Negro Digest - Freedom Archives

in his eyes was mute . My son tried
to teach him to speak .
The Ku Klux Klan was very active
in the area, and they would
hold silent demonstrations . Lines
of cars with confederate plates
would parade slowly down Main
Street blowing their horns. I got
worried about my kids . We lived
on the campus . My son went to
school right across the street . I told
him to keep away from white people,
especially people with confederate
plates on their car . He paid
me no mind . He'd bring white boys
on the campus to play with him .
Once he told me, "Mom, you were
wrong about those people with confederate
plates on their car . I made
friends with some of them. I went
to their house . They were very
nice ."
Kids can make you feel humble
sometimes .
The campus was like an island .
After I had been there for a week,
it was hard to remember any other
world. Everything was provided by
the school . Credit was opened up
for me in town . I rented my house
from the school . I got my meals
from the school. But there was no
paycheck the first two months I
worked there . If I needed a few
bucks, I had to go ask the president
to please give me an advance on my
salary. I was afraid I would be like
the sharecropper with his bales of
cotton when payday came . I
thought they would say, "You owe
us $100 ." I finally worked up to
getting paid every month .
It's an isolated, ingrown community
. The teachers each live in
their own little world, and are
afraid to talk to each other. They
treat each other with the greatest
formal respect, perhaps to compensate
for the lack of respect they
receive outside . No one is on a
first-name basis with his colleagues .
It is always, Mr ., Mrs., or best of
all, Dr . The teachers have absolute
power over the students. The administration
has absolute power
over the teachers . The local policeman
has absolute power over the
administration . And as the true
cliche goes, power corrupts . Some
of the students were conditioned to
corruption . Around final exam
time, some of the girls offered to
clean my house, and couldn't understand
why I refused . Students
complained to me about teachers
flunking students who rejected their
advances-as if I could do anything
about it .
At the end of the semester, I
heard that a teacher with tenure
was fired for no apparent reason.
Before the summer was over, I was
fired, although I had a contract to
teach the next year, because a
young man who was my friend had
registered for summer school . No
one at the college objected . But the
local policeman told the president
to fire me, which he did with much
guilty, selfrighteous indignation. I
knew it hurt to be reminded that
when it comes down to it, the local
policeman runs the school . I had
no hard feelings about being fired.
March 1969 NEGRO DIGEST