Dorothea

I’m the oldest of four sisters. I want my younger sisters to know that this narrative is correct to the best of my knowledge, even though differences in our ages probably color how we remember our father. I was born and raised in Park Addition on the outskirts of Staunton in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia (see Map 4.1). Because everyone around us was poor, I didn’t realize I was being raised during the Depression. In 1942, I graduated from high school and moved to Washington, D. C., as a “government girl” (female federal office worker recruited during World War II).

Chapter 4 · p. 136

I saw Blacks acting two ways around Whites. Older Blacks shuffled as they walked, took off their hats, and looked down as they spoke. I heard (probably from Aunt Mandy) that slaves were taught to act like this to show respect to Whites. When I answered our back door, most middle-aged Blacks shuffled when they saw me, even when I was a small child. Younger Blacks walked erect and looked Whites in the face, which made White people call them “uppity N-words.” I saw some of the older Blacks shuffle in the morning but walk erect in the evening. I think more Blacks acted “uppity” when they felt the confidence that comes from drinking or having money in their pockets.

Chapter 4 · Growing Up in Park Addition · p. 150

I never saw a Black person on the orange bus or in any of the downtown churches. I never heard about a Black church when I was growing up or about a Black person attending a White one. Although I assumed that Blacks went to church, I don’t remember wondering where theirs were or why Blacks and Whites had their own. When I was 18, I saw a Black church for the first time after moving to Washington. I don’t think I attended a church that had Black members until I moved to Charlottesville in 1980.

Chapter 4 · Growing Up in Park Addition · p. 154

While living in Park Addition, I don’t remember ever seeing a Black school or seeing Blacks on a school bus. I wondered whether Blacks in Staunton went to school, and where Black schools in Staunton might have been located. However, I was never curious enough to ask. I was aware that Beverley Manor had no Black students, although I don’t remember wondering why not or ever connecting their absence to any laws. I was a bright student, yet I remember reading about slavery in history class without realizing that slaves were less free than anyone else. I never felt sad for slaves or ever thought about their lives. (I never wondered whether Aunt Mandy had been a slave until Andy asked.) I don’t remember teachers ever talking about race except briefly in a few history classes. I don’t remember hearing anyone, in or out of school, speak of segregation or civil rights until 15-20 years later, in the 1960s, when I was living in Minnesota.

Chapter 4 · Growing Up in Park Addition · p. 157

I saw separate water fountains, one for Blacks and one for Whites, about a block apart on a sidewalk. The fountains were black wrought iron with silver-colored waterspouts. Thirsty people turned a knob to let water flow up from the base of the fountain and down into their cupped hands. I don’t remember seeing any differences between the two fountains, but I never looked closely at the one for Blacks.

Chapter 4 · Growing Up in Park Addition · p. 170

Black women were allowed to shop in Woolworth’s, but only if they wore maid uniforms and said they were shopping for their mistresses. (Uniforms were commonplace. Maids wore black dresses, white in summer, with white aprons and caps.) Blacks understood this policy, although there were no signs about it in the store. Our managers tried to enforce the policy by telling us not to sell to Black maids buying for themselves or their friends. We waited on Black maids like we did on everyone else, not because we opposed the policy but because we had no way of knowing for sure whom the maids were buying for. We had our suspicions, of course, and joked among ourselves about which employers had asked their maids to buy hair grease.

Chapter 4 · Growing Up in Park Addition · p. 171

We were a family of four in Endicott and a family of six in Rochester. We sent our first two children to Catholic Schools in both cities. I don’t remember seeing Blacks in our church or in the kids’ schools (Fig. 4-6) or wondering whether Blacks were welcome in either place. Public schools were probably almost all White, not because they were legally segregated, but because so few Blacks lived in either city. We sent our two youngest to public schools in Rochester. My son told me recently that his public school had two Black students. I don’t remember knowing this when we lived there, but it would have made no difference to me if I had.

Chapter 4 · Marriage · p. 179

I was raised three blocks from about 60 Blacks, including children. I stood in line with them at Lockridge’s store and watched them walk past my house almost every day in nice weather. Yet, I knew the names of only three (Willie, Aunt Lucy, and Aunt Mandy) and felt close to only one. When I started this project with Andy, I told him I had only four or five memories about race. I see now that race was around the edges of much more of my life than I realized. I have so few memories of it because seeing Blacks where I expected to see them gave me nothing to notice. Whites knew about legal segregation, of course, but I doubt many of us noticed it much in daily life because it seemed so ordinary and because it seemed to have so little practical significance to us. For example, the Whites I knew were much more aware of having separate public restrooms for White men and White women than for Blacks and Whites.

Chapter 4 · Conclusion · p. 182