Freedom Lessons

by Eileen Harrison Sanchez

  “Ah, not an officer’s wife. Of course. Officers’ wives teach at the white school. Mr. Peterson, our principal, asked me to look after you. He’ll want to meet with you too. We’ll talk more soon.” With that, Evelyn turned on her heel and strode out.

  Colleen pursed her lips. Why did she need looking after? She reached into her pocketbook for a tissue and blotted the sweat from the back of her neck.

  Chapter 5

  Frank

  Saturday, September 6, 1969

  The school year officially started with the first football game of the season. For ten years, West Hill High School had won the Negro League title. No wonder the bleachers were packed with students and parents.

  Two minutes remained on the clock, and West Hill was down by three points. It was now or never.

  Frank saw the opposing team’s tight end fumble at the forty-yard line. He hurtled forward and scooped up the football. The ball bounced up, slipped from his right hand, bounced again. Frank caught it, gripped the leather, and it held. He heard the roar from the stands as the cheerleaders led the crowd in chanting his name.

  “Frank, Frank, he’s our man. If he can’t do it, no one can!

  “Go, team!”

  Elbows in tight, flanked by a linebacker, he crossed the goal line for a touchdown, giving his team the first win of the new season. Lifting the ball above his head, his legs spread wide, he looked around for Dedra. He knew she’d led his chant. Each cheerleader was assigned a player, and she had his name. The team surrounded him, lifted him, and carried him off the field. His teammates put him down in front of the coach.

  “Frank! Your papa would be proud!”

  “Thank you, Coach.”

  Frank wished his father could have seen that play. He had taught Frank to grip the ball with fingers split and not on the point. Grip and hold, elbow in, forearm up. He could almost hear his father’s voice: “That way, the ball can roll against your chest when you run.”

  With both hands on Frank’s shoulders, Coach said, “You recovered that fumble like a pro. We won that game because of you. Too bad the Southern University scout wasn’t here today.”

  “Do you know when he’s coming?”

  “End of October, I hope. If you keep playing like you did today, you have a long future ahead, with football leading the way. Times are changing, Frank; professional football teams are starting to integrate. You can do what I couldn’t.”

  The locker room might have provided an escape from the throngs of spectators but not from Frank’s teammates. Between punches on the shoulder and towel snapping, Frank was taking more hits than he had on the field.

  “Hey, Frank,” Willy said. “That cheerleader Dedra’s been waiting for you to come out.”

  The room erupted into a high-pitched chorus of “Frankie! Oh, Frankie!”

  But Frank didn’t care. Dedra was student council president, smart, beautiful, and a cheerleader. He finished changing and promised to meet his teammates later to celebrate the win.

  There she was, talking to her friends. Dedra still wore her cheerleader uniform, which showed how great her legs were. She walked away from the chattering group to meet him.

  “Frank Woods! Been waiting on you! Are you coming to the church hall? Reverend Wilford is letting us use it to celebrate.”

  “Yes, I’m coming. But I have something to do first, and then I have to stop home. I’ll be there later.”

  Disappointment flashed across her face. “Later? But you’re the reason we’re celebrating, and my daddy is letting me stay out, but only till ten o’clock.”

  Frank didn’t think the day could get any better and took a chance. “Can you walk with me? My mother won’t mind if you stop in—in fact, she’d like it. She thinks you’re a good influence. My sister is a freshman and wants to be a cheerleader like you.”

  Dedra hesitated, and he thought she was going to give him an excuse. Why would she want to walk to his house and then over to the church hall? Even if she did come, she would see the stop he had to make. No one knew what he did every day on his way home.

  “Sure, I can walk with you. And I can help your sister when cheerleading tryouts come along. Sissy is her name, right? Hmm, I like that big smile of yours.”

  Frank could feel his grin stretch across his face as they walked off together. Dedra was easy to talk to, and before he realized it, they were at the intersection. He needed to tell her now.

  “Can we turn here? I have to stop two streets over. It won’t take long.”

  Frank led Dedra to the old horse-and-tractor barn that his father had rented years earlier. The hand-painted sign on the cinder-block wall still announced SHELTON’S AUTO REPAIR.

  Dedra looked around. “Was this your dad’s place?”

  “Yes. I come by most days.”

  Located on a corner of the farm owned by Penelope Woods, Shelton’s great-aunt, it was well situated. Cars and trucks passed through the intersection of the two-lane road leading into town and the main road out of town. But all that passing traffic meant that trash accumulated in unsightly clumps.

  Frank picked up a dented soda can hidden in the scrub grass.

  “What are you doing?” Dedra asked.

  “Part of the agreement my dad had with Auntie Penelope was to keep the corner clean of trash.”

  “But, Frank …” Dedra frowned.

  He knew why she was confused: his father had passed three years earlier. She didn’t remember or had never known that local white businessmen hadn’t liked the fact that Shelton had been the treasurer for the local NAACP. The trouble started after he opened his car and truck repair shop on nights and weekends. The black community preferred him to the local white establishment.

  “Auntie was getting on in years and couldn’t keep up the place. My dad promised to keep an eye on the property and do general cleanup.”

  “Do you still use the land?”

