One Drop Rule. Pt. 2

(Please read "One Drop Rule" Pt. 1 first)

I grew up in the closing couple of decades of American segregation. 

I vividly recall the institution of white and black schools, white and black restaurants and hotels, white and black restrooms, white and black water fountains, segregated public transportation, and the denial of voting rights to eligible black citizens. For a time it seemed everyone took such things for granted. 

Well, perhaps not everyone.

I think I must have lived a rather shielded life, however, since for the life of me I don’t recall the turmoil surrounding the Civil Rights movement which included such notable events as, The Selma to Montgomery March, the Woolworth Sit-In, The Freedom Riders, the Murders of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner, and George Wallace’s dramatic appearance in the doorway of the University of Alabama. 

I suppose as a family we were a little better off than average, since after we moved to the country my mother hired a black maid. Now to be sure, it was nothing like that movie, “The Help.” We loved and respected Etta, and if memory serves me well, she was treated like a member of the family. There definitely wasn’t any, “You can’t use our spoons and forks, or cups and saucers” and “You better learn to hold your pee ‘til you get back home at night.” (The truth of the matter is my mother and Etta maintained contact the entire rest of their lives, and given our former maid’s failing health, (and before her own declining health prevented it) mama exercised responsibility for her shopping and banking.

Of course, we were exposed to the “N word,” but I don’t recall using it; although admittedly, it was liberally thrown around by my mother’s parents in Georgia. I admit, however, it always seemed odd that black people called one another by the word they claimed they despised. 

Several years ago, in my role as a substitute teacher, I recall hearing a black teenage girl utter the “N word,” and I reprimanded her for it. As I remember I said something like, 

“If you don’t want white folks to call you such an awful word, don’t use it for yourself of anyone else you know!”

And then there was that first day of my Sophomore year (1965) when ten or twelve of the best and brightest black students were enrolled as test subjects in my high school. Prior to this they’d attended the “separate but equal” school across town. Things went smoothly, there was no public demonstration and the following year Summerlin’s doors “swung wide open” to the remainder of Union Academy’s students. (A few years later my alma mater, “Summerlin Institute” was renamed “Bartow Senior High School; primarily because Jacob Summerlin, an early central Florida pioneer, had been the proud owner of numerous slaves).

In spite of the advances in the area of Civil Rights, it seemed they by whom, and for whom the battle was fought were rather tentative, confused and insecure about their own identities, (and perhaps whites were in it together with them). I mean, persons whose ancestors had originated in Africa were referred to by a curious progression of monikers over the course of the next several decades.

Colored. Negro. Black. People of Color. African-American.

Fast forward half a century, and the results of the DNA tests I cited in the previous segment of my story. 

I can’t say I was shocked, and I won’t say I was disappointed. Au Contraire. It was, rather, a relief to finally discover something which I expected would remain hidden to me the rest of my days. Oddly enough, I was compelled to write several blogs about my discovery and my emotions towards it.

Following is an excerpt from a blog I referred to as “Percentages.”

There’s an old phrase about this, that or the other having “happened in the woodshed;” (and the results of my mother’s DNA testing has led me to believe that the Woodshed Theory was, among my own ancestors, much more than a theory).

Both sides of father’s and mother’s family owned slaves; (which I regret to report).

Of course, it was my mother’s DNA data which came back conclusive for a small percentage of ethnic ancestry, but in regard to our ancestors having owned slaves, my dad would sometimes muse,

“None of my grandpa’s would have ever ‘gone out back’ to ‘visit’ the slave women. They were much more ethical, than that.”

… (Causing me to wonder how ethical one could have possibly been to have purchased and worked slaves in the first place, or how my father could have possibly known the character of relatives who died a century or more before his own birth).

And then I wrote one which I titled, “The Served and Them Who Serve.” 

Following is a brief, but poignant passage which relates to the movie portrayal of a real life butler at the White House; who during the Reagan administration was invited to attend a state dinner, and for the briefest of moments exchanged his traditional role for a nobler one. 

My friends, I can tell you that the realization that one of my distant grandfathers or grandmothers was African-American, and endured the rigors and humiliation of a voyage across the Atlantic Ocean, and was delivered into the bonds of slavery has cast a new light on the privileged position I have thus far enjoyed.

And as a result, I have experienced something rather akin to the unique circumstance of which our humble server was afforded; as he sat among ranks of the served.

However, I think the diametrical opposite played itself out here.

For you see, if only in my imagination, and for the briefest of moments, I found myself among the ranks of them who serve.

(To be continued)

By William McDonald, PhD. Excerpt from "(Mc)Donald's Daily Diary" Vol. 39. Copyright pending

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