By LenCooper - 1
(The Children of My Knee-the title is a derivative of the
slave term ‘knee-baby’ which means the middle child. As my grandmother once
explained to me, when there are three children born close in age, the mother
keeps the baby nestled close to her breast; the toddler goes about its
business. The middle child (knee-baby)
holds on dearly to the mother’s leg, longing for the days when he was the jewel
of his mother’s eye. The child is confused about his place in the family. His days on suckling have passed and
beckoning for independence is a ways down the road, but for the moment, he
assumes his place, clinging to his mother’s knee and hanging on dearly to her
skirt tail.)
I was 10-years-old when
The cool of the
I stood by the ripped
screen door, waiting for my middle brother to walk to Sunday school. My
oldest brother had already left with his friends. In the front room,
Daddy was laying in bed on the quilt Dear and Muh, my grandmother, and their
friends from the neighborhood made by hand a long time ago. Dear is the
name my older brother gave my mother when he was three years old. Dad was
watching one of those Sunday mornings religious television shows he hated as he
took an occasional drag off an unfiltered Camel cigarette. Sometime he
would let me roll them. I loved the smell of the tobacco as I licked the thin
white paper to seal the job, after returning the excess back to the colorful
tin can.
Daddy said the television preachers with their prayer
cloths, healing potions and high falutin talk were nothing more than charlatans
and thieves. Dear cringed at these remarks. Not only was she a
Christian, she was also a devoted church worker, one of the stalwarts in the
choir. Whenever the doors were open, Dear was there. When the choir
director asked her to lead a song at the 11 o'clock service, she displayed a
mild displeasure, but everyone knew how important the choir, singing and this
brief moment in the limelight were to her.
"Don't talk like that in front of the boys. You
ought to know better. The Lord don't like ugly."
For Daddy, it was strictly entertainment and nothing
more.
"Tell that to those lying ass, thieving
preachers." Daddy took another puff off his roll-your-own and sent a
wobbly smoke ring in the stuffy
I wanted to laugh, but I knew better. With my brother
still scurrying around, trying to get dressed in his Sunday church clothes,
this was not the time to upset Dear.
The men in my church wore blue denim overalls to service.
The leaders of the civil rights movement instructed all Negroes not to shop at
the stores in downtown
My older brother, Archie Lee, Jr. was already at church and
Alfred Lloyd and I were late. It would have served us well to leave as
soon as possible, even if our shoes weren't quite dry or our hair wasn't combed
or our faces greased down with Vaseline to moisten the dry, white haze on dark
skin known as "ash."
Dear
went back to the kitchen to check on our shoes. Her tall and slender
frame stretched over the porcelain counter as she tried to wash the black
I continued waiting
by the door trying to blend in with the dark wire mesh and not be noticed by
Daddy or Dear. Sundays were serious and no time to laugh at Dad's bad
mouthing of God's servants.
This
was what most people did on Sundays: families doing familiar things, fighting
off the oppressive autumn heat, summing up the week's work with talk and
preparing for Sunday's Lord's day and after church socials. The women
did; children were made to do; and the men watched the doing.
Although
we were late for Sunday school, the walk to `our' church was a short one.
We would never get there. Dear yelled through the ripped screen door and
tattered curtains after seeing our fascination with the bumblebees dancing and
darting about the yellow and white honeysuckle bush. It was a sweet
morning when suddenly Dear's voice stung us.
"If ya'll don't get away from there, it's going to be
too wet to plow." This meant that the tears we shed after a good
whipping would soak the earth.
A huge noise cracked the air. It sounded like a
thousand locomotives crashing head on, a noise louder than thunder. The
earth shook. Dear's angry frown gave way to terror. Her words were
frozen in her mouth. The jars of homemade pear and peach preserves shook
and rattled on the shelf. Alfred rushed us--stumbling, falling and
crying--away from the explosion, back toward the house. The screen door
flew open and we fell past Daddy into a corner and huddled there in Dear's
arms. The sound had also startled my father forcing him to his
feet. He went out the door cursing, seething with anger. I thought
he was mad because the noise kept him from watching his Sunday morning T.V.
shows. Then I heard him spit out Martin Luther King’s name.
"I'll bet a dime to a bucket of bullshit that Wallace or "Bull"
Connor is behind this," Daddy angrily mumbled. Where in the hell is
that KING now?"
Dear nodded in agreement. Ever since those Civil
Rights people came to town and she lost her job as a cleaning woman, Dear had
few favorable comments about King and his ideas of equality. He
frightened everyone with his talk of freedom. All it did was get Dear and
some of our neighbors fired by the white people they worked for.
"Those are just words," Daddy said when the Civil
Rights people first came to town. "If they don't mean shit to white
people, you know damn well they don't mean nothing for us. All that
niggah is doing is stirring up trouble and causin' decent people to lose they
jobs and what little credit they got. When white folks start kicking our
ass, where he gon be? I'll tell you, somewhere away from here marchin or
makin' one of those damn speeches."
In the heat of the civil rights struggle, there were
constant reminders of who was in charge. George C. Wallace's grimacing
face on posters throughout the neighborhood complemented the littered
landscape. When Martin Luther King, Jr. came to town, I held him in greater
contempt because he was black like me and should have been more respectful of
whites--at least careful. People said that King and Wallace were two of a
kind. Whenever they were involved in any thing that had to do with
colored folk, Negroes ended up being fired, imprisoned, or dead.
