Temporary hold – Gov. Northam Story

by faithgibson on February 11, 2019

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and  alive One of the most recurring  criticisms of the Democratic party its its propensity for circular firing squads — when under attack, they circle the wagons and instead of shot at the enemy, their fire at each other, while their opponets clean their clock and eat their lunch on the way out.

 

 

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Maggie @@@@@@@@@@@@@

The Reality of Racism ~ A Personal Experience

In September of 1957 my family moved from Michigan to a historically segregated southern state. I was 15 year old. My mother, who had been born in Texas, tried to prepare me for the poverty that was ubiquitous on the ‘wrong’ side town, an issue she described simply as “colored housing”. But in my youthful naivety, I expected to see houses painted in beautiful pastel shades of sky blue, rose pink and daisy yellow.

Instead i saw rows of unpainted rundown shacks owned by slum landlords and all the other indignities that abound in a racially-segregated ghetto. 

That fall I started high school in an all-white segregated public school, shopped in segregated stores with signs pointing to “White” and Colored” drinking fountains and bathrooms.  After graduation, became a nurse in a segregated hospital. To say these experiences were an “eye opener” is a masterful understatement.

in 1976 I became a VISTA volunteer (domestic Peace Corps program); I was assigned to community development project in a tiny town of 400 in a strictly segregated cotton and tobacco farming region of North Carolina. At one time in the distant past, the entire town had been one very large cotton plantation. 

I choose to spend my time in the segregated half, which was literally on the ‘wrong side of the tracks’. It was beyond shocking, but also a valuable learning experience. My community development efforts included starting a farmer’s market and opening the town’s first and only laundromat. 

Maggie Nichols ~ One Hundred years old in 1976

But one particular story changed my life and will be with me forever more. One of many families that i worked with was Maggie Nichols, an elderly, wheelchair bound black woman who was 100-yr-old in 1976.  She and her 70-year old daughter lived in what I would charitable describe as a hovel with no running water or indoor bathroom. Since there was no running water, the kitchen was a little shack separated from the house by 15 feet, to prevent a kitchen fire from also burning the house down.
The living room was a dark ugly green that made it hard to see in spite of the light bulb that hung from the ceiling. All the windows were covered inside with cardboard to keep out the cold. When it rained, the roof leaked; this required buckets in several parts of the living room and sleeping quarter to catch the dripping water.

For reasons I can no longer remember, I visited Maggie and her elderly daugher 2 or 3 times every week. Very slowly a friendly relationship of trust developed. Soon they started talking about things that I’m sure they did usually did not say to “while ladies”.

On one my weekly sojourns, just days before my assignment ended, Maggies described a conversation that she had with her dad. According to her best recollection, she was 10 years old at the time and her dad was about 40. She thought her father was born in 1845 but wasn’t sure. But despite the vagaries of her memory, she said she’d never forgot that conversation. 

As told by her, he started by saying:

“Maggie, I want to tell you something important and want you to never forget it. When i was born, we was all slaves, but when you come along, …. we was FREE PEOPLE!

Of course, print words can never do justice to this historic conversation, as the tone, cadence and emotional energy in those words: “but when you come along, we was FREE PEOPLE !”, with such emphasis on the words “we was free people!” 

This gift made me into a time traveler, someone privileges to hear the exact words as they were spoken by Maggie’s father, his inflection, the emotions of a man born into slavery in 1845 and eventually emancipated. I shall be forever grateful to Maggie for trusting me enough to tell me this story, one that I will never forget, nor ever tire of telling to anyone who is the least bit interested.