Colleen stared blindly at the Instructor magazine Evelyn had given her. Then she looked up to answer.
“I’m lucky—I have a choice. The inner-city school I resigned from has some openings. It’s been hard to keep teachers since the riots in Newark.”
“Inner city? Black schools?”
“No, it’s an integrated school, and I can probably have my old classroom back. My replacement didn’t stay.”
“So, what’s the choice?”
“I’ve also been offered a job in my hometown. Fourth grade. I turned it down two years ago to work in the city school.”
“Two jobs? Seems like you’ll do fine.” Evelyn’s eyes sparkled as she added, “Maybe you can take some kids to the library.”
Colleen felt her mouth curve into a smile at the bit of humor. She took a risk and hugged her proud and prickly friend.
Miguel added a duffel bag to the three suitcases already in the trunk. The boxes of housewares, linens, and clothes and the stereo system she had packed were gone, shipped to her parents’ house, courtesy of the US Army. Sitting on the backseat was a cooler packed with sandwiches, snacks, and drinks for the trip. Not everything they owned.
Colleen watched Miguel settle into the driver’s seat. The dawn sun gently filtered through the trees behind the trailer. An early start could get them halfway to New Jersey. His two years of enlisted service were over. Her school year was done. Jarrod, Rachel, Cynthia, and Linkston had been her students, yet she had learned more from them than she could ever have imagined. Their parents and the other teachers, especially Evelyn, had made a lasting impression on her. But so had Rita’s and Jan’s vindictive actions.
Miguel leaned over the console to kiss her. “Ready? Let’s go home.”
She nodded, too full of emotion to speak.
Epilogue
Colleen
Thursday, November 5, 1970
Six months later, Colleen walked into school, anxious about that day’s lesson. It was the one-year anniversary of the overnight closure to force public school integration in the small town she had taught in. Memories flooded her mind. On their last day together, Evelyn had given her the latest copy of Instructor magazine, a trusted resource they had used. One article included an exercise written by Jane Elliott, with objectives and activities. After Martin Luther King was shot, a dismayed Elliott had developed the exercise, based on eye color, to teach her students about discrimination. Lessons learned from the year in Louisiana wouldn’t lie quietly for Colleen. Evelyn had known her better than she had realized.
Colleen organized things on her desk, making sure that the shades were exactly even with each other, because if the principal passed by and they weren’t lined up properly, he would come in and fix them. She didn’t want him to have a reason to do that today. He’d have questions. Would he like her answers?
At exactly 8:35 a.m., the bell rang and the students entered the school.
“Good morning, chickadees!” Colleen said, as she opened the door to a line of smiling faces.
As the students started to take the seats that they had used since school started in September, she made an announcement. “Boys and girls, please put your coats on the hooks, but don’t sit until everyone is here.”
Excited chatter spilled into the room.
“Mrs. Rodriguez, what are we doing today? I can help.” Emily was a precocious child. It was hard to stay one step ahead of her.
Colleen stood straighter, with her shoulders thrown back. She knew she was taking a risk, but she started to explain the exercise in a more formal tone than she typically used. “If you have blue eyes, please sit in the three rows near the windows.”
Emily’s blond braids swung wide as she whipped her head around to find her friend Maddy.
“If you have brown eyes, please sit in the three rows closer to the door.”
Emily’s hand shot up, but her words wouldn’t wait for permission to speak. “Maddy and I always sit together. I have blue eyes; she has brown.”
“I know, Emily, but it’s just for today. Can you do what I asked, please?”
Confused expressions washed over their faces, but the children obeyed her. Some looked into each other’s eyes, as if to check that they were walking in the right direction.
During the few minutes while the children moved into different seats, Colleen hesitated and almost changed her mind. The weight of possible consequences held her back for a moment. This was an all-white community. She knew the town well but didn’t understand the history behind its lack of diversity. She counted on her strong reputation as a valuable addition. She had worked for the district each summer during college and had done her student teaching there.
There were a lot of brown-eyed children in her class this year, but not one brown face looked back at her. Then she thought of Jarrod, Rachel, Cynthia, and Linkston. She owed them something. They would never know, but she would.
“Children, today we’re going to see what it’s like to feel different. We’re going to do an experiment.” A few of the students perked up at the word experiment.
“So, for this morning, if you have blue eyes, you will have to be patient with the brown-eyed children, because they’re not as smart as you are.”
Emily’s hand shot up again, but Colleen ignored it. Of course the girl wanted to defend her best friend, but Colleen couldn’t allow any discussion. Not yet. That would come at the end of the day. She plowed through the script printed in the magazine. The night before, she had practiced saying the words aloud so that she wouldn’t choke on them.
“It’s a fact. Blue-eyed people are smarter than brown-eyed people. This morning, only blue-eyed people can use the water fountain. Brown-eyed people will have to use cups.”
Children covered their eyes. “Blue-eyed children may get library books at snack time. Brown-eyed children may not.”