King frightened people, both black and white, with his
rhetoric of freedom, equality and inclusion. These words were hollow and
meaningless when pertaining to blacks. Besides, we were already free as
long as we didn't make trouble for white folk and stayed to our own. More
Negroes worried that King's presence would continue to bring down even greater
violence on us.
Dear and Daddy were neither Uncle Toms, nor handkerchief
heads. They, like many other people shackled their lives to what they saw
as reality. White people did
run the world; did give the jobs; did make the laws and carry them out; did own the land (for the most part), and
the factories and stores. "Calling them names and out of their names
wasn't gonna change nothing," Dear said. She was angry with Dr.
King for publicly criticizing white people.
"That Negro is old enough to know better."
Born Annie Marie Walker in
In the 1930's,
Daddy-Yo hated Archie Lee Cooper. This tall
chocolate-colored "bean pole-of-a-niggah" ruined his daughter; Dear
got pregnant before "jumping the broom." Daddy, of course, did
the right thing. In spite of marriage, Daddy-Yo never forgave Dear or Daddy, so
neither of them ever shared his riches. Daddy-Yo didn't believe in
accumulating debts. Every two or three years, he bought a brand new
Mercury and Truck, paying cash for both. He invited his grand boys over
and would spread scores of $100 dollar bills on the floor for them to play
in. If his daughter needed money for rent or the children, he made it
clear she was not to come to him.
Dear
didn't complain. She loved her husband and with him struggled to provide
for their three sons. Archie Lee Cooper, Jr., Alfred Lloyd Cooper and
Leonard Lanier Cooper. I've never understood why I was named after a
famous Southern poet, Sidney Lanier, or for that matter, why my brother was
named after the British poet, Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Dear spelled the
Lord differently for religious reasons. As far as I can tell, there
is no poetry in Dear's life--a life restrained by racism, poverty and abuse of
a drunken husband.
-------------
Dear and Daddy slept in a
large bed in the living room. My two brothers and me shared the bed,
mattress and pallet on the floor in the bedroom. Since I was the baby, I
slept on the pallet. For those two rooms we paid $22-a-month.
Sometimes Dear and Daddy didn't have the money on time and were late paying the
rent. On those occasions, our landlord, Mr. Spanno, a stout ruddy
Italian, came by to collect. If our door was unlocked, he'd walk right in
shouting at the top of his lungs: "Marie, where is my money?"
Apparently, Mr. Spanno never heard the Reverend's sermons
on patience and benevolence or maybe this Italian Catholic didn't hold the word
of God in such lofty esteem. Mr. Spanno also owned the neighborhood
grocery store where we sometimes got provisions on credit. It got so hot
in his little dingy store, that the penny suckers melted and fused together
right in the glass case. Mr. Spanno put chunks of the broken cluster of
sweets along with the cardboard sticks in a small brown paper bag and sold it
for a nickel, right next to the two-for-penny butter cookies. A bag of
his concoction was too much candy for one person to eat so we shared it with
our friends. Dear sent me to his store when the rent was over-due and
when food was getting low. I entered his shop with a few coins in hand, and
resting on my lips, was one more of Dear's excuses for not having the rent
money.
"Tell
yo momma and daddy I want my money the first of every month. Not the
second or the third, but the first...I don't want to have to go looking for
them. Now you run along and tell your momma what I said."
I
can't recall which was more humiliating, Mr. Spanno embarrassing me in front of
our neighbors or his showing up in our house to collect his money.
We had become accustomed to living with this kind
of disrespect and it seemed natural as air. Even Daddy-Yo, a well
off, if not wealthy, contractor, could not escape the chilly winds of the
"Southern way of life." Every Christmas, Arnold Drennen, a
prominent attorney in
Muh spent half the day cleaning when the Drennen's planned
to stop by. She never bothered with putting a tree up at Christmas.
In the living room window she would string large multi-color lights in the
shape of a tree. In all the windows facing the street, she had white
plastic candelabras with blue flickering lights. The entire house
radiated with the smell of oranges, grapefruit and assorted nuts. Hung on
the mantle were three red and white stockings for my brothers and me. One
year I made Dear and Muh's gifts in art class at school. I covered an
apple with clove spice and placed it in a nylon mesh bag. Muh and Dear
loved it.
Everything in Muh's and Daddy-Yo's house was special.
Daddy-Yo and a friend built their brick house from the foundation to the
roof. The entire house had sparkling hardwood floors that Muh mopped and
shined every week. Ours had fragments of mixed matched crumbling
linoleum. Her living room furniture was an imported white French
provincial covered with plastic. Daddy-yo also owned the three
double-tenant houses on their dead end street.
Long before the streetlights came on, the judge and his
family stopped by on the way home from Christmas shopping.
"Hey there Sam boy, good to see ya."
I thought that maybe the Judge was fond of Daddy-yo's money
and didn't particularly care for him. "Come on in, make yourself at
home," Daddy-yo replied.
"We can't stay, we just wanted to stop by and drop a
few things off for you and your family."
Mrs.
Drennen always seemed nervous and said little if anything. Her and the
son always stood by the door, as if poised for a quick exit.
"We
got some chitlins', maws, tongue, feet, pig tails and mountain oysters (hog
testicles) for ya'll,” said the judge.
"We sho' do appreciate it, sir,” Daddy-yo said as
he took the huge bag and handed it to Muh.
