Freedom Lessons
Page 1
Praise for Freedom Lessons
“This powerful story of lives shaped by school integration in the deep South shows us the fear and deeply held prejudices that marked the time, the place, and the people. But we also see the kindness, courage, and risks that offered hope and ignited change. Sanchez is a masterful storyteller. Her characters leaped off the page into my heart—where they’ve stayed. Freedom Lessons illustrates how far we’ve come, while reminding us how much more we have to do.”
—Donna Cameron, award-winning author of A Year of Living Kindly
“Sanchez offers a rare look at a tumultuous period in our nation’s history—the desegregation of the schools … Sanchez deftly jumps between perspectives, fully immersing the reader in a different time and place. Heart-wrenching at times, Freedom Lessons will leave you inspired and wanting more. Sanchez gives us much to think about that is relevant even today. A captivating new voice!”
—Michelle Cox, author of the Henrietta and Inspector Howard series
“Freedom Lessons is an essential read for learners of all ages, especially high school students, with accurate portrayals of the south, and characters that readers connect with instantly.”
—Mia Owusu Antwi, High School Student
“In her riveting novel, Sanchez makes us feel the pain of a Louisiana community as deeply rooted prejudice undercuts school integration … gives us a glimpse into the truth of a highly flawed time and place, and the corrosive nature of prejudice that unfortunately persists today.”
—Michelle Cameron, author of The Fruit of Her Hands and Beyond the Ghetto Gates
“Freedom Lessons reminds us of a dark period in our history, and of the importance of an equal opportunity education for all. A must read for our generation and generations to come.”
—Kari Bovee, author of the Annie Oakley Mystery series
“A poignant snapshot of the real-life impact of integration in the American south during a single school year in 1969, when one step forward was usually accompanied by another, often worse, step back. A reminder that genuine cultural change requires so much more than the right intentions and a good heart.”
—Rita Dragonette, author of The Fourteenth of September
“An excellent source to teach current and future generations about The Crossover. Eileen succeeds where historians and academics like myself fail—recounting major societal events through the inescapable and complex humanity of her characters. Eileen fully delivers on the challenge of framing what teaching and learning was during this era, and Freedom Lessons forces us to ask the question of what it should be now.”
—Michael R. Hicks, Ed.D., Assistant Professor of Education, Centenary College of Louisiana
Freedom Lessons
Copyright © 2019, Eileen Harrison Sanchez
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please address She Writes Press.
Published 2019
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN: 978-1-63152-610-7
ISBN: 978-1-63152-611-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019942982
For information, address:
She Writes Press, 1569 Solano Ave #546, Berkeley, CA 94707
She Writes Press is a division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC. All company and/or product names may be trade names, logos, trademarks, and/or registered trademarks and are the property of their respective owners.
This is a work of fiction based on personal experience and on primary sources, personal interviews, and a dissertation documenting the experiences of others during the school year of 1969–70.
Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the privacy of certain individuals.
I am most grateful for Gary L. Clarke’s permission to use information and phrases from his dissertation, “Even the Books Were Separate: Court-Mandated Desegregation and Educators’ Professional Lives During the Caddo Crossover of 1969-70.”
Permission given for the use of the term or phrase “Even the books were separate”, “The Crossover”, “Freedom of Choice “,“I’m going to graduate”, “you know we need someone to discipline the Black kids”, “we’ve been robbed”, “I only want the best to keep their classes.” Permission to use the background of the high school students’ experiences from the narratives in the dissertation.
Used examples of no black cheerleaders, no black football players on the bench, no black voices in student government, school walkouts and boycotts, and parents bringing lunch to students on the lawn during a walkout to tell the story from a student point of view.
The use of the words “Negro” and “colored”, though not politically correct by today’s standards, is era-specific and not intended in any kind of pejorative sense.
For my mother, Peg Harrison, who told a good story and encouraged me to write one.
Author Note
May 17, 1954: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was a landmark US Supreme Court case. The court unanimously declared that state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students was unconstitutional. In 1955, the court ordered states to desegregate “with all deliberate speed.”
July 2, 1964: President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which allowed the federal government to enforce desegregation. The Jim Crow laws of the South were abolished.
Freedom of Choice: A political practice that southern districts adopted in the 1950s and ’60s to delay court-mandated desegregation. Dual zoning of housing—one for blacks, one for whites—was common in the South. Students had the “free choice” to attend a school that was not in their neighborhood. Few made that choice; most students continued to attend racially identifiable schools.
Chapter 1
Colleen
Wednesday, July 2, 1969
Heat shimmered off the highway in waves that created the illusion of puddles. Colleen and Miguel passed a bank with one of those new digital clocks outside. At first, Colleen thought the flashing 106 was the time. It was the temperature.
Sweat trickled down her back. Deal with it, she told herself. It’s not Vietnam. He’s safe and we’re together.