Heads shook in disbelief. Mouths gaped in surprise.
“Blue-eyed people will get five extra minutes at recess because they are better. Brown-eyed children may not play with blue-eyed children.”
Emily put her head down on her desk.
“Blue-eyed people go to lunch first. Brown-eyed people will stand at the end of the line. I’ll explain the rules if you forget.”
Colleen held her head high and took a deep breath for courage. “Now, let’s begin our day. Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.”
Twenty-six pairs of eyes rounded in surprise. It would be a very long day. Could she really do it? Her decision to try the Jane Elliott experience with the children was challenging in more ways than one.
It was a professional risk for a new teacher to try something so controversial. The bile had risen from her gut as she’d recited the script. Were her words covered in the repulsion she felt?
It was also a personal risk. Would she fail? It had not been an easy lesson for her to learn. Not only had she gained new perspectives during the school year in Louisiana, she had also acquired new knowledge of her country—and of herself. She had a responsibility to share that insight.
Author’s Note
What are the Freedom Lessons?
1. Treat others as you would like to be treated.
2. Have courage to confront uncertainty, intimidation or danger.
3. Family provides security, identity and values.
4. Prejudice is taught and learned.
5. It takes individual actions to create social change.
Unapologetically, I am a white woman who has written a book about school desegregation in the Deep South during the school year of 1969-1970 from three points of view: a white woman’s, a black youth’s, and a black woman’s. How could I? Why did I do this? Because I had a story to tell. I wasn’t sure whom it was for. Initially, it was to be a memoir about my own experience that year, for my daughters and my grandchildren. It became a novel, a fictionalized version of a mandated, unplanned, overnight integration of public schools. As I started to write the memoir version forty year
s later, I realized that some parts were missing. I wondered how this same event played out in the lives of the teachers and students I knew at the time.
When I started to research the background of the era that I thought I knew, it became clearer that I knew only my version. With the help of my local librarian, I found and read Gary Clarke, EdD’s, doctoral dissertation, Even the Books Were Separate. It documented the history and emotional impact of, decisions surrounding, resistance to, and life lessons he learned through first-person interviews about that school year. I am most grateful for his 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. Copyright 2006 by Gary Lee Clarke. Reading his work was the first validation of my experience after forty years. Gary was a high school student during the school year 1969–70, when I was a teacher. That year impacted many decisions, particularly career choices, for the remainder of my life. Gary is now a retired school administrator and also served as one of my beta readers.
If any reviewers look at this story through the #ownvoices lens, it won’t pass. But I didn’t write this story for black women or black men, although I hope they read it. I wrote it mainly for white women and white men because in my research I learned things about black history, culture, and families that I never knew. How didn’t I know? When I was a student, these lessons were never taught to us—I had to experience them firsthand. I am open to, curious about, and interested in other cultures. I always have been. I married a Cuban man at a time in our country’s history when our marriage was frowned upon by some and caused some concern in my own family. However, our union has flourished for fifty years. One of our daughters is married to a black man. I attribute the fact that she fell in love with someone from another race and culture to the way we raised our daughters and our continued interest in people from all walks of life. When my husband and I married, our daughter’s marriage would have been illegal in nearby states. There are books and a movie, The Loving Story, that document that truth. I hope that my novel will generate conversations that are necessary in today’s world.
This fifty-year-old story is a reflection of today’s political climate. Unfortunately, many US schools are still segregated, for a variety of reasons. A few still resist the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Discrimination, prejudice, and numerous examples of social injustice remain. Initial interest in reading my book came from readers of historical fiction and social justice stories and for professional development in the realm of discrimination.
The period from June 1969 to November 1970 documents actual events, some that I experienced and attributed to fictional Colleen. The final scene of the book was based on a lesson plan published in an Instructor magazine that I owned at the time. I credit Jane Elliott, the teacher who originally used the lesson in her own classroom the year Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered. However, I would not advise any teacher today to use that lesson in a class of young children. Lessons on discrimination and racial bias should be part of the general curriculum, and teachers should receive professional development on these issues.
When I started to write this book, I wished I’d had a friend to guide me that year, so I created her and named her Evelyn, in honor of a black woman I do call a friend, Evelyn Counts. My real-life Evelyn has always been a kind woman. Frank’s devotion to his family and his loving respect for his mother are based on two men I know well: my husband, Manny, raised in the Cuban culture, and my son-in-law Philip, raised in the Ghanaian culture. If I needed to know how Frank would act in a situation, I channeled one of them. The intersections of Evelyn’s and Frank’s stories with my story are fictionalized versions of factual events that occurred in nearby cities and states during the same year.
This isn’t a white-savior story, nor can I claim to have written a novel of diversity. As a white woman writing in the voice of a young black male and a black woman, I expect some pushback on how I could have done that.
This is how: I asked two black readers to read with a critical eye. I added two white beta readers, who wrote and published similar books representing black voices. Gary’s dissertation and two others gave me firsthand accounts by teachers and high school students, as did newspapers of the day.
