Once When I Was Colored . . . (standard:drama, 2728 words)
Author: J P St. Jullian	Added: Jul 14 2002	Views/Reads: 3528/2377	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A nostalgic look back at life for black people in sixties Mississippi and beyond.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

moment, then continued.  We engaged in awkward conversation for about 
10 minutes, then the ice broke.  She reached her soft, white little 
hand over and rubbed on my arm, then looked at her hand.  She seemed 
surprised that it hadn't rubbed off. 

“Hey Sarah,” she yelled to her sister, “it don' rub off liken papa say!”
 She turned and grabbed a handful of my thick hair and pulled.  Then 
she started to rub her hand back and forth across my head.  Actually, 
since my father was three quarter Choctaw, my hair was very wavy, 
except when there was a lot of humidity.  Then it curled.  The point is 
that it wasn't (isn't) kinky. 

“That feel good, yo' har, it feel good!  So sof' n' spongy.”  she
retorted.  “I thank I mite' like colored har, n' skin too!”  My being 
colored was brought home to me right then and there.  Meeting this 
little white girl, with her deep brunette hair, beautiful light brown 
eyes, dark complexion (for a white kid) and easy manner set the tone 
for my likes and dislikes in the physical attributes AND personalities 
of white women for the rest of my life.  That's the day that I 
officially became colored, in my own mind. 

But Katie was not done.  She wanted to share her discoveries with her
little sister, Sarah. 

“Hey, Sarah,” she called, “c'mon ovah heah n' lookit this.”  Sarah
timidly inched her way over to where we were, holding a doll under her 
left arm and sucking her right thumb. 

Removing the thumb, she scolded her sister. 

“Katie,” she started, “you kno's what papa done said,” she admonished. 
“If'n papa kno' you done teched dat nigga, he whops you good.” 

“C'mon Sarah,” the older girl begged, “ain't nothin wrong wit what I a'
doin'.  Come feel dis har ‘n tech dis purty brown skin, you gotta, you 
jes' gotta'.” she wheedled.  As an afterthought, she strolled over and 
whispered in her sister's ear, “Don' call ‘im a nigga ta ‘is face 
Sarah! It mite hurt ‘is feelins.” 

Reluctantly, Sarah sidled over and touched my hair, then rubbed it.  I
felt like an idiot standing there while two white girls were busy 
rubbing and crunching my hair.  Just then my mother came to the door 
and called the two girls away.  I was so glad.  I turned back to my 
unending chores, but couldn't help thinking how unafraid and unwavering 
Katie seemed to be.  She had actually enjoyed touching my naked arm, 
and my hair.  The thought scared me some.  I had a feeling that she 
would find a way to come back out and examine me further.  However, it 
felt really good to know that a white person might like being colored 
with black wavy hair, even if that person was just a silly kid. 

I had more visits from the Smith sisters that day while I struggled to
finish my chores, and as unlikely as it may seem, a bond was cemented 
that day between Katie and I that was never broken, even after we 
became adults.  Not so with Sarah.  In her mind, she and I remained on 
a sort of  “master/slave” level.  But that one day in my life, that one 
change in my daily routine, was the day that I truly became colored in 
my own eyes.  I was now and forever, a colored boy.  In my heart, as 
well as in the mirror, I became a fast brown color, warranted not to 
rub off, and not to fade or run when washed. 

Many colored people of that era were "tragically" colored.  What I mean
by that is that many only saw gloom and doom around every corner, with 
great sorrow dammed up in their souls or lurking behind their eyes.  I 
used to hear about some of the men talking on weekends while they sat 
around in the dirty little country taverns ran by black landlords from 
a spare room in their homes or some broken down shack.   The poorer 
Black men would gather to drink beer, gamble, and talk about things.  
When I was a teenager sometimes I would listen from a slight distance 
to their talk of how nature had dealt the Black man a lowdown dirty 
hand.  But even then, with the help of my school teachers I reasoned 
that the world would go to the strong and the determined who bothered 
to prepare themselves, regardless of a little pigmentation of the skin, 
more or less.  The Black man would have to fight valiantly for his 
portion, but he could get it if he was willing to fight and work for 
it.  I was taught not to weep and rage at the world.  One of my 
teachers, Mrs. Lizzie McMorris, told me that the world would be my 
generations oyster, and that we should be too busy sharpening our 
oyster knives to worry about being the great, great grandchildren of 
slaves.  I endeavor to teach my children the same lesson.  Slavery is 
more than 137 years in the past. My prognosis for myself is that the 
operation was successful, and the patient is doing well, thank you very 
much! 

