Mother also brought home records, which we would listen to together. One day, when I was about five years old, she brought home Aïda, the Giuseppe Verdi opera. My little eyes were as big as saucers as I listened to the “Triumphal March” for the first time, and I played the record over and over. And on Saturdays we listened to radio broadcasts of the New York Metropolitan Opera, “brought to you by Texaco.” Opera and classical music were totally and completely my mother’s domain. My father loved jazz but had no interest in or taste for classical music. Even so, he displayed admirable patience when my mother and I took charge of what was playing on the car radio as we ran errands on Saturday afternoon.
Daddy did teach me to dance. He’d put on a record by jazz singer Dinah Washington or play the big-band music of performers such as Duke Ellington. Then I would stand on his feet as he walked me through the box step or the fox-trot.
But Daddy’s real territory was sports, and I took to it with great fervor. We watched the National Football League on television every Sunday after church. In those days, there was one game and no halftime studio show. Daddy wanted me to really understand football and would analyze the plays, explaining what the defense was doing to counter the offense and vice versa.
Our team was the Cleveland Browns, and to this day I am a fan. This may seem puzzling given that I didn’t visit Cleveland until the mid-1990s. The reason is simple: Birmingham had no NFL team when I was a child. It was one of only two cities in the South, the other being Memphis, that prohibited blacks and whites from playing together professionally. But even in other southern cities, black players had trouble finding hotels to stay in and restaurants to eat in. By the late 1950s, the NFL was refusing to play in the South at all because of segregation.
The last team to integrate was the Washington Redskins, which had no black players until 1962. Though Washington, D.C., was geographically the closest to us, my father hated the Redskins for their racist policies. They couldn’t be our team. So we rooted for the Cleveland Browns, who had the great black running back Jim Brown. And each Thanksgiving, Daddy and I would watch the Detroit Lions, who by tradition played on that holiday every year. The next day, we would play the “Rice Bowl,” a touch football game held at “Rice Stadium,” known the rest of the year as the front yard.
chapter nine
My parents may have doted on their only child a little more than their friends, but they shared the same goals of other parents to provide a safe, nurturing, and stimulating environment for their kids. The task was hard and complex, yet straightforward at the same time. The hard part was obvious: Birmingham was the most segregated big city in America, and daily life was full of demeaning reminders of the second-class citizenship accorded to blacks. Whites and blacks lived in parallel worlds, their paths crossing uneasily in only a few public places.
So how can I say that there was a straightforward way for black parents to nurture their children? Well, ironically, because Birmingham was so segregated, black parents were able, in large part, to control the environment in which they raised their children. They rigorously regulated the messages that we received and shielded us by imposing high expectations and a determined insistence on excellence. It took a lot of energy for our parents to channel us in the right direction, but we became neither dispirited nor bitter.
The extended family, including grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, provided the first layer of support and nurture. The community mentors were not far outside the family circle, and our little neighborhood of Titusville provided a strong network of black professionals who were determined to prepare their kids for productive lives. There were few single parents, and black men were a dominant presence in the community.
The schools too were completely segregated in Birmingham—there were no white teachers, no white students. Education in Alabama was well behind the rest of the country. For a number of years schools did not provide free textbooks to any student, black or white. Although my parents bought mine, some of my classmates were often forced to share one book. Sometimes teachers would pool their money to buy a few extras for their classes. The city put fewer resources into the black schools, so they were substandard in an already poor state system. But the teachers were dedicated, and they produced remarkable results. In these circumstances, teachers could demand the best of their students without any racial overtones. Teachers had high expectations and were pretty tough on low performers. “To succeed,” they routinely reminded us, “you will have to be twice as good.” This was declared as a matter of fact, not a point for debate.
The churches provided a final pillar of support. There was no question as to where you should be on Sunday morning. There were no atheists and no agnostics in my middle-class community. The two largest churches, Sixth Avenue and Sixteenth Street, were Baptist.
Birmingham’s churches were competitive with each other for members and vied for the reputation of having the most compelling services and outstanding music. It also helped to have influential members, particularly those lured away from other congregations. But the churches were more than a place to worship on Sundays. They were also the locus of much of the community’s social life and safe places for kids. Later, some would also become centers of political mobilization.
All of these elements—extended family, community, schools, and churches—conspired together to convince me and my peers that racism was “their” problem, not ours. Whatever feelings of insecurity or inadequacy black adults felt in the appalling and depressing circumstances of Jim Crow Birmingham, they did not transfer it to us. For the children of our little enclave, Titusville, the message was crystal clear: We love you and will give you everything we can to help you succeed. But there are no excuses and there is no place for victims.
chapter ten
While I grew up in this larger environment of family, church, community, and school, my circumstances were special because I was an only child. My parents were sensitive to this and strove to make sure that I had plenty of contact with other children. Apparently, I didn’t want siblings. Mother told me that I asked repeatedly whether she intended to have any more kids, making clear that I would not be supportive of that decision. Most likely my parents just decided that one was enough, since at the time of my birth Mother was already older by the standards of the day.
In lieu of siblings, I had several close friends, including Vanessa Hunter, Margaret Wright, and Carole Smitherman. I was also close to my cousins Lativia, Yvonne, and Albert. Even after Uncle Albert and his family moved to take up a congregation in Thomasville, Georgia, our families made certain to pay each other holiday and summer visits.
When I was about to turn five, my parents decided that it would be good to enroll me in kindergarten. Throughout my childhood, Mother always contended that I was well adjusted and got along well with other kids. My father, though, felt I was not at ease with other kids, and enrolling me in kindergarten became one of his many attempts over the years to make sure that I was competent socially. I struggled at times, exhibiting a bit of a thin skin and a tendency to retaliate when I felt slighted by my friends.