I also went back to the school and met the current principal, who was a college freshman during that year. Her brother was one of the black students who was to be held back and not graduate. The scenes in which Penelope argues for the students to be allowed to graduate are entirely fictional but based on a first-person interview reporting that parents did demand that the graduation take place. I have taken care in telling my point-of-view characters’ stories in a respectful manner. I am also an experienced (retired) educator and have worked in segregated and integrated school systems as a teacher, a consultant, and a supervisor.
Ellen Oh, CEO and cofounder of We Need Diverse Books (https://diversebooks.org), encourages writers to create stories that reflect the diversity of the world we live in. Her advice to those who write about IPOC (indigenous people, people of color) is to tell their story properly or be prepared for criticism. Did I need to tell this story? Yes, it is my story too. I did my best to get it right.
Acknowledgments
I claim to be a perennial. Gina Pell is the architect of the concept. She can be found on Twitter @GinaPell or http://thewhatlist.com. Perennials are ever-blooming, relevant people of all ages who know what’s happening in the world, stay current with technology, and have friends of all ages. The fact that I have published a book in my seventh decade has proven to me that life offers us new and exciting opportunities at any age. By maintaining friends of all ages, I gain multiple sources in this world of ours. It is impossible for me to stay current with technology unless I seek out others who do.
I am grateful for family and friends who have encouraged me and confirmed my belief that I needed to tell this story. Maureen Mahon challenged me to write it. Michelle Cameron guided me to find my voice. I have finished my debut novel with her gentle and encouraging mentoring and editing. Elaine Belz and Agnes Golding believed I could do it. Mally Becker, Laura Romain, Niv Miyasato, Connie Fowler, Mary Rahill, Margo Key, Karla Diaz, and Suzanne Moyers, from my Writers Circle writing groups, listened week after week, year after year, and offered insights and advice.
Thanks to my beta readers—Gary Clarke, Evelyn Counts, Judy Pickney, and Roz Miller Choice—who generously gave their time to read early drafts and then provided me with detailed comments, and especially to Susan Follett, whose strong, no-nonsense advice kept me improving the manuscript.
Thanks to Amy Hill Hearth, who guided me to improve the manuscript and encouraged me with specific references to the strong scenes and pinpointed some that needed attention. Her generous support on this journey helped me to believe that this story has value.
Annie Tucker, you are an exceptional editor. You pushed me to improve the manuscript one more time. Your attention to detail is incredible. Katie Caruana polished the manuscript with her proofreading.
Thank you to Brooke Warner, Lauren Wise, Julie Metz, and everyone else at She Writes Press for your innovative vision. Thank you to the whole She Writes community, especially the New York–area group; I am so pleased to be included in this amazing group of women authors.
Thanks to my family: my sister, Celeste, who is my go-to tech support; and my daughters, Elisa, Carla, and Laura, who read my final manuscript on their laptops and gave me the younger generation’s perspective. Thanks to my sons-in-law, Brian, Mike, and Philip, who cheered me on, and to my granddaughters, Mia, Emelia, and Courtney, and grandsons, Max, Kellan, and Jake, who are waiting to read the book that their grandmother wrote. I am hopeful that they will live in a future that doesn’t judge people by the color of their skin.
To my husband, Manny, my life partner, the one person who shared the year this story is based on, the
one who knows me better than anyone else, you are in my future, my past and my present—I love you forever.
About the Author
Photo credit: Jennifer Kearney
Eileen Sanchez is retired after a forty-year career in education. She started as a teacher and ended as a district administrator. She is a reader, a writer, and a perennial—a person with a no-age mindset. Family and friends are the most important parts of her life, followed by traveling and bird watching from her gazebo.
Eileen has been writing for seven years with a writers’ group, the Writers Circle, in Summit, New Jersey (www.writerscircleworkshops.com). She is a member of the Historical Writers of America, the Historical Novel Society, the Philadelphia Stories writers’ community, Goodreads’ American Historical Novels group, and several online writers’ groups on LinkedIn and Facebook.
Book Club
Discussion Questions
1. Colleen married a Hispanic man in 1969, when some states still had laws that prohibited or strongly discouraged marriages between individuals of different skin tones or races. Those laws have changed. Why? How?
2. Although the book does not clearly state this, Colleen grew up in a sundown town. What does that term refer to? Do such towns exist today?
3. The characters Jan, Rita, and Beau reflect the views of segregationists. Do you know people with those opinions today? How can we change those views?
4. Colleen was accused of helping black family members register to vote, like church ladies from the North did. What do you know about that effort? Did she have reason to be afraid?
5. Evelyn was proud to be a third-generation, college-educated teacher following her mother, aunts, and grandmother. Did you know about the legacy of black college education before you read this book, or did it surprise you?
6. What other middle-class professions for blacks are represented in the novel? Why do you think the author included them?
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