Lingering Jim Crow

My great grandmother Coyle (nee Seabolt) died ten days after Grandma was born and a black woman became Grandma’s nurse maid – her name long forgotten. Being from the south, in “Jim Crow” times, grandma apparently grieved at the way she personally treated this black woman who’d breastfed her. It seems the nursemaid was an ongoing presence in Grandma’s life after she was weaned. When Pop went back to Kentucky to visit Grandma’s family in the early sixties, several years after Grandma died, he took a picture of this forgotten old woman who remembered him as “Miz Belle’s husband”. From the stories told and from the nature some of her children inherited, my grandmother must have been very tender hearted. In a time when people ridiculed “niggers” with no second thought, Grandma Oldham stands out to me as a force of conscience in a shameful period for America and both sides of my family.

Neither the Douglass nor the Oldham families were vicious, mean spirited nor did they bear ill will regarding race matters. But the subtle, underlying reality is that subconscious attitudes existed. Typical of the time and place, my family’s views of other people were southern. The examples below, for the most part reflect attitudes as I remember them in the 1950’s and 1960’s and I simply point out that many years have passed as such tendencies were slowly expunged.
“Jim Crow” is the subject of a song caricaturing the southern American Black after the Civil War in which the catch phrase is “I weel around and jump Jim Crow”. A happy smiling, joking clowning black man was the stereotype and that behavior was intended to calm the underlying white terror of retribution from a freed black population. While intended to mitigate, being a phony act for the most part, it actually masked and perpetuated contemptuous white violence toward the black man, confiscation of his property, and effective disenfranchisement by denying education and access to vote. This period came to be labeled “The Jim Crow Era” and continued with routine hangings and contrived abuse (laws were passed and now referred to as “Jim Crow” laws) until after World War I or much later in some areas. One white woman reported being inadvertently bumped by a black man. She was astonished at his look of terror over this “hanging crime” and his frantic attempts to escape the situation. So this era and area shaped both sides of my family. It may be distasteful to discuss, but it’s a component of both Douglass and Oldham heritages and it was engrained in the community and culture at large. Nancy do I footnote any of this?
“Pop”, my granddad, was a foreman on a share cropper farm in near Ennis, Texas. Once in the black quarters, quite apart from the home grandma and grandpa lived in, a ruckus occurred. A black woman screamed and cried for a long time. “They’ll kill you”, grandma was quoted as saying when she prevented Pop from going to the blacks’ quarters “to see what all the carrying on was about”.
Clayton, our county seat, had a lone black cowboy known as “Nigger Bill” as a resident. In the late thirties and forties, signs are reported to have been posted in towns along the Burlington Northern Railroad which ran through Northwest Texas, our part of New Mexico and into Colorado which read, “Niggers, don’t let the sun set on you in this town.” Other words in the community were “nigger shooters”, “nigger toes”, and the like.
The attitude in the community extended to some degree towards the Mexican/American population. As shameful as it was and is, subtle bigotry existed. The tale is told in northeastern New Mexico of the notorious train robber, Blackjack Ketchum, and his gang that saw a Mexican riding off in the distance. Blackjack pulled out a gun and shot him. This thug was so heavy that when they hung him for robbing trains, a vey well attended public event in Clayton, an improperly placed noose and rope popped off his head when he dropped through the trap door in the gallows. When exhumed years later to verify he was still in the grave, it was colorfully reported that his fingernails and hair had grown. Probably, the fact that the fluids from his body had evaporated, shrink wrapping his body with skin and thus exaggerated the length of hair and nails in comparison to his face and hands was ignored.
Once in the 1930’s, Great Uncle Artie, his sister Pearl, and my Great Grandparents were in the process of relocating to Espanola, New Mexico, where the Pueblo Indian huts along the Rio Grande and adobe Mexican homes scattered on historic Spanish Land Grant land, provided good mercantile opportunities for a “white” man. That venture ended when Uncle Artie died of asthma and Great Grandpa became melancholy and longed to move back to Seneca near Pop and Grandma. Dad recalls driving with Pop and Uncle Adrian to Espanola to move them back. Tires were precious and every few miles they’d stop to fix a flat tire. They’d jack up the car, remove the tire and locate the cause of the flat, pull out and inflate the tube, and spit on it to locate the hole where escaping air caused the spit to bubble. Then the area around the hole was roughed and cleaned with a file and then a hot patch kit was screwed to the tube with a device. The patch had something like gunpowder or maybe the easily ignited material found in fire works. That was fired with a match and it flared for a few seconds, melding the tube and the patch. Careful to inspect the interior of the tire, any nail was removed and thrown well away from the road as a courtesy to the next travelers. Replacing the tire, the car was lowered and they traveled on until the routine was again necessary.
Once, Grandma Hartman (formerly Douglass) shushed me and made me sit down. Riding down Polk Street in Amarillo, Texas with Parker and Grandma Hartman, I stood between them, excited as a four or five year old can be seeing a big town with people out on the busy street. “Looky, looky, Grandma. There’s a nigger”. Polk Street was named for President Polk who took the Manifest Destiny Doctrine to Mexico and insured New Mexico became part of the United States as a result of the Mexican American War. It also made many Mexicans into Americans.
Once, a cousin and I visited about the immigrants who come to United States and perform the labor that some “Americans” are unwilling or are not forced to do. (This is another version of slave labor in my opinion). Anyway he said he didn’t mind them coming up to our country but he didn’t like them changing our language. Along the border towns there are movements to have dual language education or disseminate public information in Spanish and English. Because the issue is too complicated and because I love him, I couldn’t bring myself to point out that the Texas Revolution and the Mexican/American War changed the official language of a large portion of the Texas and New Mexico population over a hundred and fifty years ago. Sometimes, major cultural issues aren’t solved by talking about them with loved ones.
The issue of race crept into little songs that were sung. They weren’t mean spirited per se, but reflect the times. With no malice, June, a Douglass aunt and a worker down in east Texas, would sing to all the children as she passed through our homes, “I’m a little pickaninney, blacker than a crow. I’m as sweet as black molasses, ‘cause mammy told me so”. It seemed cute, but as time wore on and times changed it seemed increasingly inappropriate and in the latter years, I don’t recall hearing it sung. At the dinner for their sixty fifth wedding anniversary in 2009, Mom and Dad sang a catchy duet from their young days about a little slave boy who fell in love with May a slave girl with another owner. “Oh May, dearest May. You’re lovely as the day. Your eyes so bright, they shine at night and gwine away” “I cried so hard when I leff her, cause Massa came….” Again, there was no malice, just a facet of our culture.
And, finally, there was the occasion in the 1950’s that we were a happy family on our way to convention with three little kids in the back seat. Someone said “Dale, I bet you are going to grow up and marry a little black girl.” And I was teased when I wouldn’t deny that I might just marry a little black girl. So now in the late 2000’s it is with that background that I add a side note of introduction for Rochelle Alexander of Paducah, Tennessee, a lady with sensuous, slender ebony hands and calls me “the man with the hugs” in her emails. I would like to think that maybe, just maybe some of that legendary Grandma Oldham goodness crept into my blood. I know my angst over this issue may sound patronizing to the black race. Having lived among black people in the Army, on the street, in rehabs and elsewhere, I know, to my regret, that they sense something of old, southern bigotry in me. Probably, I will never be allowed a close relationship with most of them it is why it is important that Rochelle loved me because she recognized it and forgave it. Perhaps in the spirit of Grandma Oldham, my children will carry balm to the racial rupture.