"My people won't eat this kind of stuff and it's a
shame for it to have to go to waste. I knew you all like this sort of
thing so we just drove over to drop it off."
Daddy-Yo owned a 300 acre farm thirty one miles from his
house where he grew corn, beans, cotton, cattle and more than 60 head of
hogs. He sold the judge the pigs he slaughtered every winter. At
anytime, Daddy-Yo could have had the finest portion of the shank or the parts
that repulsed the judge and his family. Nonetheless, smiling, always
smiling, Daddy-Yo graciously accepted his porcine gifts, along with five
dollars for each of his grand boys.
My
grandfather believed the only way for Negroes to survive the harsh yoke of Jim Crow
was for them to develop strong moral character and adhere to strict
discipline. This objective was best realized through long hours of
picking cotton, chopping cotton, slopping hogs and stripping cane. Daddy‑Yo
had no use for churches, preachers or their misguided rituals. In
Before my 10th birthday, I had
spent grueling mornings and exhausting evenings picking cotton and working my
Daddy-Yo’s farm in
Every day during the summer
months and weekends while school was not in session, my brothers and I were
shackled to Daddy-Yo’s land. There was
never a discussion of pay or special considerations for our labor all those
years. Occasionally he gave us a
32-cents check he received in the mail from his bank. He promised that the land
would someday be ours, but in time it would be surrendered to strangers and to
his mistress. For now, this was our life
whether we liked it or not.
On break, I would remind him
that Mr. Lincoln freed the slaves more than a hundred years ago and that we
were not slaves.
“Mr. Lincoln ain’t freed no
slaves," my grandfather, snarled when I compared my life to a slave’s.
"
After spending a trying morning searing in the heat of the
We sat in the shade of the
towering oaks, riveted as Daddy‑Yo went on to tell us of modern
slavery. Our eyes dared not stray as wounded hands carefully dug the red
fleshy fruit out of the green striped rind. We spat out the melon seeds
as our parched cracked lips sipped the sweet lemonade from dented tin cups.
All my life I have lived with tales of
slavery, especially while attending to Daddy‑Yo’s 360-acre farm.
The tales led beyond the Emancipation Proclamation through the early
1950s. We imbibed his stories of black men being stolen from the streets
of
When I first heard this more than 35
years ago, Daddy‑Yo was a young grandfather. The civil unrest going
on in Birmingham at the time served as a backdrop for his stories as he spoke
passionately about friends stolen away while walking to church, school or along some
dusty Alabama road, never to return. As a broken old man, just before his
death 14 years ago, he wept with each word as if ghosts had returned from the
past to feast on his soul.
Daddy‑Yo never knew those tales of
20th century slavery would leave an indelible impression and would someday take
me to southwest
The scars on my hands have faded. The demons of the past revisit me as
they did my fathers and grandfathers. Daddy‑Yo used to tell his
story while stroking the gold pocket watch his father gave him years
before. Today I find myself telling the stories to my children and
stroking the same timepiece.
Daddy‑Yo’s invoked stories of the enormous hardships endured by one
of his close friends in an attempt to make the long arduous hours in the field
bearable, but nothing could bring lasting comfort to our
lives.
In 1918, Daddy‑Yo was nearly seven years old. He and three of
his friends were playing along a dirt road in the community of Tip
Top, near Morning Star Baptist Church. Daddy‑Yo, the Strait
brothers and Cleveland all lived in
Most of the Negroes who lived in this rural part of southwest
"Hey ya'll lit'il niggra boys, have ya'll ever seen the likens of such a
beautiful machine?" The man on the passenger's side said.
"I can't reckon we have, suh,"
It wasn't often coloreds of any age got a chance to see a real car up
close. The boys stood around the new vehicle gawking and mesmerized in
disbelief. One man got out of the car and offered them the chance of a
lifetime.
"I'll tell you boys what. How about hoppin' in for a ride down to
Poor Negro boys riding in such elegance was unheard of. They were more
accustomed to traveling on splintery cross boards on the back of old rickety
wagons. The boys were more than willing and eager to pile into the black
leather rear seat.
"Coloreds don’t ride in the buggy with whites, but we sho' do appreciate
yo offer and we’re much obliged."
The men continued trying to lure the boys into the car.
"We sho' do appreciate it suh', but I reckon we'd better be headed on back
to the house now," said
Suddenly, in anger, the driver forced the parking brake forward and jumped from
the car cursing and swearing.
"Goddammit! Just grab them niggahs and lets get the hell out of
here!"
The four broke towards the wooded area along the roadside as fast as their legs
would carry them. Several shots cracked the air as Sam Walker ran
through the briar‑filled thicket to the creek. He didn't stop
running until he was on the front porch of his house.
There he told his father, Professor Henry Walker, what had happened.
Within a few minutes, more than a dozen men on mules and wobbly old, field
wagons traversed a familiar trail, searching for the three stolen Negro
children. This time was no different
from the countless times before. The fragile peace Southern Negroes
scarcely knew was once again broken. The Strait boys and Cleveland were
gone without a trace.
Eventually the lives in
"When
The scruffy aged man told the Walkers that he and the others were taken to the
Mississippi Delta region in the southern part of the state. He was held
for all those years and forced to work as a slave on a plantation. He had
no knowledge of what happened to the other boys. The area where he was
forced to work was surrounded by two rivers and protected by armed guards,
barbed wire and dogs.
