Negro Digest - Freedom Archives

students said, "Didn't Malcolm
preach hate?" We both answered
together, "Malcolm didn't preach
hate ." Before the term was over,
the basketball player was carrying
my books to class .
"Aren't you afraid the students
will make fun of you?"
"I don't care anything about
that," he said .
Most of the students were from
tobacco farms, but the college was
in a lumbering area . The family
that owned the lumber mill owned
the town and everyone in it . They
wouldn't allow an anti-poverty program
in the area because they
didn't want any interference with
their cheap help . But the college
did have funds for student jobs,
which teachers were given the right
to distribute among their favorites .
The college community was a
weird world of make-believe .
There were teachers at that school
whohad worked there for 10 years,
and had never been to town . They
didn't even know where Main
Street was . These were the teachers
most likely to talk about what a
lovely, advanced, progressive town
it was, how important the college
was to the town, and how much
the black teachers were esteemed
by the community . I soon discovered
that the only way to maintain
these fantasies of prestige,
power, and status in relation to the
town was, indeed, not to go there .
Black PhDs would find themselves
addressed by their first names by
white store clerks . My kids and I
NEGRO DIGEST Mareh 1969
were nearly assaulted for trying to
buy a take-out pizza from a white
restaurant . When I told my fellow .
teachers about it, I was advised not
to file a complaint if I wanted to
keep my job .
Late spring and early summer
was harvest time on the nearby
truck farms . Migrant workers arrived
from Florida on open trucks .
Some of my students told me they
had hidden migrant workers who
were trying to escape from the
camps.
As time passed, recruiting of
workers to get in the crops became
aggressive . Students were stopped
on the streets . Recruiters approached
small children . One,
morning at 4 o'clock I found my
nine-year-old son dressed and
ready to pick corn for $4.00 a day.
I had a hard time stopping him.
The children told me about conditions
in the fields. They had to
look out for the tractors . The tractors
didn't look out for them . It
was swampy country, and there
were poisonous snakes . The chitdren
were transported on the backs
of open trucks . Three small boys
had been killed on the highway the
year before.
The children seemed to be
frightened . They would come and
tell me when they were beaten up .
I would ask if they told their parents.
They always said, "They
won't do anything about it ." I
didn't know what to tell them. I
couldn't do anything about it,
either . One little boy with terror
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