“Since segregation is subject to the whim of individuals and the custom of localities it could and did crop up in all periods and in numerous manifestations…Like acts of intolerance, discourtesy, and inhumanity, acts of segregation acquire a new significance when they are endowed with the compulsory conformity of ‘folkways’ or the majesty of the law.” -p. viii, C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow

When we are children, we perceive of our world as the center of the universe. As adults, we can be taken by surprise when we realize how different other people’s lives and realities have been depending upon which part of the nation they lived in. When I moved to Western North Carolina from the Virgin Islands, I was amazed to realize that this area had still been segregated in the sixties by Jim Crow laws. While recently watching the film, Far From Heaven, I was surprised to see the North of the 1950’s portrayed with the same prejudices as those of the South even if they were not carried to the extreme of separate drinking fountains or swimming pools.

I grew up in California, living in the small suburb of Lynwood during the fifties and sixties. Our community had four grammar schools, one junior high, one high school, and it was white, with the exception of a few Mexican, Indonesian, and Asian families. I never perceived them as “different”—we were all one race and culture to me. My world was insulated until the Watts riots of August 1965, which “raged unchecked for four days and longer in sporadic outbursts…in bloodshed and destructiveness it ranked with the worst in American history.” (Woodward, 190) Watts was about a fifteen minute drive from our house, and carloads of blacks rode through our neighborhood yelling “burn Whitey, burn.” My father stood on the roof, holding a hose and spraying its surface in fear that they would toss a Molotov cocktail at our home. He was scared to death, yet he afterward said, “I’ve never met a black man I didn’t like.” Years later, before he died, this gentle man told me that prejudice most harms the one it infects.

When school opened in the fall of 1966, my senior year, our exchange student from India appeared in a pink silk sari, with a red dot on her very dark forehead. Whispers flowed through the halls until third period when we were called to assembly. Our principal introduced Shanti and asked that we all make her feel at home. As far as I know, we all did. After the first week she abandoned her native costume for our Western dress, no longer needing the protection of her nationality: she was one of us.

The following year, my parents sold the home where I’d grown up and we moved to an apartment in Gardena. The complex was mixed ethnicity, as was the neighborhood. I worked at the telephone company in that town and attended college in Long Beach. Although my world was primarily white, I had expanded my acquaintances and friendships to a more multi-ethnic base. As I watched Far From Heaven, I felt a sense of déjà vu when the heroine, Kathy, asked Raymond what it is like to be the “only one” in a room. I once had asked a friend what it felt like to be at a party where he was the only black man. He laughed, and told me he was also the only artist and both characteristics gave him a great deal to talk about with the ladies. Less than a year later, Ed took me to a party at an “old girlfriend’s” and everyone was black. I felt very shy until my color-consciousness disappeared with introductions and conversation. I had a wonderful evening and never forgot how important a few words of welcome can be.

Our daughter Lyric was born in the Virgin Islands and attended the local Montessori school. She asked me one day why her best friend, Brittany’s hair didn’t fly around like hers did on the swing—which was the only thing she noticed as “different”. I told her it was because Brittany had very curly hair. When we moved to North Carolina, Lyric was seven. On her first day of school she was excited to find a girl in her class who looked just like Brittany. They had decided to be best friends. A few days later, she came home very subdued and asked me, “Mama, what’s a ‘nigger-lover’?” I wanted to cry. I told her it was what people with small minds called other people when they needed a reason not to like them or to try to feel superior. She still didn’t understand. Ed and I had not taught her to see black, white, red, or yellow—we were all just people. I had to tell her that some people won’t accept anyone with skin a different color than their own. It may have sufficed as a verbal explanation, but it was never acknowledged by her heart.

One summer on a Teens Westward Bound trip across the United States, Lyric was aghast to find only white teenagers were allowed on the trip and that bigoted, racist comments were de rigueur. At home, she was dating an African American. Her bottled up rage at the redneck attitudes came spilling out in a torrent of tears one night during a truth circle as she blasted the worst offenders. She felt better about herself for telling everyone her boyfriend was black even though she received a cold shoulder for the rest of the trip from many of them.

Lyric is now a freshman at Chapel Hill and giving a great deal of thought to a major. She told us the only thing she feels passionately about is races getting along with one another, and therefore might major in Cultural Psychology which deals with such issues. When she attended her first campus meeting of the Caribbean Association, she was the only white in the room. One of the students said she “didn’t belong”. Lyric responded that she was born in St. Thomas and had every right to be there as she was a West Indian by birth, if not by color. I believe she has something to teach them about acceptance!

While watching the movie I realized how little I knew about race relations in America. I found The Strange Career of Jim Crow in my library. From it, I learned that it was not until the turn of the century that the Jim Crow segregation laws were established in the South, and the '20s by the time they had major impact. The 1940s brought mass migration of the (then called) Negro population to the factories of the North. In 1946, President Truman created a Commission on Higher Education and a Committee on Civil Rights, both of which called for the elimination of segregation. The military began to eliminate racial discrimination within its ranks. Federal laws were passed outlawing pole taxes and lynching and the desegregation of interstate transportation. President Eisenhower, however, withdrew presidential leadership, saying that laws could not legislate the hearts of men, which caused race relations to take a turn for the worse. (Woodward, 134-137)

One of my dearest friends, Cita, was in her senior year in Little Rock when Governor Fabus of Arkansas closed the public schools for a year rather than allow their integration. She has told me of the trauma of those times, and how her parents sent her out-of-state to a Catholic girl’s school. But that does not even compare to the year-long siege in Mississippi in 1962 when 30,000 troops had to be called in to quell the mobs that tried to prevent James Meredith from attending the University at Oxford. (Woodward, 174-175)

It’s a battle still being fought in American higher education. From 1990 to 1999 there has been a 48.3% increase in minority enrollment in the nation’s colleges and universities according to the American Council on Education. (USA Today, 9/23/02). However, President Bush is calling for an end to Affirmative Action in the current Supreme Court case dealing with admission policies of the University of Michigan. Jesse Jackson has said President Bush is the worst President regarding race relations in fifty years. (Asheville Citizen Times, 1/18/03)

It is my belief that through education we will put an end to the disparity between races and find equality. But it is our hearts that need to lead us to acceptance and the inner-knowing that we are all one. When we find that place, we are closer to realizing heaven on earth.

Resource: Woodward, C. Vann The Strange Career of Jim Crow, Oxford Univ. Press, 1966. 

©2003 Gabrielle M. Thompson ~Gabrielle Thompson lives with her husband Ed and daughter Lyric in the mountains of western NC at Eco-Cove, a 117 acre wildlife sanctuary. She has a degree in Anthropology and is Coordinator of Library Services at McDowell Technical Community College. Previously she helped Ed build, sail, and charter the 75’ schooner, SATORI for 14 years in the Virgin Islands. She is a freelance writer and has written two unpublished novels. In December 2002, she had an article published in Moments of Grace Magazine, with an introduction by Neale Donald Walsch.

~ Gabrielle M. Thompson, 2003
© 2003 Gabrielle M. Thompson

Gabrielle Thompson lives with her husband Ed and daughter Lyric in the mountains of western North Carolina at Eco-Cove, a 117-acre wildlife sanctuary and trout farm. She has a degree in Anthropology and is Coordinator of Library Services at McDowell Technical Community College. Previously she helped Ed build, sail, and charter the 75’ schooner, SATORI for 14 years in the Virgin Islands. She is a freelance writer and has written two unpublished novels. In December 2002, she had an article published in Moments of Grace Magazine, with an introduction by Neale Donald Walsch.