That night the truck left with the family in the cargo bay, frightened and
suspicious of the sound of every passing motorists, thinking it could be a
As a child
listening to my grandfathers’ stories, I cried silently out of fear for
myself. As a man, the fear surrendered to sorrow for the plight of
innocent people I never met.
In high school during Negro History Week, I took issue with students and
instructors who considered President Lincoln, the ultimate emancipator of
Negro people. My flesh cringed whenever slavery was considered to be an
atrocity lost in the distant past. I knew a truth that I shared with one
other person on this earth, my grandfather. No one else was interested in
the ranting of an aging Negro man that contradicted what most considered a
sacred historical fact. Years later, after Daddy‑Yo’s death I
would give a voice to those slaves history overlooked by writing my
grandfathers story for The Washington Post (see index for complete story).
--------------------
Throughout my early childhood, Dear left our apartment
nearly every morning and took three buses "over the mountain" to the
white neighborhood where she cleaned floors, toilets and children, whose names
I knew from her stories. I'm sure they didn't know mine. When
crossing the threshold to our apartment, family and guest alike were greeted by
the unmistakable stench of poverty; the smell of decaying linoleum and roach
spray mixed with strong disinfectant. It
dawns upon me now, those children Dear took care of, may not have known Dear's
name, for certain not her surname since they weren't obliged to address her by
it; for sure they never knew her.
My oldest brother was
eight going on nine and it was his job to get us cleaned, fed and dressed for
school. I was left alone for a few hours
in the morning because my schooling started at noon. Archie would rush home then walk me back to
Dear was one of hundreds of black women who huddled on the
street corners in frigid weather, blazing heat or pouring rain, waiting for the
No. 11 bus to carry her far from the neatness of home to clean someone
else’s. Sometimes my brothers and I got up in the darkness with Dear to
escort her to the bus stops. We often linger to watch the sparks shoot
from atop the electrical bus lighting up the sky in every direction as it
sputtered away.
Dear said when black passengers overcrowded the rear of the
bus--the only place they could sit or stand--the driver put some of them off
and wouldn't refund their fare. While Dear was making sure those white
children were well-fed and clean before going to school, my eight-year old
brother made sure we got to school and back. God looked out for him, I
guess, there was no one else to.
At
the end of the day, Dear dragged in, exhausted from the days toil. She
hardly had time to take her shoes off before collapsing across the bed and
falling asleep. Black women, who were fortunate enough to get a rare ride
home from their white employers when it was late, always rode in the back seat
of the car. A basket of clothes or a dog was usually placed in the
front. Dear had stories and hand-me-down clothes. We were
glad to get them and strutted around our friends as if to say; "Our white
people got better clothes than your white people." We tried to out
do our playmates, and they us, by telling tales of the big houses and fine
things within them that our parents were privileged to clean. In
retrospect, the ordinariness of those white homes and lives were made resplendent
only in comparison to our own. Dear, and others like her worked for the
marginal businessmen, civil servants and used-car dealers. Was life
better for those black domestics who worked for the landed gentry, the southern
Aristocrats, who wore starched uniforms and had "been in the family for
years?" I think not. Does it really matter whether one is
humiliated at the hands of soi-disant "masters" or want-to-be
"overseers"?
It was clear to me; even then,
that Dear, Daddy, Daddy-Yo and all other black people, only existed for the
benefit of white people. We were here to work for them, amuse them, and
when necessary, to be ridiculed and punished by them. There was nothing
in my childhood to say otherwise. I was separated from white children in
school by the state of
Racism and the
cruelty of the old south reared its' ugly head early in my life. Mrs. Brunt, my fourth and fifth grade library
teacher was a tall, lanky, fair skinned disciplinarian. Something special was in the air one morning
in the fall of 1964. Mrs. Brunt
announced that day was the day we were to receive new textbooks, from Martin
Elementary, the white school nearby. The
books were scheduled to arrive at any moment.
In truth, the books weren't really new, but they were new to us. We were as eager as beavers could be,
bursting with excitement. Mrs. Brunt had
to calm us time and time again. It had been weeks since school started and the
teachers relied on grossly outdated books from previous school years. Finally, word came for Mrs. Brunt to send
five able body boys to the office to pick up the boxes of books. I was one of the one chosen to go. I was proud.
Mrs. Brunt gave stern instructions not to open the books until each
student had one, as she passed the readers out to the first person in each
row. The student then gave it to the
student behind them until everyone had one.
I had a short wait because I always sat in the middle of the row. The books were worn and tattered but to us
they were fresh off the press.
"Will you please turn to the first page and print your name in
pencil at the top left had corner of the page," she commanded. The scribbled words and drawings on the pages
reached up and choked the enthusiasm that had earlier encased the room. NIGGER! BURHEAD! SAMBO! Negroes drawn in blackface with
gigantic lips were like apparitions from
the grave serving as a constant reminder how things would always remain the
same for us. It became an annual ritual
for us to spend one recess in September making a futile attempt to erase those
reminders of our existence but never being able to erase the emptiness and pain. I was embarrassed, ashamed to use the
books. My teachers were pleased that we had books at all.
During those same years, we were given one of those
standardize psychological or aptitude test that I grew to despise. One of the pages had a drawing of a girl with
traditional European features and the other, a girl with stereotypical African
features. The question under the
drawings asked, "which girl is prettier,” I always selected the correct
answer, the white girl.