Once they crossed the Mississippi River, the landscape changed from cypress trees draped with Spanish moss to flowering swamp plants. Bayous threaded the low-lying sections of the river plain.
She was entertaining herself with the little rainbows rising from the puddle mirage, when she noticed a wavy mist through the windshield. She blinked. It was still there and rising from the hood of the car.
“Miguel,” Colleen said, “is it really so hot that the hood is steaming?”
“Qué está pasando?” Miguel veered onto the narrow shoulder and opened the car’s hood.
“Yes, what is happening?” she replied. More Spanish streamed from his direction. Colleen stepped out, pressing her fingertips to her temples.
Just three days earlier, she and Miguel had married after a six-month engagement. Impulsive as it seemed to surprised friends and family, it was a simple decision. Life was better when they were together. Since then, they’d driven 1,500 miles from New Jersey. This trip—from the place that had always meant home for Colleen to the Louisiana army
base where Miguel would serve as a drill sergeant—was meant to be the start of their honeymoon.
“Dios mío! The bypass hose is busted. The engine overheated.”
Colleen looked around. “What will we do?”
These back roads from Mississippi to West Louisiana were like nothing she’d ever seen. Highways became narrow, unlined passages with barely enough room for two lanes. They’d passed lawns strewn with rusted cars and shacks with tin roofs—not the stately mansions she’d expected.
But now there were no houses in sight, not even a shack with a wringer washing machine on the porch.
“We’re so close,” Miguel said. “The town line is down the road.”
But they couldn’t leave the car. It contained everything they owned, including some of their wedding gifts: Corningware, a blender, and a nine-inch Sony TV.
“We can wait a bit.”
Colleen closed her eyes and imagined setting up their first home. The noise of a pickup truck interrupted her daydreams. Miguel waved desperately at it. A woman hanging out of the passenger window nodded at him. The longhaired driver saluted and pulled onto the shoulder. Two rifles hung on a rack across the truck’s cab.
“Hi, soldier,” the woman said. “Got some car trouble?”
Miguel ran a hand across his army-regulation haircut. He explained that the car had overheated.
“Well, y’all, we can drive one of you to a garage. It’s on our way.” The woman gave Colleen a wide grin that revealed missing teeth. “Hop in, sweetheart.”
“Yes,” Miguel said. “You go, Colleen. I don’t want to leave you out here alone on the highway.”
Colleen didn’t want to go with these strangers, but she didn’t want to wait along the highway either. She gave Miguel a worried look, then stepped up.
The woman moved over to make room. When she swung into the passenger seat, Colleen shuddered at the sensation of warm breath down her neck. It turned out that another man was sitting in the back. Colleen put one hand on her bare knees to keep them from knocking and rested the other on the door handle.
The woman introduced herself as Maggie and said the men were her nephews, Jack and Jake. As they drove, she peppered Colleen with questions.
“So, that’s your husband?”
“Yes.”
“He’s good-looking for a Mexican, not as dark as most.”
“He’s Cuban, not Mexican.”
“Darlin’, they’re all the same to me.”
Colleen shifted closer to the door.
“How long you been married?” Maggie asked.
“Since Saturday.”
“Oh, we know what you two been doing, don’t we, boys?”
The men snickered. Colleen felt a flush rise from her chest to her cheeks, and she imagined leaping out of the truck and running from these people. Surely everyone down south wouldn’t be this crude, right?
After a seemingly endless drive, the truck turned onto a gravel lane and headed toward a grove of trees and a sign that proclaimed BEST MECHANICS IN WEST LOUISIANA.
Maggie reached over Colleen and opened the truck’s door.
“Here you go, darlin’, safe and sound.” She grinned. “So you can relax now.” Her sarcasm dripped like the sweat down Colleen’s back.
Colleen hopped out of the truck as fast as she could, right onto wobbly legs. Her heart pounded as the truck zipped away.
There weren’t any other vehicles in the garage’s driveway. The building was neat, maybe freshly painted. Not sure whether to be relieved or worried that no one else was around, Colleen walked to the open bay and saw legs poking out from under a truck.
“Excuse me,” she called, “but I need some help.”
A voice answered, “Hold on. I need to tighten this last bolt.”
As Colleen waited, she examined the garage. New tires were stacked neatly in one corner, and well-organized shelves lined every wall. In the back hung an American flag and a Confederate flag. A jolt surged through her body.
In one quick motion, the mechanic pushed himself out from under the truck and stood up. BEAU was embroidered in red on the man’s blue overalls. Oil stains marked the front and sides of his pants. Except for oil-crusted fingers, he was well groomed and clean-shaven, with short hair and disconcerting blue eyes. As he wiped his hands on a towel, Colleen noticed that the skin on his right forearm was patchy and discolored with a ropey scar. She wondered if he’d had some kind of accident.
“Hi, miss, I’m Beau. Where did you come from? How is it that a pretty thing like you is standing here in my garage?”
