From my front porch…
It is night again and in its silence, I want to raise out of historical oblivion Black race women who loved generations as if each of us was their child.
From the early days of my childhood, Black race women inhabited my life. These women were a constant presence in my life. We were for each other a familiar. I knew them like I knew the lifelines in my hands. Everywhere I looked race women populated my growing space. They raised me in the church, community, school and on the playground. In many ways, they were my other mamas, and I was their “omanish” girl child whom they loved even as they shook their heads at my fast mouth and unorthodox ways.
Everywhere I went as a young person there was a race woman beckoning me to “come here” or “speak louder.” They sat in the deaconess corners or on front porches or presided over classrooms, honor societies, cheering squads, Majestic Ladies, Tri-Hi-Y and Sunday school classes. They taught me how to carry myself well and dignified. Even when I grew up and left them to go my way, they continued to exist in and with me. I heard their voices like a steady drumbeat that helped establish the rhythm of my life.
Mrs. Armstrong was an unapologetic race woman who loved her students across our differences. We called her “big red” behind her back. Everyone in Columbus knew that “you did not mess with Marian’s children.” At Carver High school, she was a force. She took students into her home room class whom the world dismissed as thugs and problems. They both loved and feared her. When she spoke, they listened because they knew that she would knock down doors to give them a chance in life. Many of her male students were actually too old to be in school. But, that did not stop her. She changed their ages and dared anyone to question her. They repaid her with a fierce loyalty and a high school diploma. Her determination to educate her students and advance their lives was the defining aspect of her life as a teacher and race woman.
I met her in the seventh grade when she selected me to be in her homeroom where I stayed until I graduated. My classmates teased me about being her pet. I suppose in many ways they were right. We were fiercely dedicated to one another. But, this did not lessen her expectations of me or free me from her insightful tongue. There was no mountain too high that she did not encourage me to climb. It was in her class that I learned an important lesson about the abuse of power. She let me eat in class which broke the no eating in class rule. Her silence infuriated my friends, and that evening they took me under the hill and surrounded me. Afraid to hit me, they decided to shout through the streets on the way home, “Ruby Nell got beat today.” Their organized protest and public chastisement were justice lessons that began my early reflections on power, protest and abuse of power.
My point is that race women were not always fair or even-handed, but even their unfairness generated important lessons. Despite their human weaknesses, their dedication to the race and young people was unbending. As race women, they are not to be confused with White race people who used race as an organizing tool for White supremacy. They understood that their loyalty to the Black race did not require them to be anti-white. Nor did being a race woman circumscribe their movement or vision in the world.
When I went with students from Tuskegee to march on the capitol in Montgomery, and when the police drove us into Dexter Avenue Baptist Church where the deacons turned off the water and heat to force us out, Mrs. Armstrong drove all the way to Montgomery from Columbus, Georgia to see if her students were alright. She convinced all of them to leave the church except me. When she left, she gave me a look of exasperation edged with a smile of agreement. She told my mother later that she knew that I would not leave. Despite her fear that White vigilantes would kill me because of my work in the Movement, she was proud of me and defended my decision to participate and to even cut my hair into an Afro.
Mrs. Armstrong is dead, but every day I hear her voice asking annoying and insightful questions. Yesterday, she asked, “Ruby Nell, when did we move from living in neighborhoods to ghettos?” Her question resonated deeply because it says so much about how we value our lives and the places that we make and call home. Neighborhood implies connections, intimacy and relationships. Ghettos conjure up disconnection, brokenness and deficits. Ultimately ghettos become “hoods.”
I thought about that generation of race women today as I listened to White supremacists. They would not have wasted their time dignifying them or giving them “the time of day.” Instead, they would have worked harder to produce good students who would grow to avenge white supremacy by up building powerful, outstanding, committed and caring generations.
Although individual race women still exist, integration scattered them as a group, and they could not find their footing in a world that paraded as post racial. Everyday I think of the gaps that their absence created for subsequent generations. I too feel the loss, however unlike my younger community members, their memory is for me a light tender breeze that still blows in my heart.