My fate as a young Black man in
I had few positive recollections that I could build upon
in my interacting with white people.
When I was a child, after school we would meet in the neighborhood that
surrounded our block called Melvil Courts. There we would play tackle football
on a field that covered several neighbors’ yards. We would fill an old pint size milk carton
with gravel and use it for a ball. I
knew without a doubt that someday I would be catching long bombs from Johnny
Unitas of the Baltimore Colts. That was
just a boyish dream that was marred by the cruel reality of our everyday struggle
to survive the wrath of Jim Crow. In the
midst of our game, Sgt. Jack of Car 49 of the Birmingham Police Department
would roll up and slide to a screeching halt.
The game would freeze momentarily.
To me, Sgt. Jack was the meanest, biggest, all intimidating of a white
man I had ever seen. He would swing
those tree trucks for legs out of the car with his eyes fixed on us as if to
dare one of us to move.
"Come
heah you li'l ole black ass niggahs!"
We would run as fast as we could over to the car, careful not to make
direct eye contact with him. "Come
here and let me rub them naps and burs. Might bring me a lit ‘il better
luck," he would say while he frantically stroked and gripped our heads. And he did, raked his hands through our hair
until tears came to our eyes. I
was ashamed of having kinky, nappy hair that caused me to be ridiculed and Sgt.
Jack had difficulty in putting his fingers through it. I can clearly
remember those haunting sounds of laughter and disgust has he disdainfully
stripped us of our dignity, one painful nap at a time. After my friends and I
became of age, we decided it was time for the
In my hometown, Blacks were not allowed to buy a new
Cadillac, even if they could afford it or could get killed for making eye
contact with a white woman, but most times they were threatened and harassed by
angry whites and the police or hauled off to jail. Daddy once told me a story about a Negro who
was once employed by U.S. Steel. He said
that the man worked for years, saving money from two jobs to buy a brand new
Buick. When the man purchased the car, he decided to drive to work one
day. Upon driving into the foundry
parking lot, he was met by the foreman. The foreman inquired if the car was his
and the man proudly answered. The
foreman in turn said, “If a nigger can afford a automobile like that, he don’t
need to be working here,” and the man was fired on the spot. I can’t vouch for
the validity of the Daddy’s story, but I understood the spirit in which it was
told. Daddy didn’t have to share such stories with me. Daddy had his own brushed with the Birmingham
Police. He told me that he was waiting
for the 18
My place in
Death and dying was all around us. It was inescapable. I was never afraid of dead bodies. Daddy-Yo always said, “It’s not the dead you
have to concern yourself with. There’s
nothing they can do to hurt you. It’s
these living devils you have to worry about.”
Mr. Johnson was an ornery old fellow that lived near my mothers’
church. Between Sunday school and 11
o’clock service, I chose to go home to use the bathroom rather than use the
facility in the church basement. The
walk home was abbreviated. As I crossed
the creek, I faintly heard an agonizing moan emanating from beneath the
bridge. I slid through the tall grass
and rocks until I was at the waters edge.
There Mr. Johnson sat wearing only his dingy white boxers. His crusty aged feet were immersed in the
chilled water, as his head lay rested against the cement wall. His speech was barely lucid and
unintelligible. I ran from the creek to
a neighbor’s house who called for an ambulance.
I return to the creek and found Mr. Johnson as I left him. He laboriously pawed at me as if he was
trying to say something. By now my pants
legs and Sunday shoes are submerged in the murky waters. I could hear the sirens blaring in the
distance and voices gathering on the tiny bridge above. Mr. Johnson rested his head on my shoulder,
as his movements ceased; his last effort to communicate with me was abandoned. “Git from under there boy!” one of the adults
ordered from the entrance. I rested Mr.
Johnson against the wall and slid from beneath the bridge. I made my way up to the road and through the
gathering unnoticed. Good and bad news
travel fast through close-knit neighborhoods. I was in trouble for wading
through that dirty water. Dear had
already heard what had happened. She was
not angry that I had ruined my best pair of shoes and my Sunday pants. She
placed a glass of cool-aid and a tea cake on the table for me and didn’t have
to go back to church that day.
---------------------
Dear and Daddy knew the power of white people and tried
to keep us from them. They certainly didn’t want us marching around town
calling white people names and talking about black people running things.
It wasn’t even a dream to Daddy and Dear, just
foolishness--"Bullshit," Daddy called it.
After Dear lost her job as a cleaning lady because
of all that civil rights mess, Dear got a job with a ladies clothing
store. Her wages increased. We moved to a larger place. That
was the point, to keep bettering yourself and survive. You couldn’t do
that if Mr. Spanno put us out in the cold. You couldn’t do that without
accepting the leftovers from the white people for whom you worked. Dear
and Daddy understood all of this. They bowed and scraped for white people
everyday. Their children were fed and clothed, their house clean, and
they got along well with everybody until that slick talking preacher from
Now, in my memory she huddles in a corner with her
children. "I ain’t never heard no noise like that before," she
muttered, and pulled us closer to her.
"I’m gonna go see what the
hell happened,” Daddy said, his voice quivering. "Ya’ll stay
here and don’t open the damn door for nobody." His fear gave way to
anger as he slammed the door behind him. "Nobody, damn it!"
Dear held us close, rocked and comforted us.
