn’t even a stray “amen.”
I don’t mean to make the services sound boring. In fact, they were beautiful, even inspiring. Mother was the organist and choirmaster, pushing the small choir to sing ever more complex anthems. My favorites, “God So Loved the World” and “The Heavens Are Telling” from Haydn’s Creation, are still standard fare in most large Presbyterian churches. But they were a stretch for the Westminster Presbyterian Church choir, and it would sometimes take many weeks to learn them. Yet the choir usually managed to do a respectable job, and it grew in size owing to the pride people felt at being able to sing sophisticated music.
The Christmas and Easter holidays were particularly busy and enjoyable, celebrated with plays for the children and special music that took months to prepare. I loved to go to the church and help decorate, particularly on Easter, when the altar was adorned with three crosses that my uncle Alto built in his shop. There was a glorious sunrise service at six o’clock and then the regular one at eleven.
I didn’t care much, though, for the Easter egg hunt the Saturday before. I thought it was kind of pointless to hide eggs and then try to find them. I was particularly put off when I caught my parents putting an egg in my basket so that I would not be embarrassed if I failed to find one. I asked them to stop doing that, protesting that I was smart enough to find a stupid egg if I wanted to. I just didn’t want to.
My father was a terrific preacher, though he rarely raised his voice above a normal speaking tone. “He was known as a pastor who made you think before you could feel,” to quote one of his elders. This “lecture style” of preaching brought in many new members, particularly teachers who identified with my father’s more cerebral approach to his ministry.
I can still remember some of Daddy’s sermons, and some of the outlines for them have survived. He preached often about the uncertain times for the disciples leading up to and after Christ’s crucifixion. He had great sympathy for Thomas and the other disciples who were so unnerved by Christ’s death and disbelieving of the resurrection. One of Daddy’s most controversial sermons involved a rather nuanced approach to Judas, who, according to my father, felt that he had been betrayed. He told the very human story of these men who had given up everything to follow Christ and the confusion, anger, and fear they felt when it turned out that Christ could be killed like a common criminal. Their skepticism about what would happen after Christ’s death was, he said, understandable. Daddy used the stories to say that questions and doubts were to be expected. Jesus would not condemn his followers for these human responses to the mystery of faith.
From the time I was very young I loved to engage in theological debates with my father. This started at the age of four when I insisted that my father was mispronouncing the name Job. It was the book of “Job,” I insisted, not “Jobe”! My father, ever tolerant of my dissent, argued patiently and I guess decided that eventually I would know better. Our theological debates became a bit more sophisticated over the years. We exchanged views on everything from the teachings of Paul, about which my father had some reservations, to the horrors of Revelation. We discussed the relationship between the angry God of retribution in the Old Testament and the God of redemption in the New. I always felt that my father wanted me to use my intellect to help build my faith. I was never told to simply accept anything on the face of it, and my constant questions were always engaged. Because my father never made reason and faith enemies of each other, my religious conviction was strengthened. I am grateful for that because in the many intellectual environs in which I have found myself, I have never suffered the crisis of faith that so many do. I have always believed, fully and completely. My challenge has been to avoid complacency in my faith and to remember to struggle with its meaning as my father taught me to do.
Westminster grew rapidly under Daddy’s leadership, with new members joining frequently. Toward the end of the Sunday service there was a “call,” where the pastor stands in front of the congregation and invites “anyone who has decided today to declare for Jesus” to come forward and join the church. This is still done in many Presbyterian churches today. I hated that moment because it seemed really awkward if no one came forward. Therefore, when I first learned, at about seven, that Christian doctrine expected Christ’s return to earth, I had a good idea. I prayed each night that if Christ was coming again anyway, perhaps he could come to Westminster. I knew that membership would soar if he did.
In fact, my father built the church in more conventional ways. He knew that it was important to make his church more than a place of worship on Sunday. Most churches had a social component, but Daddy’s church was ahead of its time, providing a place to gather all week long. Choir practice was on Wednesdays, Bible study on Thursdays, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays church members who were teachers offered tutoring in algebra, science, and foreign languages. Mrs. Margaret Cheatham, who was my father’s colleague at Ullman, was recruited to tutor and attended services at Westminster, though she did not join the church for several years.
Dr. Duval, a white dentist, would come to the church once a month to conduct checkups and perform dental work. There were also typing classes and etiquette lessons that taught young people such things as which fork to use at the dinner table. Friday night was “flop night,” a time when kids could come to the church for everything from chess lessons to movies, watched on a projector borrowed from the school. In the summer we looked forward to church-sponsored cookouts as well as volleyball matches and track meets.