His leering eyes unsettled her. There was a tire iron by her feet. If she had to, she would grab it. Behind Beau and his crooked smile, the Confederate flag rustled.
Miguel had warned Colleen about how different things were in the South. He hadn’t been sure she should join him in Louisiana. She didn’t want him to be right.
“Our car broke down about five miles back.” Colleen made herself speak up and square her shoulders. “I got a ride here. My boyfriend—I mean, my husband—is waiting at the car.”
“Guess you’re a missus, then.” Beau’s eyes passed over her body anyway.
She tugged at her shorts, but there was no way they could cover her bare legs. “A hose busted, and it overheated. Can you fix it?”
“This is your lucky day, miss—I mean, missus. I just finished work on this truck. My next stop was going to be for a burger, but I can take care of you first. Do you know what hose sprang a leak?”
“The bypass hose, and the car needs coolant.”
“Sounds like you know your way around cars.”
Colleen nodded at the compliment. He didn’t need to know that she had trouble unlatching the hood.
“Come on with me, little lady—unless you want a beer first? I’ve got some in a cooler in the back.” He mopped his neck with a chamois cloth that hung from his belt.
“No, thanks.”
“You sure? It’s a hot one, and I’m mighty thirsty.”
Colleen felt her heart beat in her throat. Miguel was miles away.
She searched for her no-nonsense teacher voice, the one she had used on her students last year, her first year of teaching. “Yes, I’m sure. Can we go to my car now?”
“Your car?”
She wondered why that seemed to surprise him.
Beau muttered, “Little lady comes in for help but can’t give me the time of day.” He grabbed a hose and a container of Prestone antifreeze off a shelf and walked to the tow truck.
For the second time that afternoon, Colleen pulled herself up into the cab of a pickup. At least there wasn’t a rifle rack on the back of this one.
“There he is!” Colleen’s relief produced an audible sigh the moment Miguel came into view. He was sitting by the car on the side of the road. As soon as she stepped down from the truck, he grabbed her by the shoulders, looked directly into her eyes, and said, “Lo siento! Mi amor, qué pasa?”
She pulled away from him. She couldn’t believe Miguel had called her “my love” in front of this stranger. At least the puzzled looked on Beau’s face told her he didn’t understand Spanish.
“Nice car you have there. Whose is it?”
Miguel stood back, looking surprised at the question. “What difference does that make?” His English mixed Jersey City twang with a Spanish accent.
“Your little lady said it was hers, that’s all. Mighty classy for this neck of the woods.” Beau looked under the open hood and whistled. “V-8 engine, too. No wonder the hose busted in this heat.”
Beau leaned back from the car, eyebrows raised. “Where y’all from, Mexico? This is a classy car, Mercury Cougar, black leather seats, Jersey plates. Is it really yours?”
The muscles in Miguel’s arms and shoulders tensed up. “This is our car, and we’re on the way to Fort Polk. Can you take care of it or not?”
He added something that Colleen couldn’t hear, and Beau replied, “Sure can, soldier. I’ll do that, and w
e can both be on our way.”
After Beau replaced the hose and added antifreeze to the radiator, Miguel paid him. As they watched him drive away, Colleen said, “I’ve got a lot to get used to here. Let’s get to the trailer park and unload the car.”
As Miguel opened the door for her, Colleen said, “He thought you were Mexican. Maggie, the woman in the truck, did too.”
“Yup, he did. Mexicans and Negroes are the same here. This is Jim Crow country. But when I told him I’d pay in cash, he got to work fast and stopped asking questions.”
Miguel grabbed Colleen’s hand and squeezed. “I never should have let you go with those people. Lo siento. I was sorry as soon as you drove off.”
As he started the car, Colleen reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette. She lit it with shaky hands and took a deep drag, letting the nicotine soothe her ragged edges.
The gravel road meandered past a dozen trailer homes with just enough space between them for a car or a patio. Miguel passed a cozy-looking trailer with a FOR RENT sign and continued to a much older trailer parked at the end of the road.
“Oh my God.” Colleen clapped her hand to her mouth. “You’ve got to be kidding. It’s turquoise! It has porthole windows! Does it float too?”
“Very funny,” Miguel said. “It’s not that bad. And everything’s included.”
Colleen’s heart sank, but she put on a good face. She wouldn’t let her new husband know that this was not the American dream her upbringing had promised.
Inside the trailer, her resolve to make the best of the situation faded. It was like an oven with the sun beating down on the metal enclosure. She dropped the box she was carrying and sat down heavily on a nearby sofa covered in green Naugahyde.
“Even this couch is hot!” She broke into tears.
Miguel left to go into the bedroom, leaving her feeling deserted. When he returned, he immediately pulled tape and staples off the flap of a large box.
“Here, we have this huge floor fan. You cool off, and I’ll keep unloading our stuff.”