"Everything is going to be alright, after while." I couldn’t
tell if she was talking or singing. "Everything gonna be alright,
after while."
Minutes ticked by. We couldn’t tell if the loud
noise came from down the street, downtown, or from across the town. Some
of the men said it was definitely an explosion. A bomb. But where,
this time?" Who was hit? We listened for clues from screaming sirens
or police cars, from ambulances. There was nothing. Then from WJLD
or WENN, our two colored radio stations, we received the news. The
newscaster on the radio said the
"From the WJLD news desk, this just in. Four
little girls are believed to be dead--killed while attending Sunday school at
the
Tears streamed down Dear’s face. My jaws locked, my
stomach quaked and my chest felt as if it was going to cave in. Little
rivers of sweat swept down my face. Maybe, they were coming for us next,
I thought. [Even now, 40 years removed from that day, I jump when I hear
unexpected sounds.] Daddy stomped through the house waving his shotgun
and screaming, "The bastards ought to be killed, and they’ll wind up going
free." Some people whispered that Dr. King shared the blame for
those four girl’s death. No one believed in his notion that life could
change for us.
That morning had no end. We were prisoners of
fear, frozen in the moment. Before that day, I felt safe at home and in
church. But I saw that white people could kill me when and wherever they
wanted to. They could pluck me right out of the hand of God almighty, at
any time. I pressed my head deeper into Dear’s bosom and heard her heart
beating. Sunday, September 15, 1963. What did I know then of the
"lifelong hidings she had to bear?"
One of the things I didn’t understand then, and find hard
to understand now is why Dear didn’t take us and run from Daddy. When the
bombs, fires and taunts from white people came, I could always find solace in
resting in Dear’s arms, or listen to her words of comfort. "Don’t
worry, honey. God will take care of us". God and Dear took care
of me, but who took care of her--certainly not Daddy or Daddy-Yo. When
Daddy hit Dear and made her cry, my world was turned upside down. I can’t
remember a time when Daddy didn’t beat Dear. Curse words aimed at her
fell from his mouth so profusely and so vile. The maligning darts he
hurled at her sliced through me before piercing her heart. I am pained
even now remembering them.
A mild protest [That’s just that cheap liquor talking,
Archie]. A vicious slap [Don’t talk back to me, bitch].
Then another [motherfucker]. Screams [Don’t Archie! Please]. A
punch to the stomach [whore], in the face [don’t tell me what to do,
this is my gotdamn house]. Slaps [bitch]. Screams and
slaps. Slaps and screams until he tired out, sat on the edge of the bed
and fell asleep across the colorful spread, fully dressed. A couple of
times following a beating, as Daddy drifted deeper into a drunken slumber, Dear
stood over him swirling a pot filled with boiling grits or black-eyed
peas. She couldn’t bring herself to pour it on
him.
Neither my prayers nor Dear’s were answered. We asked
for different things: she wanted the beatings to stop; I wanted her to stop
living with Daddy. He overheard me once tell her this. Instead of coming
to terms with what was bothering his youngest son, he took his belt off and
beat me from under the coffee table as I tried to get away. Large whelps
rose on my body, bruising me for days. Although the bruises have
faded, the scars to my soul are still there as are my memories.
Dear comforted me and told me stories of how kind and
gentle my father was before the war. She believed he would someday be
that man again. "The Lord will change his heart," she
said. "You just wait and see." Dear was more generous in
her faith than I.
Archie
Lee Cooper, my father, grew up in Verbena,
His
taut dark body resembled a scythe’s handle when he worked in the
In
Dear
said: "He was so different back then, before the war. He had
long black curly hair and a voice so smooth you just wanted to rest in it
forever. He didn’t curse none, either. He was a perfect gentleman:
didn’t smoke, drink or nothing. Always talked about going to
An alarm crept into Dear’s voice: "And he quit
coming to church...him and my Daddy can’t stand preachers. If they don’t
agree on nothing else, they shake hands on that. Your granddaddy said
`Satan is in the pulpit." Said the preacher ain’t good for nothing but
eating up your best pieces of fried chicken, taking your hard-earned money, or
laying up with some ‘saved’ sister."
Daddy spoke about detesting people who drank. As a teen he described himself as shy and
withdrawn. A friend convinced him that
if he took a drink or two, he would loosen up and feel a bit more relaxed
around the girls. It worked. Daddy said he really loved talking to the
girls but wasn’t able to unless he had a drink or two first. When he joined the military, he said there
were times when all they did was sit around and drink and tell lies. Aside from driving a supply truck, one of his
duties was to travel in to
I
tried to picture Daddy as a lady’s man. All I could see was his mouthful
of missing teeth, except for a few yellow and gray dangling fragments. I
guess they weren’t that way back then or they were that way for so long, the
ladies didn’t notice.
Dear must have noticed his meanness and his drunkenness.
She was once entertaining her club members in the living room. Daddy,
drunk as he could be off home brew, stumbled through the back door. My
brothers and I heard him coming and turned off the lights and pretended to be
asleep. Daddy always said: "When I come home, I want it quiet
enough to hear a rat piss on cotton."
Daddy clicked the lights right back on and in a slurred
voice called us sons-of-bitches and headed toward the bedroom gagging and
throwing up his guts. We heard his vomit splashing on the floor. He
reeled into the bedroom, opened a dresser drawer and pissed all over Dear’s
things. When he finally got to the bathroom, he fell asleep in puddles of
his own vomit.
