Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family

chapter five

It took my parents a long time to finally tie the knot. They began “courting,” as my mother called it, almost immediately after meeting, but they did not marry for almost three years. I soon learned, both from their recollections and from stories told by others in the community, that these young sweethearts were apparently the talk of the town—while teaching their classes, my parents often passed notes to each other through student couriers.

The two young teachers were fully committed to their work. Mother taught English. Her former students remember her as a teacher whom you didn’t disobey despite her diminutive stature. She was a stickler for good grammar. She was the coach of the debate team and would enter her students in citywide oratorical contests. She also directed student plays and musicals, gaining a sterling reputation throughout the city for her efforts.

Her most famous student, though, was neither a debater nor a thespian. Mother taught American baseball legend Willie Mays and, despite her lack of sports acumen, knew that he was special. He recently told me that he remembered her well and recalled that she had told him early on, “You’re going to be a ballplayer. If you need to leave a little early for practice, you let me know.”

During my parents’ courtship, Daddy’s workday was completely tied up with sports. Daddy had studied athletic administration at the University of Wisconsin and put that knowledge to work by creating a comprehensive sports program. He started a girls’ basketball team, which he held to the same rigorous standards of technical excellence that he demanded of the boys.

The young couple also enjoyed an expansive social life outside of school. Birmingham was so segregated that most middle-class social activities took place in private homes and private social clubs. The few public spaces for blacks weren’t very desirable and were located in rough neighborhoods such as Fourth Avenue in downtown Birmingham. The area was known for drinking, knife fights, and “loose” women. Though my father seems to have gone to the movie theater in that part of town once in a while, my mother stayed away. In those days, there was a very clear distinction between “nice girls” and “bad girls,” and one had to be very careful about one’s reputation.

Fortunately, there seem to have been many private functions. Daddy was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, the oldest black fraternity, which sponsored dances and parties. Thankfully, Daddy was a Presbyterian minister, not a Southern Baptist, and so dancing and even a little light drinking by the minister were quite acceptable to the congregation. To the end of his life, Daddy’s eyes would fill with tears when a band played “Stars Fell on Alabama,” which was always the last dance of the night.

My parents’ lives, before and after they were married, were also taken up with my mother’s younger siblings. Alto and Gee were high school students at Fairfield when Mother and Daddy were teaching there. Because of the age difference, my parents helped raise them. Gee, sandy-haired, pretty, and spirited, was a handful and challenged her parents, particularly her mother, about everything from what dress to wear to what party to attend. Daddy was often a shoulder to cry on and a wise counselor, someone both my aunt and her parents trusted.

This was especially important when Gee abruptly left Spelman College in Atlanta without informing her parents. Gee, it seems, had decided to go to New York, where she planned to marry an Irish boy named Andy she had met there. Granddaddy Ray boarded a train and brought her back to Birmingham. My father, sensing that Gee could not at that moment live at home, arranged for her to go to Norfolk, Virginia, and live with his sister and mother. She attended and graduated from Norfolk State University, where Aunt Theresa was a faculty member. Gee became a teacher and later principal at a school for children with special needs.

Daddy was also very close to Mother’s brother Alto. He was unable to convince Alto to play football—Alto said that being hit once was enough for him—but the two became like brothers. Alto was incredibly handsome, with dark, wavy hair and an athletic build. As Gee would later do, he started college but soon quit. He joined the army, where he used his extraordinary talents as a trumpeter to play in the band throughout Europe and admittedly avoid the hard work of infantry duty.

That wasn’t good enough for my grandfather, who was determined to see every one of his children get a college education. After selling insurance for a while, Alto was shipped off to Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Alto finished college and, like most of the Rays, became a teacher.

Thus, like most of their middle-class peers in segregated Birmingham, John and Angelena managed to live full and productive lives. Segregation provided in some ways a kind of buffer in which they could, for the most part, control their environment. Like their friends and neighbors, my parents kept their distance from the white world and created a relatively placid cocoon of family, church, community, and school.

But when my parents did have to venture outside of their narrow world, shocking things happened. My uncle tells the story of the night that my father drove him back to college in Louisiana after a holiday at home. Their car broke down on a dark back road. That was in the days when a sign at the Louisiana border was said to have read, “Run, nigger, run! If you don’t know how to read, run anyway.” A highway patrolman came upon them and asked why they were there. They explained that their car had broken down. “All right,” he said. “But you boys had better have your black asses out of here before I come back.” By the light of the matches my father had with him, Alto, a master auto mechanic, somehow found a way to get the car started. The two young black men were grateful to be gone before the officer returned.

Another oft-told family story relates to my father’s decision to become a Republican. Daddy and Mother went to register to vote one day in 1952. Back then Southern officials frequently used poll tests as a way to discourage black people from voting. Mother sailed through the poll test after the clerk said to the pretty, light-skinned Angelena, “You surely know who the first President of the United States was, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Mother answered, “George Washington.”

But when my dark-skinned father stepped forward, the clerk pointed to a container filled with hundreds of beans. “How many beans are in this jar?” he asked my father. They were obviously impossible to count.

Daddy was devastated and related his experience to an elder in his church, Mr. Frank Hunter. The old man told him not to worry; he knew how to get him registered. In those days, Alabama was Democrat country. The term “yellow dog Democrat,” as in “I’d rather vote for a yellow dog than a Republican,” was often used during this era. “There’s one clerk down there who is Republican and is trying to build the party,” Mr. Hunter told my father. “She’ll register anybody who’ll say they’re Republican.” Daddy went down, found the woman, and successfully registered. He never forgot that and for the rest of his life was a faithful member of the Republican Party.