My First Three Experiences with Negroes

The following presents my memories of my first three experiences with negroes. The memories date from 1957 to 1961 when “negro” was the accepted white word for that race so I use that word to center my recollections accurately within that time. These recollections are from a child’s naïve perspective. I could overlay them with commentary as an adult but my intention is to try presenting my actual, somewhat oblivious, childhood experiences. My stories take place in Walla Walla, a conservative farming town of twenty-five-thousand in the wheat country of eastern Washington.

My first contact was Aunt Jemima. She came to our school assembly. We had assemblies every month or so and one of them was for Aunt Jemima, the actual Aunt Jemima, who was going to serve her pancakes at a fund-raising breakfast the following morning. All six hundred of us baby-boomed kids sat on the multi-purpose room floor from first graders in front to the sixth-graders in back. I was three or four rows back from the front so I must have been in second grade which would make it around 1957/58. Aunt Jemima was introduced and she came out with a big smile. She had her hair covered with a bandana just like her picture on the box and a shoulder to floor dress (yellow, I think) with an apron.  She talked just like negroes in the movies talked. She was my first negro and she was happy to be at our school.

Part way through the assembly, she asked for a volunteer to . . . . Now, one thing I had already learned by second grade was to always raise your hand when a volunteer opportunity came up. They offered a chance to do something different from usual. So my hand shot up but as she added other words to her sentence, I hesitated and pulled my hand back down. But it was too late. She pointed to me and asked me to come on up onto the low stage with her. As I walked up, a similar-aged girl was coming on up from the other side of the room. Aunt Jemima welcomed me up to her stage-left side and the girl to her stage-right side and put her hands on our shoulders in a maternally or auntly-welcoming way and introduced us to the assembled school. I had never stood in the front of an assembly looking out at the six hundred of us. It was this very different point of view that occupied most of my attention. But I remember her saying words to the effect of “isn’t this a wonderful little boy and beautiful girl” and that she was going to sing a song about us – which she did. With her arms around our shoulders she swayed back and forth and sang a song about this little boy and girl that, in my seven-year old boy mind, linked us romantically. I was sorry I had volunteered as I looked out over the assembly, full of grinning and delighted (but not cruel) laughing. I felt embarrassed.

There was some ribbing about me liking the girl that I had to endure but that faded away before the end of the day. There was absolutely no comments about being up there with a negro. It was just the little boy/little girl thing.

Second experience.

In third grade, we moved into the older, larger school building for the big kids. It had broad wooden steps leading up from the outside doors to the first main floor. At the end of recess and lunch, we would come in through the playground side doors, and line up on either side of the stairs, waiting for a teacher to come let us walk up into the main hall. My position in my memory is definitely on the left-hand side of the stairs so I must have been in fourth grade because my fourth grade classroom was on the left side of the main hall.

One day in the school year, we all came in and I was standing there on the left side. Three or four steps higher, on the right side of the stairway, was a negro boy. An actual negro boy, standing there on the steps like the rest of us. I gazed at him because I had never seen anything like this before. I had no sense of prejudice against him, just curiosity about this novel thing. I had never seen a negro boy before. I kept studying him until a teacher came to let us all come to class.

The same thing happened a second time. There he was on the other side of the stairs. I could study him some more. He definitely had dark brown skin and black curly hair. He didn’t look comfortable; he stared down at the floor. I didn’t know why.

I never saw him at our school again. I didn’t know why.

Third story

I think I was in fifth grade, around 1961. Mom attended the First Congregational Church. She had a life-long respect for the minister back then, Frank Elliot. We went to Sunday School every Sunday and church camp usually every summer. She would sometimes go to evening programs for adults.

She went to an evening program that featured some men from the South who were talking about things that were happening there. The next day at dinner she made a declaration. We were no longer to say “Eenie, meenie, minie, moe, catch a nigger by the toe.” Instead we were to say, “Eenie, meenie, minie, moe, catch a tiger by the toe.” A whole lot of kid games started out with eenie, meenieing to determine who went first or who was It so this phrase was used a lot. I’m not sure if I knew what nigger meant; it was just a word that was used, like meenie. What does meenie mean?

Sometime soon thereafter, we neighborhood kids were playing and we circled up for eenie, meenie. I felt awkward but Mom had made a declaration so I had no choice. I told the other kids that I couldn’t say it that way anymore. I had to say “catch a tiger by the toe.” The other kids were fine with that and that’s what we said thereafter.

Now, almost sixty years later, when I ask my students, they all report that it goes “Eenie, meenie, minie, moe, catch a tiger by the toe” just like they all automatically put their seatbelts on. We all are shaped by the world the preceding generation has shaped but we also have the chance to shape that world for the future.