These activities were open to the whole community, not just to the church members. This was somewhat controversial, particularly when Daddy insisted on including the kids from Loveman Village, the government housing project behind the church. There was considerable class stratification in segregated black Birmingham. I remember being told by my mother, for instance, that my friends from Lane Elementary could
come to visit me but I could not go to visit them. Their neighborhood was “too rough.”
Many of our church members were not comfortable with Daddy’s outreach activities. I recall one attempt at inclusion that backfired when during a picnic some of the kids from Loveman Village were caught teaching children from the congregation to shoot craps behind the church. “Reverend Rice, I told you they weren’t ready to be with us,” an elder told my father. Daddy came home and told Mother about the episode. He was really hurt and defended his program. But he was always struggling to reconcile his desire for the broadest outreach with what his church’s middle-class membership would tolerate.
Relations were sometimes very strained when my father pushed church members beyond their comfort zone. At one meeting of the Board of Elders, the powerful governing committee in Presbyterian churches, members decided to deny money for Daddy’s “missionary work.” My father became so angry that he turned over a table and stormed out, my uncle Alto trailing behind. Daddy was a big man and could be physical in his expression of anger, though never with my mother or with me.
Daddy decided to seek support among the women of the church, getting the Presbyterian Women’s Circle to fund his activities. Stalwart supporters such as Mrs. Florence Rice (a cousin by marriage), Mrs. Hattie Conrad, Mrs. Lillian Ford, and Mrs. Marie Bracy helped him overcome opposition. These women shared his vision of the centrality of a ministry for children—everybody’s children. Daddy, in turn, tried to get the presbytery to ordain these women as elders. When the Presbyterian Church of the late 1950s refused to do so, he created a special category for them. They were allowed, for instance, to serve communion, likely in violation of church policy. He didn’t ask permission, and in the end, no one objected.
My father’s somewhat controversial youth ministry became central to Westminster. The links between the church and the community were nurtured through the Youth Fellowship program and a club that Daddy formed for young black men, the Cavaliers, who were teenage boys with whom my father met weekly. They wore yellow hats with “Cavaliers” written in purple across the front. Daddy involved several other men from the church and the community in what is now called mentoring.
Youth Fellowship met every Sunday afternoon at four in the church with social activities for high school kids. At its height there were more than forty students. My father recruited Ms. Julia Emma Smith, an unmarried parishioner, to be his partner in the program. They arranged panel discussions and tutoring sessions as well as a one-week summer leadership conference at Stillman College.
Daddy wanted the kids to know that there was a bigger and different world outside of their immediate environment. He befriended a rabbi and took his students to Temple Beth-El or Temple Emanu-El to learn about Judaism. The temple was not in use on Sundays, so the Youth Fellowship would go there to listen to lectures arranged specifically for them. Looking back on it, I rather doubt that the congregation at Beth-El or Emanu-El realized that a group of black high school students was taking instruction at their synagogue. I later learned that blacks were not the only ones targeted in Birmingham; fortunately, a heavy rain doused a burning fuse leading to fifty-four sticks of dynamite intended to blow up Beth-El in 1958.
The young people of Westminster also participated in an “exchange” program with a large white church, South Highland Presbyterian, during the early 1960s, when segregation was still almost total. The minister and my father decided to do this despite trepidation on the part of both congregations. According to several participants, such as Harold Dennard, a retired Birmingham teacher, their parents were wary of having their children attend these excursions but trusted Reverend Rice to take care of their kids. Harold remembers that the white kids sometimes seemed to come without their parents’ knowledge. It appears that the exchanges happened only a few times, likely owing to growing opposition in the congregations. The soon-to-come violence also put a damper on the idea.
In addition to these educational and cultural opportunities, my father could also provide something that the Baptists couldn’t: dances and parties. Some members complained that the church should not be used for dances. Daddy countered that the church was the safest possible place for kids to have their parties.
Moreover, parents trusted him, and the dances he arranged were always heavily attended. One night some of the kids decided to hold a house party and tell their parents that Reverend Rice would be there, which was not true. When Daddy found out just before the party was to take place, he went to the students and told them to recant their story or he would go individually to their parents and explain the truth. I rode in the car with him as he confronted each student. Playing the role of a vindictive little sister, I lobbied to have him tell their parents. Daddy refused, saying that it was important that the students come clean themselves. He left it to the parents to discipline their children. He never had that problem again.
