FacingRacismLR

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like cigar smoke and it’s on my clothes, I can’t get that cigar smell off me, that’s what they’re
smelling.” They kept howling, “I smell a gar, I smell a gar.” “What a Ci-Gar?” one of the boys
asked, “No, a, Ni….gar!” another replied bringing the joke to it’s triumphant end amid cheers
and laughter. That was the first time I can ever recall hearing that word. And how did I handle
that? I said under my breath. “Oh thank God, they don’t smell uncle Roy’s cigar.” I was so
thankful they didn’t smell that smelly cigar smoke. I knew they were talking about me, but
that word had no significant impact on me.
I soon came to find out, that I would be segregated in another way. That first year I had no
classes with other black students, and my lunch period was different from theirs as well. I was
in a totally different place, and that first year I had to face my hardships alone. I felt invisible
and I wanted to be invisible. No white students ever once spoke to me, unless it was to bark in
my face, “What are you looking at!” or to harass me with the N-word.
Whereas in my last year at my all black elementary school, I was learning algebra, at my
new school I was treated completely ignorant and was put back in classes being taught how
to add and subtract with some of the dumbest people you ever want to meet. Eventually the
gym teacher (who taught the remedial students math) told someone that I didn’t belong there,
and I was moved up to a more appropriate level. I had an English teacher who had me get up
in front of the class and speak so the white students could hear the difference between the way
black and white people talk. And when white students would throw our books out the third
story windows, we had to go get them. The white students were never, at least not in public,
reprimanded for any mistreatment or abuse of black students.
When Richard walked right through me in the hallway, knocking me flat on my back and
cracking my head against the floor, nobody helped me up or said anything. I got turned away
by the principals secretary with: “He doesn’t have time to see every student, he’s busy.” But it
was the lunch period that was the worst part of the day. I hated it when they served peas. The
boys would spit them through their straws at me. Every day I sat invisible and ate my lunch
across from a girl who would try to find my shins and kick the hell out of me, to the point
I would have bruises. I was too afraid to do anything about it. I didn’t want to start a fight
surrounded by white people. If I did that, I knew I’d be dead.
Walking home always included outrunning and maneuvering Richard Meeks who would
chase the black kids with his car. I’m convinced to this day if we had not run he would have
hit us, and it would have somehow been our fault. And then when the school bus passed full
of white students, they would throw all their nickels at us from the bus windows.
I had to fight back so many tears. “Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry” became a mantra of sorts.
I didn’t want anyone to know how much pain I was in, how scared and sad I was.
Under the weight of my father’s honor, and the weight of the discrimination facing all black
people, I had to keep moving forward through school instead of retreating like I wanted to
back to the all black high school. That was my cross to bear and I chose to bear it. That pain
I endured helped bring about integration of schools. I know there are still prejudices and
injustices in this world. There are still crosses to bear and people are saying, like I did to my
father, “Ok, I’ll do it.”