  “No, but it was my job to check this corner on my way home each day. Sometimes I skipped it. I didn’t come the day of the fire. Why should I pick up stuff folks just toss out the window?”

  Frank stopped and took a deep breath. This wasn’t a good idea. He could feel the emotion building behind his eyes. Dedra put her hand on his arm. He couldn’t cry in front of her. He bent over to pick up some candy wrappers.

  “You didn’t come that day,” she said, “so you come now.”

  She seemed to understand something that Frank had never admitted to anyone, something that haunted him. Because if he’d come that day like he’d been supposed to, maybe he could have stopped what had happened and his father would be alive.

  Dedra handed him another soda can. The lump in Frank’s throat loosened.

  Frank walked around the house to enter through the kitchen door. He was late after walking Dedra home following the celebration at the church hall.

  “Franklin Delano Woods, I hear you sneaking in. Come say good night to your mama.”

  He should have known she’d be up. She was hanging the last of the shirts she ironed for white ladies who expected them the next morning.

  “Good night, Mama. Time for you to sleep too.”

  Heart pounding, Frank ran as fast as he could toward the heat. Flames shot above the trees. The fire was close to the garage. Someone rolled across the grass. Rolling, rolling to smother the fire engulfing the body. Frank pulled off his shirt, ready to swat the flames. Other people were running, shouting, “Stand back!” Someone shoved him aside. The man on the ground wore his father’s blue jacket.

  His knees buckled under him as he heard the burning man scream.

  One of the men commanded, “No! Now, you be strong, son. Get your mama!”

  But how could Frank tell his mother? He could hear her voice as if she were next to him. He saw her collapse to the floor, but he knew she was blocks away. He stood there as men placed his father in the back of a pickup truck and drove toward the infirmary on the army base.

  Still in shock, Frank saw his father�
��s shoe—black leather cracked from the heat—and bent to get it. A silver glint flashed next to the shoe. Frank picked it up: a small metal object with initials engraved on one side. He put it in his pocket and heard his mother calling his name.

  His mother’s cool hand stroked his cheek. “Frank, Frank! I heard you shout. Hush, now, hush. You were only dreaming.”

  Chapter 6

  Colleen

  Thursday, September 11, 1969

  At the end of each day, Evelyn stopped at Colleen’s classroom to ask, “Still here, Mrs. Rodriguez?” And Colleen would smile and say, “Still here, Mrs. Glover.”

  Colleen’s initial impression of a well-appointed classroom had quickly faded. One of her desk drawers didn’t work properly, and the reading table was chipped. Some of the shelves under the students’ chairs were broken, so those children stored their belongings on the floor. When the bell rang for dismissal, they moved their things to their chairs so the custodian could sweep and mop.

  Her biggest disappointment was the reading books. The bindings were repaired, glued, or reinforced, and it was clear that the books were respected, but they were outdated hand-me-downs, bearing the imprint THIS BOOK BELONGS TO KETTLE CREEK ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, not THIS BOOK BELONGS TO WEST HILL SCHOOL.

  Two weeks into the school year, Colleen sat at the reading table with her plan book and some of the readers spread out before her. Evelyn entered the room, sat down on a low student chair, and smiled—a bit strained, but it was still a smile, a sign of friendship. Colleen felt encouraged, seeing it. Could she be honest and ask for Evelyn’s advice?

  Colleen picked up one of the readers and opened to the page with Dick and Jane hurrying to help their mother take the clothes off the line because it had started to rain. Colleen had taught from the 1965 edition in her last school. In it, a Negro family with twin sisters Penny and Pam and their brother, Mike, were friends of Dick, Jane, and Sally.

  “Evelyn,” Colleen said, “this is a really old book, from 1956. Why don’t we have the new edition?”

  Evelyn’s rare smile disappeared. “We take what we get, and this is what we get. Did you look at the inside page? All the books came from the white school. When they got the new books, we got ‘new’ ones too.”

  Colleen felt her eyes widen.

  Evelyn shook her head. “Don’t look so shocked. Some folks think we should be grateful that we have a Negro school at all. ‘Separate but equal.’ A friend of mine had to set up a new classroom in a white school this year, and she found out that they store the books in different stockrooms: colored and white. If they can’t even mix the books, how do they think they can mix the students and the teachers?”

  Colleen spoke carefully. “I’m just trying to understand how you relate stories and children like Dick and Jane to your students’ lives with these old books.”

  “What do you mean?” Evelyn’s mouth tightened.

  “Since I don’t have a teacher’s guide, I’ve been writing comprehension questions for the class tomorrow.”

  “Comprehension questions?”

  “Yes, like, did they ever paint a chair like Dick did? Or float paper boats in a puddle?”

  “Of course they painted a chair! Probably painted all the chairs and the table, maybe whitewashed a fence too. You’re going to waste time talking about floating paper boats?”

  Colleen leaned back in her chair and almost tipped over.

  “Let’s work on the basics first, all right?” Evelyn said. “These students are in 2C because they need more help than 2A or 2B classes. Drill and practice, Colleen, then drill and practice again. Be sure that they write every day. Don’t accept any careless work.”