In fact, Youth Fellowship and the Cavaliers were vehicles for my father’s educational evangelism. Much like his father before him, he would insist on strong academic performance and counsel each student toward college. Daddy’s “kids” turned out to be a remarkable lot.
Before he died, Daddy talked about writing a book called Something in the Water that would reflect on the exceptional achievements of the young people with whom he had worked. Freeman Hrabowski III (a black teenager, apparently with Polish ancestry) lived at the corner of our street. My father called him his “little math genius.” Freeman went to college at fifteen and received a PhD in higher education administration and statistics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He now serves as president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where he became well known for his pioneering work in inspiring young black students, particularly men, to pursue careers in math and the sciences.
The National Merit Scholarship organization named Sheryl McCarthy one of the first National Achievement Scholars in Birmingham. I remember a Good Friday service at which Sheryl, still in high school, wrote and delivered a “newscast” of the crucifixion. She ended her commentary on Christ’s death on the cross with a beautifully constructed line that I’ll never forget. “Well,” she said, “I’m going to sign off. The weather is starting to look pretty threatening. Looks like a real storm is moving in. It has been a day to remember.” Sheryl was a brilliant writer and went on to become an award-winning journalist at Newsday and the New York Daily News as well as a national correspondent for ABC News.
Amelia Rutledge was studious and quiet. She was the valedictorian at Ullman and eventually earned a PhD in medieval studies from Yale. She now teaches at George Mason University.
Larry Naves, a member of the Cavaliers, became chief judge for the Denver District Court in Colorado after my father recruited him for the University of Denver. Mary Kate Bush finished Fisk magna cum laude, received an MBA from the University of Chicago, and became a Treasury official in the Reagan administration as well as the first black woman to serve as the U.S. government’s representative on the board of the International Monetary Fund. Carole Smitherman served as president of the Birmingham City Council and became the first black woman to serve as a circuit court judge in Alabama.
These were the children of middle-class Titusville. But the success stories extended to less advantaged kids. Gloria Dennard became director of library media services at the Jefferson County Board of Education. I cried at Daddy’s memorial service when Gloria said that but for my father’s intervention with her parents, who were not college-educated, she would never have gone on to college. Barbara S. Allen, who served as interim superintendent of the Birmingham public schools, was one of the children of Loveman Village whom my father sent to college. She too says that it was my father who insisted that she get a degree. And Harold Jackson, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and editorial editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer, was a Youth Fellowship kid from the Village. As the next-to-youngest of the five Jackson brothers, Harold credited Daddy for laying the spiritual fo
undation for his life and inspiring his older siblings to pursue a college education.
These were just a few of the scores of teachers, doctors, lawyers, and other professionals who grew up at that time in deeply segregated Birmingham. They clearly took the right messages from their parents, teachers, and mentors such as my father and mother who emphasized excellence and hard work and never tolerated victimhood.
These future professionals were, in turn, role models for younger kids like me. I wanted so much to be one of the “big kids.” My father would always say of Mary Bush, “That little Bush girl is pretty, and smart too.” I wanted to be Mary Bush. When Sheryl McCarthy won a National Achievement Scholarship, I wanted to be Sheryl McCarthy. When Amelia Rutledge was voted valedictorian at Ullman, I pretended to be the valedictorian. And whenever someone went off to college, I’d pretend to be on my way too.
Over the years, I have come to understand that it must have been much tougher for these older kids to stay focused and positive. I was very young in segregated Birmingham and perhaps easier to insulate from its negative influences. But these teenagers were well aware of their circumstances. They must have felt the sense of injustice and harm more intensely than those of us who were younger. That they still succeeded and internalized the positive messages of their teachers and parents is a great testament to their focus and perseverance.
CHAPTER EIGHT
School Days
BECAUSE I so wanted to emulate the older kids, my parents found it rather easy to discipline me. I can only remember being spanked once. That was when I ignored my parents’ order not to climb up on a chair to get my Halloween costume from the top shelf of the closet. I almost fell, and my father had had enough. Usually, though, they only had to say something about being “disappointed” in me. I hated that phrase because I did not want to let them down. They could also say simply, “You’re acting like a child.” I hated that even more. Perhaps as an only child I was driven to be more like the adults with whom I spent so much time. I even refused to eat the “child’s plate” at A. G. Gaston’s, the only nice black restaurant in town. And when we went to the Presbyterian ministers’ retreat in Tennessee’s Great Smoky Mountains in 1959, I insisted that my parents pay full price for my meal when the cashier tried to discount it. Obviously, “You’re acting like a child” was a real insult.
Extraordinary, Ordinary People Page 6