Dear didn’t know he was home until one of the club ladies
went to the bathroom, threw the door open and hurriedly retreated to the living
room. Dear put off her pain and embarrassment and politely asked her
guests to leave. She called us to help get Daddy out of his filth and
into bed.
"Len, Alfred Lloyd, Archie Lee! Ya'll come here and help get your daddy off
this floor," she called out to us.
We jumped out of the bed wearing just our underpants. We struggled to get him up as he flopped
across the foot of the bed. As she was
getting him undressed, he woke up and started cursing.
"If ya'll don't get your black asses back in that bed,
I'll stomp corns on your asses as big as a nickel and kill every last one of
you bastards!"
We made a beeline for our room. We were all too
familiar with the storm that was rising in the next room. My brothers
slid beneath the covers and I squirted under the bed and crawled to the
farthest corner against the wall. The balls of dust, roach carcasses and
rat droppings didn’t matter when Daddy was in what he referred to as his
"coma." Dear usually got a beating on Dad’s “coma”
nights.
"Our Father, which art in Heaven,” I whispered
faintly. I knew this passage backwards
and forwards, but on that night the words escaped me.
"Bitch! I'm the boss in this
fuckin house! I'll put you, your clothes
and your no count chulluns' out the gotdamn door!" He screamed.
I could hear him slapping Dear and the thumping sound as she fell
against the wall.
"Don't you hit me again,” she
yelled back.
I lay on my side with my knees up to
my chest and my ears covered, rocking and begging, crying to God to let this
last lick be enough. It seemed the more
I prayed the worse the beating became.
Daddy must have had a good reason for hitting Dear otherwise God would
have interceded and save her. The preacher
said that God's ways are not our ways and that his works are mysterious. I didn’t understand God's point in letting
Dear, one of his loyal subjects, get smacked around. To question God was a grave sin I committed
frequently. Every day that brought us
closer to the weekend, I anticipated the events with overwhelming dread. Undoubtedly, I had offended God by asking
him to help Dear, why else would he allow the fighting to continue?
Daddy
eventually drifted off to sleep and I crawled out from under the bed, back onto
my pallet. Dear was sobbing in the
bathroom. I asked Dear once why she
didn't just take us and leave. She was always
willing and found some comfort in telling her story about how kind and gentle
dad was before the War. She was
convinced that someday he would again be the husband she once knew. I was not as hopeful for the future.
With any upheaval in our fragile
lives, in the middle of the night, my friend Billy and I would steal off to the
clearing, next to my grandmother's house.
We called it `problem hill.' We
would lie flat on our back in the tall grass and look toward the sky, asking
God for a sign. Billy thought he had
received one, his eyes were glowing and as bright as new marbles. I reminded him it was just a shooting
star. We both made a predictable
wish. No point in wasting a perfectly
good shooting star.
Billy's father was much like mine. Billy was what we called `cock strong,'
(unusually strong and muscular for his age) but wouldn't harm a fly. He was leery of people outside of his
family. The adverse effects of his home
life on him were more evident than mine.
He was teased horribly about how badly he smelled, or the over-sized
safety pin he used to keep the back of his Converse sneakers together. This was not some foolish fashion statement;
Billy’s mother honestly couldn’t afford to buy shoes or sneakers for him at
times. People stared and often made
belittling comments, but he never let on that it bothered him.
That hillside was Billy's and mine for hours
as we beseeched God for everything from money to imploring His help to get our
mothers to leave our drunken, no count fathers.
I once prayed in earshot of my father for Dear to divorce him. He did not spare the rod. The looped welts on the skin made from an
extension chord whipping would turn white after a few days. The kids in school laughed and joked, but it
was just a matter of time before they would come to school wearing the same
markings of a troubled home.
One evening Daddy came in late from work and hurled
accusations at me in a soft, controlled tone.
He was certain I had been looking out the door and when I saw him coming
I raced for the kitchen and started washing dishes. Nothing I said could convince him
otherwise. He ordered me out of my
clothes and told me to lie across the bed.
If I moved one inch, he threatened to start the punishment all over. It
was my choice. Daddy doubled the long
brown extension chord. I could feel the
fire tear across my back, legs, arms, buttocks, and neck. The only part spared was my face and
head. I tried to keep as still as
possible and pleaded with him that I wasn’t lying. The beatings started over several times. Finally, he tired and order my older brother
to get the alcohol to treat my wounds.
My brother cried as he soaked the torn rags in the isopropyl and
sterilized all those little broken loops on my body.
Although the beatings were the worst acts of meanness, they
weren’t the only ones. In Daddy and Daddy-Yo’s houses, the women seldom sat
and ate with the men. Dear stood in the doorway until we had our fill,
then ate what was left. Some days there was nothing. At those
times, Dear cried. It was not as if she was weeping for a feast that
passed her by. Many times she prepared fried potatoes for breakfast,
boiled potatoes for lunch and the juice from the lunch potatoes with corn bread
mashed in it for dinner.
Daddy
never made more than $80 or $90 dollars a week driving the delivery truck. He
sometimes gave Dear 5 or 10 dollars to run the household and he would gamble or
drink up the rest. One afternoon, my friends and I were playing basketball when
all of a sudden the game came to halt.
