Ck out this #Author Showcase by @pat_garcia “A Spotlight On My Childhood” – @RRBC_Org @RRBC_RWISA @Tweets4RWISA #RRBC #RWISA

“A SPOTLIGHT ON MY CHILDHOOD”

I am black. Born in the backwoods of Blythe, Georgia, on October 14, 1949, the midwife registered me as Colored. To be called Black was a curse word back then until James Brown recorded Say It Loud, I’m Black, and I’m Proud.

Blythe is not where we lived, though. My father came out of Keysville, Georgia, so the first five years of my life were spent there. Times were hard for Colored people. Many of them lived across the railroad track and worked in White People’s houses.

Some Colored folks escaped and went up north to Baltimore, Detroit, New York City, or Chicago. With five kids and a wife that had a strong bond to her family, going up North didn’t even enter my father’s mind; the farthest we ever got North was Augusta, Georgia.

Back in those days, we were lucky to have White people call us Colored. Most of the time, they called us niggers with a small n. I don’t remember when I first heard the word Negro or Negroes. I believe some of our relatives who had moved up North came back to visit and told us that we were Negroes and not Colored. That didn’t make any sense to me because when I looked at my skin, I saw the color and not Negro. Besides that, the word Negro was too close to the word nigger, and it was easy for most White people {who were still called White instead of Caucasian} to get tied tongue, and instead of saying Negro or Negroes,  they said nigger or niggers. Therefore, the connotation and definition of that one word ate away at my self-esteem.

Mister and Mrs. didn’t exist for us. No matter what you did, or how hard you worked, or what kind of achievement you acclaimed, behind closed doors you were a nigger, and you were addressed as either boy or gal, depending on your gender. When someone said hey gal, and you were the only Black on the street, you knew they were talking to you, and you had better stop at once.

The gals were wild game for White men, and especially when one of them needed to get his rocks off. As a result, mixed babies were born in our country town. Of course, no one said anything. A Colored gal, whether a teenager or a woman, didn’t dare scream rape. The White man took what he wanted, and when that poor unfortunate gal got pregnant, he didn’t look back once, unless he claimed he was bewitched and kept on returning to the gal. Then, he would have his family in the big house and his hoard of nigger children living in a cottage a few hundred feet away. Often it was the Colored man’s wife that was birthing the White man’s illegitimate brood. No Colored man would have dared say anything unless he wanted to be hung. The White man never lost his respectability.

Only the church deacons knew the truth, but like the churches in Europe that cohabitated with Hitler during World War II, they remained silent.

The poor gal was the one who suffered, though. Since most Colored folks didn’t believe in getting rid of the babies, the gal had to stand before the church and admit that she had sinned and asked forgiveness. Regardless of how many times she got pregnant from the same White man, she had to go before the church,  while the respectable father who had taken what he wanted, was sitting in his church pew in his area of town, praising God.

However, the truth could not be hidden for long. It did surface, especially when it was walking around with two legs, light skin, blue or green eyes, and good hair. You would hear Colored people whispering, “You know where that one came from.” I felt sorry for these babies. They grew up under a blanket of non-acceptance. They didn’t belong to us, but they didn’t belong to the Whites, either. They were rejected by both sides.

We moved to Augusta, Georgia, when I was six years old. Things changed for our family of seven. We no longer had an outhouse; we had a real bathroom and a driveway with no asphalt beside our matchbox house. Two bedrooms were not enough, but we made it. One bedroom was for the kids and one for my parents.

Being church-going people, we drove back to the country to go to church. My parents didn’t even consider moving our church membership to a Colored church in Augusta. Church services were held once a month. We attended Sunday School every Sunday and would visit the other Colored churches in the nearby country towns when we could.

Looking back on my childhood now, I see where the roots of discontentment with the way things were, strengthened my rebellion to get out soonest. When Dr. King and his group started pushing for tearing down the system of segregation, we were amening the Man. At that time, the Deep South was on lockdown. In fact, we were more isolated than the people in Alcatraz. We Coloreds had an onerous line to walk. You didn’t want to bring attention to yourself unless you wished to have a cross burned in your front yard. That meant your life was in danger, and the only choice you had was to run. Men like my daddy thought twice or three times before putting their families in danger.

Whatever we said about Civil Rights was said behind closed doors. Therefore, my mouth became an issue for my parents. My mouth was big. At least that is what my mama, daddy, and many of my aunties said. I got in trouble for saying the right thing at an inappropriate time. My temper wasn’t much better, either. Going to Sunday School, deep within me, I thought I had to practice what I learned. My parents and many others didn’t think so.

When I look back now, I see the frustration I caused them. There were so many things that I tried to understand but did not grasp, like why we had to pass by school after school to ride twenty-five to thirty miles to get an education. As a first grader, that was beyond my comprehension.

That was the Deep South, though. We lived under the humongous lie of an amendment that gave Whites in the Deep South the power to keep us as slaves legally. The separate but equal bill not only stigmatized us, but it also paralyzed us. In those days in the small rural towns, a Colored person was considered big time if they had an eighth-grade education. The Whites swore that our schools were just as good as their schools, but none of them would have changed places with us.

I discovered reading at an early age. My daddy wanted all his kids to get an education. He knew that the inferiority in the Black school was despicable. Although he only had three years of schooling, he had a mathematical brain. I remember him showing me how Algebra worked when I was in high school and later at the university. Nobody ever taught him. He just knew it.

My father insisted on his children learning to read. I found myself in the books I read. When the schools in Augusta integrated in 1966, I went to George P. Butler High School.

I wanted to be a writer. After being told that the best I could do would be to become a kitchen helper or a maid, I left Georgia in 1972. We were now labeled as Black Americans. In 1967, I had become the first Black American to graduate from George P. Butler High School. We were two Black students in the senior class. Based on the names being put in alphabetical order for the graduation ceremonies, my name came before the second student, and I had the honor of being the first.

If I had the opportunity to transport myself back in time and be a member of the 1868 Congress, I would bawl them out for signing into effect the fourteenth amendment that defined separate but equal rights, which threw the People of Color in the Deep South back into slavery. It gave the Deep South the freedom ticket to destroy our human spirit and to whittle down our self-worth, sliver by sliver.

Since then, I have become that which I was told I could not become. Having been raised in a Jim Crow State taught me to fight with words and to persevere through any difficulty. There have been setbacks along the way. Some because of my skin color, but it has been mine to choose how I see them. I have learned through my childhood experiences to tackle what is coming at me in every situation and keep running toward my goal.

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To learn more about Pat:

*AUTHOR, PAT GARCIA

*The Author’s Story