  Evelyn stood so quickly that she almost knocked the chair over.

  Colleen watched Hurricane Evelyn leave. Why had her simple question about reading create such a storm?

  She rose, trying to shake the unsettling feeling Evelyn had left her with. Instead, she focused on the pride her students took in their classroom. She was used to children forgetting to push in their chairs or leaving their belongings on the floor of the closet. These were the neatest seven-year-olds she had ever seen.

  While Colleen was packing up her things to leave, Evelyn returned to the classroom, playing nervously with her pearl necklace. “Colleen, can we talk a bit?”

  “Sure,” Colleen said. “I hope my question about the reading books didn’t offend you.”

  Still lingering in the doorway, Evelyn shook her head. She cleared her throat.

  “I was going to tell you this before. Mr. Peterson asked me to alert you to some events that happened last week not far from here. Some Negro teachers had to be escorted from their cars to the school building.”

  “My goodness, what happened?”

  “They were assigned to the white school, along with a handful of Negro students. An angry mob outside the building demanded that they leave. The school had to be closed, for now, at least.”

  The words angry mob sent Colleen back to her hometown the night they closed the store she’d worked in. It was July 1967, and the Newark riots were on TV and the front pages of the papers. Police advised stores and residents in the community to stay indoors. The store was off a main highway and easily accessible to the crowd of rioters spilling over from the violence ten miles away. Colleen’s town had been targeted because it was known to be a segregated white community.

  “Well”—Colleen tried to sound confident—“are the children in danger? The teachers?”

  “Mr. Peterson just wants you to know. You should be aware that these things are happening. White families are withdrawing their children from the integrated classes. There’s some talk that they’ll set up their own school.”

  “What does Mr. Peterson want us to do?”

  “Nothing, Colleen.” Evelyn’s voice caught. “There’s nothing for us to do, except do our jobs for these children.”

  Chapter 7

  Frank

  Thursday, September 11, 1969

  Thwack … thwack … thwack.

  Frank heard the tennis ball slam again and again against the back of the school gym. A smile spread across his face when he saw Dedra in a short white skirt that revealed her shapely, athletic legs. She was playing an imaginary opponent as she practiced her forehand, aiming high, low, left, and right. Dedra returned each volley steadily and consistently.

  Frank admired her powerful swing as much as the repetitive motions of her muscular arms. He stood at the edge of the pavement, his heart beating fast. His dream was that football would take him to college, to a better life. He knew Dedra had a dream too: to be the next Althea Gibson.

  Finally, Dedra missed a return, and the ball rolled next to Frank’s feet.

  “Frank Woods, how long have you been standing there? Are you watching me?”

  She walked toward him, the tennis racket swinging by her side. A rosy glow accented her big smile.

  “Sure I was. You’re really good. When are you going to play against a person? That wall can’t take much more of you.”

  “None of the other girls are interested. There’s no court, and the volleyball net is too high.” Dedra shook her head. “Football practice must have ended a while ago. What are you still doing here?”

  “I was with Coach.”

  Dedra zipped her tennis racket into its case and wiped her face with a small towel. “Well, I’d better get going.”

  Frank didn’t want the moment to end. “Can I walk you home?”

  Dedra lived a mile past his house on a small farm, and the trip would make him later than he already was, but he didn’t care.

  Dedra’s smile faded. “No, my daddy wouldn’t like that.”

  “He’d rather have you walk alone?”

  “No, he doesn’t know I stay here after the other girls leave. But he’s strict about boys visiting. If he saw you without knowing about it first, it would be the last time you could come over.”

  Relieved that she was refusing him only because
of her father’s rules, Frank gathered the courage to try once more. “Can we walk as far as the road splits off?”

  “Sure, and then you can tell me why you were talking to your coach.”

  Without asking, Frank lifted her bag full of books and tennis balls, and they headed down the road past the school.

  Chapter 8

  Evelyn

  Thursday, September 11, 1969

  Retreating behind her home’s heavy oak door always made Evelyn feel safe. But not tonight. She was upset. Upset that her friend’s picture was on the front page of the newspaper. Upset that she had become emotional in front of Colleen as she’d told the story. What had she been thinking?

  That Colleen. How could a white teacher know how to teach these youngsters? A white woman with no history in this part of the world, who’d never been to church with her students, who didn’t know their brothers, sisters, parents. Who’d be gone soon enough, most likely.

  Evelyn sat heavily at her kitchen table, with its one place mat, and waited for the water to boil for tea. She’d lived alone since her parents had passed.

  The newspaper was still open to the photo, just as she’d left it. Mildred’s face was in the center of the picture. She looked determined and strong, her eyes fixed on the camera, and Evelyn felt a surge of admiration for her dear friend. By contrast, the Negro woman standing behind Mildred was looking down, fear creeping into the turn of her mouth.

  The federal marshals who’d escorted the Negro teachers to their cars were in the picture too. Their heads and eyes were averted from the camera, as if they were embarrassed to be there. Evelyn read the article beneath the picture and raised her hand to cover her mouth. It included strong resistance in a comment credited to a middle-class white man: “No court order will ever end segregation down here. The government doesn’t understand.”