My neighbor, Ms. Juette, was known as the neighborhood gossip and
resident hell-raiser. “Len! Come get our
daddy out of my flower bed right now!” She shouted. Mrs. Juette was about
4-feet nothing and was almost equally as tall as she was wide. On any given day after school, up to 15 kids
would be standing around, waiting their turn to get in to the game. I could feel all eyes on me at once, as I
limped woundedly away. Juan and Billy, my closest friends, offered to help me,
but I knew I would have to take this familiar walk alone. Sure enough, there he was all sprawled out in
between Mrs. Juette’s roses and begonias. By now the adult neighbors had
gathered. My brothers and I struggled to
get daddy to his feet and carried him passed the onlookers to our house a block
away. Daddy spat out grass and dirt along with expletive after vile
expletive. I hated daddy for putting us
through this humiliating ritual dance.
My Granddaddy constantly reminded us of the sorry lot we had drawn for a
father and that was never going to change.
I truly
believe Daddy-Yo would have killed my father if he had presented him with
little cause. Whether Dear love daddy or
not was irrelevant to him. Daddy-Yo
always said that daddy was not only a poor excuse for a man, but for a human
being. One night Dad came in as drunk as
a skunk coughing up out all the words we were not permitted to say. My older brother ordered us to turn out the
light and jump in bed immediately when he heard Dad staggering and cussing
towards our room. The room was pitched black
and we pretended to be sound asleep. I
heard Dad utter, “I got something for you little bastards.” Trouble was only a few moments away. On rare occasions, Dad would get distracted
from reeking havoc in our lives and just pass out across the bed. This night we would not be so fortunate. I could hear Dad fumbling around with
something in the kitchen. We were all
too afraid to move as Alfred and my eyes alternated from the door knob to
Archie, waiting for instructions from him.
I peeked from under the covers, with my eyes fixed on the doorway once I
heard Daddy coming. I looked to Archie once more for something, anything. In a rush, the door flew open with a loud
crash. “I told you little mothafuckers I had something for you!” Dad shouted,
pointing the barrel of the shotgun towards Archie. Before I could scream, came the explosion and
the fire, shooting from the barrel. With in seconds came the second flash. I was frozen. Something warm and wet running
down my legs. I felt something tugging at the back of my arm, as I stood in the
middle of my pallet on the floor. I
could see Alfred’s silhouette against the
With in the hour, my drunken father
was out in the street in from of Daddy-Yo’s house, yelling for us to “get our
asses home.” As it turned out, Daddy,
had lit two fire crackers and dropped them down the barrel of the gun. Daddy-Yo, placed his 38-cal. Pistol in the
chest pocket of his worn, blue overalls before going outside. I watched from the living room window. Daddy-Yo would have none of what ever Dad had
to say. Then I heard him dare Daddy to
set one foot on his property, with his hand placed firmly in his overall chest
pocket. Daddy-Yo taught me to shoot and
always told me never to draw a gun on a person unless you intend to use it. I prayed Daddy would be a man just this once
and take one more step. One more step
meant freedom for Dear. No more late night beatings and having to sex a husband
reeking of vomit and waste. One more step would release me and my brothers from
our torment. No more extension cords or
braided tree branches. “Please Daddy, do this one thing for us, for me.”
Daddy kept company with the likes of those Dear
despised. Once a week and sometimes more, Daddy would make his way
to Mrs. Burrell’s house to spend the greater portion of his meager $90.00
weekly wages on scotch and sweet milk. In our neighborhood, you could
count on a having a shot house with in a short brisk walk of about 15 or 20
minutes. Mrs. Burrell and Ben Fuchs sold more liquor than all the others
combined. Louise Winfield lived just a few feet from out back porch and
down the path in a green, wooden double-tenant house. After spending
months drinking a Mrs. Burrell’s, Daddy would suddenly switch gears and start
spending his precious drinking time at Ms. Winfield’s house. I suspect
Daddy got behind on his tab to Mrs. Burrell and decided not to return until he
had enough to pay the outstanding bill. Ms. Winfeld had been a fixture in
my life since the day I was born. Dear gave strict orders for us to be
respectful of her, but nothing more. Everyone whispered and said she was
strange, the unusual sort. Daddy came right out and said she was a
‘bull-dagger,” whatever that was. Louise was short and stocky and wore
men clothes. Everyday I had to pass her house in order to get to my school
and everyday she would be out front saying hello to all who dared to make eye
contact. “Hey Cooper boy!” she would yelled in her deep, gravelly voice
while fanning her hand and arm way up over her head in an undulating
motion. There she stood; dressed in men flannel plaid shirts, corduroy
pants and penny loafers. Sometimes she wore men’s hats with full brim
like the ones men often wear to Sunday services. Louise cannot be
adequately described unless I mention her teeth. With each word spoken,
her tongue whipped through the opening in her mouth where at least four of her
front teeth once resided. The two teeth on each side of her mouth were
green, yellow and brown. I barely noticed Ms. Winfield’s teeth because I
had grown accustom to seeing my father’s mouth which was in much worse
condition. In my neighborhood, adults didn’t get their teeth fixed.
If a dental problem arose, no matter how small, that tooth was usually
extracted without giving much thought to the possibility of saving it.
Ms. Winfield, the bull-dagger and Daddy’s friend, took a shine to me and I
hated her. Whenever I passed her, she would politely ask me to go to Joe
Millers or Mr. Ben’s store to buy a pack of