As far as I am concerned, the terrible struggle in this nation called
the Civil War made Americans out of potential slaves, and that says to 
me, “RUNNERS, TAKE YOUR MARKS!” Then the Civil Rights Movement of the 
sixties with all its anguish, said to me, “GET SET!” And the generation 
of fine teachers that taught me said, “GO!”  I got off to a flying 
start, and the only one who could have halted me, was and still is, me. 
 We as a people, held center stage in the nation for a time, with 
spectators that didn't know whether to laugh or weep, and some who 
couldn't have cared less.  That generation of Blacks from the sixties, 
liberated by the blood of martyrs, shall get twice as much praise, and 
blame, for any acts of theirs on the stage of life. Jesse Jackson, Al 
Sharpton and others are living proof of that.  Not since Reconstruction 
has any generation of Black people had a greater chance for achievement 
than this one.  It's up to each of us to take advantage of and use all 
opportunities that come our way, and to teach our children that, THEY 
CAN IF THEY REALLY WANT TO!  THEY CAN IF THEY THINK THEY CAN! THEY HAVE 
TO REALLY BE HUNGRY FOR IT. 

On a more personal note, the position of my white neighbors of that
period in the south of the sixties was a lot more difficult. They were 
waging a futile war to hold on to a vanishing lifestyle.  They did some 
unseemly things to try and keep what they believed was theirs by right. 
Most have seen the folly in trying to prevent the inevitable, and for 
some it has been a hard lesson.  I am not accompanied by any brown,  
dark skinned or white skinned specters who pull up a chair beside me 
when I sit down to eat.  No dark skinned or white ghosts thrust their 
legs against mine or shares my pillow in bed when I sleep, as I am sure 
the ghosts of Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King, those four little girls 
from the church in Alabama, and a host of other slain Black martyrs 
have done to many whites of that era and before.  But time and new 
generations that grow up in the “New South”  will eventually eliminate 
the ghosts, I hope. 

I emerged from a cocoon of unconsciousness and burst into the conscious
era of enlightenment.  I went to college, got a fairly decent 
education, served in the Vietnam War, and made the military a career.  
I am well traveled with much experience in life. But there are times 
when I am thrown against a pure white background, and at those times I 
do not feel African American, Afro-American or Black.  That feeling is 
totally humbling, making me feel “colored” again. The town we live in 
now is indicative of this.  It is in the Southwestern United States and 
is mostly a White and Hispanic environment.  There are times I feel 
surrounded by a sea of cream, but all through it I remain me; and when 
the ebb and flow is done, I am revealed as myself again. 

I have always hated it when those who are hung up on race, try to put me
in a little racial box. Aside from Choctaw, I have French, Scottish, in 
my ancestry.  I glory in each of these, and there are things about each 
that I treasure more than the others.  But the people who love to do 
statistics will always place me in that box with all the other Black 
people, discounting my other possibilities, regardless of what they 
are.  A good example of that is demonstrated in the progeny of mixed 
marriages where one of the partners is white.  For instance, if a white 
man married a Philippino woman with a moderately dark complexion and 
they have children with more white features than Philippino, and can 
pass for white other than having a slightly permanent tan, these 
children are automatically designated as white in this country.  If the 
same white man married a black woman with the same features as the 
Philippino woman, and they had children with the exact same features as 
the ones from the Philippino marriage, then these would automatically 
be designated as Black simply because their mother is black.  Why is 
that?  The second set of kids look exactly the same (feature wise) as 
the first but they are black and the first set is white. 

Conversely, if a very, very light skinned black man marries a white
woman and their children turn out to be little darker than their mother 
with straight blonde, brunette or auburn hair, they too are classified 
as Black, because their father is Black.  By the same token I've seen 
with my own eyes, legal white people whose hair is just a kinky as the 
blackest man in the USA.  It makes no sense. 

Then there is the extreme other end of the spectrum for me, when I feel 
I have no race at all.  At these times I feel more like a dark brown 
bag, stuffed full of miscellaneous trinkets and baubles, and propped 
against a wall in company with other bags of red, white, yellow and 
brown.  Pour out the contents of each bag, and you may find a jumble of 
small things, priceless and worthless.  A fine diamond, an empty thread 
spool, an old pocket knife, bits of broken colored glass, some lengths 
of string, a piece of carved wood, a key to a door long crumbled away, 
a rusty knife blade, some old shoes meant to walk a road that never was 
and never will be, an old rusty nail bent from the weight of things 
much too heavy for any nail to bear, a stuffed toy, a little plastic 
car that's missing a wheel, and a couple of still slightly fragrant 
dried flowers put there long ago by some loving hand.  I stand with a 
bag in my hands and its contents on the floor.  I think for a moment, 
that I will empty all the other bags, all in a mixed heap on the floor, 
and then refill them from the heap, without regard for altering their 
contents much at all.  A bit of broken glass, a piece of wood, or a 
small length of string , more or less, won't matter at all if it 
happens to get into a different bag.  Then, I think to myself, that 
perhaps-----maybe----- this is how the Great Stuffer of Bags filled 
them up in the first place----who knows? 


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