LEOLA’s Story

“Every September I Remember”

There are events in life that one never forgets.  A certain moment in time forever etched into your being, creating an indelible impression that somehow changes your entire outlook on what you once perceived as normal.  That one experience can set the tone for the rest of your life.

     That day for me was September 12th, 1974, my first day of high school. What I remember most are the sounds.  The explosive impact of rocks and bricks smashing through the windows of the school bus. The quick swirling speed of shattered glass hurling across my face, missing by inches. The piercing frightful screams of injured children franticly crying out for someone to rescue us. My body crouched under the seats of the school bus, crawling, burrowing deep into the floor in hopes of finding refuge.

Through the chaos I hear the unforgettable chanting by the angry white protesters as they stood by defiantly with fists held high singing out in unison, “Hell No, we won’t go!” The words grabbed me tight, slowly deconstructing what little self-esteem I’d acquired at that point in my life.

In paralyzing fear, I watched how smoothly the word nigger formed around the inside of their mouths, how easily it molded to fit their jaw line.  How effortlessly and unrestrained it slipped through their teeth, eagerly inching its way out into the atmosphere. Nigger, nigger, nigger resounded endlessly in quick succession like loud angry thunder. It was as if I could feel the word Nigger bounce off the school bus, float throughout the crowd, then finally sink into the streets and sidewalks, forever leaving the stain of racism.

What I witnessed that day was unconscionable. What I felt 50 years ago still resonates like it was yesterday. As a fourteen-year-old child, my limited world view was struggling to understand what was happening around me. I’d never known so much fear and uncertainty.  I sat on that school bus listening intently as my mind absorbed all the anger and incivility directed toward me. My brain was desperately trying to unravel and somehow conceptualize what it meant to be the focus of another human beings hate.  On that day, something changed in me, but at that time in my life, I didn’t have the language to articulate what human betryal actually felt like. 

     Every single day as me and the other kids from Roxbury boarded our assigned school buses headed to South Boston, it was a known fact that our presence would be met with extreme resistence. Boston Public school superentendent Louise Day Hicks had run a successful campaign filled with a racist ideology of unfair generalizations, labeling black people as inferior, violent, calling us animals. Her words set the tone for a visceral set of beliefs that one group is morally supeiror, while labeling another with insidiously filled sterootypes and misperceptions that haunt black people to this very day. It is through those lens that the people of South Boston viewed black people. Making it crystal clear that we were  unwanted, as if our presence disrupted their notion of purity.  

     I now think back and wonder how my underdeveloped sincebilites were given a crash course in this countries long and ugly history of anti-blackness. So much of who we are is molded by the toxic environment of racism—dictating who is to be valued and who is to be discarded.

Somehow, at age fourteen I found the wherewithall to prepare myself for a world that saw me as a insignificant image of misconstruded sterotypes. With school teachers and faculty I managed to navigate the forced smiles, the differential treatment, the vailed tolerance and the award winning performances of pretending to care. In these daily encounters I came to the realization that my very existence, all the beautiful characteristics that make me uniquely human---my black skin, my brown eyes, my one dimpled cheek and hair that coils and tighten at the slightest threat of moisture, they all triggered a repulsive hate so pervasive that basic humanity was inconceivable.

Mentally, it was impossible to not be overwhelmed by the enormity of emotions that were wreaking havoc on every part of my psychological development—so out of necessity my brain intervened and saved me. I remember splintering—becoming these two entities that were necessary for my survival. I’d tapped into a double consciousness that is a requirement for black people to merely function in an environment that deemed you so unfit that parents would rather their children drop out of school than sit beside a black child in a classroom. How does a person reconcile that level of hate?

     It was incredibly difficult to learn with the knowledge that danger was a constant thought. Police protection was imperative in every classroom, hallways and cafeteria. Daily body searches were performed each morning, and metal detector screening had become our normal. What was happening around me required a level of objectivity that I don’t think most 9th graders possessed. Instead of experiencing the fun of high school with sports, goofing around with friends, or the simplicity of a pimple being the extent of my concern, I spent most of my freshman year mastering the intersection of structural racism and one’s own right to be treated with basic humanity. I quickly figure out that my sanity was linked to my capacity to departmentalize my trauma. At a very early age I became innately aware of how to conduct myself in the presence of whiteness—movements were calculated, my words careful, my interactions limited. I associated white people with harm and injury. Like so many generations before me, you learned to deal with the constant racial discrimination, moving through bigotry with fluidity--enduring it, finding the skills to pack it way to be dealt with at some other time in your life.

There were times when the heaviness became unbearable, I wanted out, I wanted to quit. I wanted to get back to my life prior to busing—simple, fun, double Dutch jump rope and grape Now & Later candy. I craved the familiarity of my community where I was wrapped in the consistency and the comfort of trust. I wanted to inhale the sweet smell of my dads Days Work chewing tobacco. I wanted to hear Momma’s southern drawl, how her words caress and sooth, slowly creating a story that is forever etched in my memory.

But unfortunately, I was carelessly thrust into an egregiously violent environment that at its core was completely void of any level of comprehensive learning. Education was camouflaged in the rhetoric of a school committee that never had the best interest of Black children. Education was secondary to survival. 

     Fifty years ago, my life was forever changed when U.S. District Court Judge W. Arthur Garrity issued a mandate to desegregate Boston Public Schools by means of forced busing. A decision, fueled by a lawsuit that found the Boston Public School Committee guilty of intentionally establishing a dual school system that deliberately and consciously underfunded schools in predominately black neighborhoods. 

It is without question that the members of the Boston Public school committee used their platform as overseers of education to create learning roadblocks for black children, as well as barriers that maligned access, while maliciously trying to sever our capacity to gain the knowledge and skills directly related to success. 

But, the question remains, why? I go back to that fourteen-year-old girl that grew up in a world that told her to believe in God, eat your vegetables and treat people they way you want to be treated. Get good grades, be respectful. I was told that all men are created equal. And that if I did all those things, that I too could live the American dream. But that girl quickly discovered that the American dream is conditional with a non-negotiable caveat, one that would restrict the free will of black people.

     History is instructive, and In order to understand what happened in 1974, we must look back and understand that, “Today is so much a product of yesterday, that yesterday can only be understood as it is explained by today. For the present is simply the developing past, the past an under developed present.”

 It is my belief that until we reexamine racisms historical past, how it influences laws, how we misinterpret history, how it impacts regulations, and institutional practices throughout society---until it is properly addressed, we will continue to have a legacy of distrust, and limited racial progress.