My eight year old granddaughter, Keira, experienced a lousy episode at a meeting of her Brownie Girl Scout Troop. She arrived with her older sister, was ignored by the other girls, and one of the group - staring at her - remarked, "some people don't belong here." Keira told her sister that she wanted to leave, that her tummy hurt. (this is Keira's 'tell' when she needs
to get out of Dodge.) My older granddaughter took Keira home. Uncharacteristically, she did not tell the offending kid off. She rescued her sister. Keira, of course, doesn't want to go back to the Girl Scouts. Keira and her sister are biracial. All of the others there are Caucasian.
Lots of old hurts rise to the surface when something like this happens. Again. I remembered my daughter's confrontations growing up in a white community (and a white family). And I remembered when I experienced racial bigotry for the first time. I was a sophomore theatre major in college in Pittsburgh, PA. Half-way through the year I met a guy from another university close by. Richard was charming, blond, and nice to look at. We went out a few times; always in the company of his friends and their dates. Perry Jones was usually there, too, but alone. His girlfriend was back home in Jamaica. Perry was black.
A while after Richard and I had stopped dating, Perry phoned me. He wanted to go up to the Hill District to listen to jazz. He invited me to join him - as a friend. I'd been to the Hill the year before. A friend and I had gone to see Billie Holiday. No place better back then for great jazz than the Hill District. So of course I said yes. And because Perry was a terrific guy; very bright and witty and a real gentleman.
He met me in the lobby of the girls' dormitory. Everyone there stood around waiting to see whom this black man was waiting for. When I emerged from the elevator, there was a universal gasp. When we were on the street, I asked Perry what that was all about. "Welcome to my world," he laughed. We cabbed it to the club in the Hill District. It was fairly early in the evening; the club was far from busy. The head waiter refused to seat us. The scene was repeated in two more clubs. These were black clubs, you understand. Our roles were reversed. Neither of us had anticipated this kind of reception from the black community. We were ready to give up. It had begun to rain; so we agreed to duck into one more club. We were being very brave; folks seemed to be getting more mean and nasty with each encounter.
I remember that there was a wide bar on the left as we entered the club. The band was on top of the bar. When we walked in, the band leader stopped playing his trumpet, bent down and smiled at us. "Welcome to our club - bet you kids love jazz," he said. "Thanks," Perry replied. "Do you think they'll seat us? We've been barred from three clubs already." The band leader looked a bit surprised - well, we were both dressed like college kids on a date in the fifties - pretty conservative. Then it registered. He called the host over and told him "these young folks are my friends; you take good care of them." So we got a table; we each had a drink. We listened to the music for perhaps 45 minutes without conversation. Then we left. We both felt as though we'd been to war. Perry hadn't encountered anything like this in the two years he'd been in Pittsburgh. But he'd always been with the guys and never alone with a white girl. We stopped to thank the trumpet player on the bar; he was Louis Armstrong.
The scene in the dormitory repeated itself. By now I was pissed off; so I kissed Perry goodnight at the elevator. Shocking! The next day, the head of the drama department called me into his office to tell me he heard I'd been keeping bad company. This was the ultimate disappointment and I told him so. I'd heard about snotty New York restaurants not wanting to serve black Broadway stars. But it wouldn't have occurred to me that people working in theatre or any of the arts would be racist.
I went back to my dorm room and called my dad to tell him the entire saga. His response - being a Jewish immigrant from Poland - was pretty close to "welcome to my world." Perry phoned me that evening to say that he thought we'd better not attempt such an outing again. He wasn't up for the fight. I'm sure he had many others before and after our shared battle. Over the years I fought along side my daughter. I had hoped that the world would be a gentler place for my granddaughter. Not so much has changed. Keira will need to learn to be brave. And to seek out the great human beings like Mr. Armstrong.
