What If God ...?
02-15-2021
By Brenda Pogue
“Give me five on the black-hand side!” Does anyone remember this? Instead of a clap of the palms between two people, back in the day, “giving five” was rather a slow slide of the palms from wrist to fingertip. The “black-hand side” was a slow slide of the back of the hand, or the black skin of the hand from wrist to fingertip, shared between two black people. It is just one cultural particularity that was intrinsic to the African-American experience.
Although I don’t remember being called “colored,” my mother shared the stories of when she was going up in the Jim Crow south. She recalled how, in order to see a movie at the local theater, black people were only allowed in through the rear door in the alley that led them to the “colored only” balcony seating. She was disallowed from going to the movie theater by her father, a proud civil rights advocate, who would not have his children walk through trash-ladened alleyways like second-class citizens. “Nooker” McCain did not play. I heard stories of how some of those emboldened enough to do so would chance taking a sip from the “whites only” drinking fountain to see if the water tasted the same as the water from the “colored only” drinking fountain. The risks they took had potentially deadly punishment.
The irony of the state of black people then was that despite the obvious oppression and cruelty, black people where a proud people. It showed in how they, like my grandfather, carried themselves with heads high. They displayed the upmost respect, for themselves and for one another. It showed in how they dressed. Men were always in suits and ties, and a proper hat. Women looked like they stepped straight off the fashion runway. This is even evidenced in the black-and-white photos taken of black people as they fought for civil rights.
I recently completed research for a course presentation on writer, teacher, and cultural critical thinker, bell hooks. Like me she was raised in a segregated school system. The students, the teachers, the faculty and staff (with the exception of principal and vice principal) were black. Many lived in the community. My mother taught eighth-grade Social Studies, and our neighbors were also teachers, faculty and staff at the elementary school where all of the neighborhood children were taught. The adults had charge over all the children in the school and neighborhood, and any adult had the expressed right to discipline. Bloodline was no factor. But, as bell hooks mentions in Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, “for black folks teaching – educating – was fundamentally political because it was rooted in antiracist struggle… They [teachers] were committed to nurturing intellect so that we could become scholars, thinkers, and cultural workers – black folks who used our ‘minds.’”[1] Black teachers were challenged, motivated and empowered to produce the brightest black students, capable of making major contributions to their communities, society and the world. hooks and I were raised with the example of a village raising a child. It was an example of Black community, rich with black phraseology, sense of style and social grace, self-esteem and regard for one another, that was and remains deeply embedded within us.
What if God, in Deuteronomy 4:9 had this witness of black community in mind when instructing us as we won the fight for integration: “Only be careful. Keep watch over your life. Or you might forget the things you have seen. Do not let them leave your heart for the rest of your life. But teach them to your children and to your grandchildren.” Let us not forget, though we are now interwoven into the fabric of a larger community, that the heart of the black community resides within our hearts.
1 bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (New York: Routledge, 1994), 2.
Photo by Gordon Parks, Drinking Fountains, Mobile, Alabama, 1956 (accessed February 15, 2021) https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artwork/59681/Gordon-Parks-Drinking-Fountains-Mobile-Alabama
