I received the book and also the movie, "The Help", for Christmas 2011. Reading the book and seeing the movie reminded me of my early days in Texas. I had married while in California and after finishing the school year there in 1956 moved to Texas to join my husband who had finished his army stint and returned to Texas about six weeks before I could leave. After living in Longview for two years we moved to the farm we had bought between Mt. Pleasant, Omaha, and Daingerfield.
By then I was already aware of certain differences and customs. We had paid many visits to my in-laws a few miles north of Mt. Pleasant. For example, the courthouse had men's and women's restrooms in the basement on one end and colored men's and women's restrooms on the other end. Drinking fountains were also labeled. The doctor's office had two entrances, one for white and one for colored. When we heard the local news on the radio, the announcer said colored after some obituaries. The movie theater had separate sections.
After we had moved and I went in a store and the clerk was waiting on a colored person, he/she left that person to wait on me. I said, "Please finish", and they did, but both were obviously uncomfortable with that.
When I needed help with some major housecleaning, I asked a neighbor to help me find some "help". She helped me hire two black women from the colored section. She also instructed me on how to act with them. I was to provide them lunch but was not to sit at the table with them.They would have been embarrassed for me to do that.
My mother-in-law had a number of colored friends but was careful to stay within the unspoken boundaries. I really felt that she was more forward thinking than many were at that time but we never discussed that. When my husband hired a black electrician to wire the house we had built after our house burned, and we were all three sitting a table going over plans, a neighbor came to see us, and demanded to know,"What's this "boy" doing here?" We explained but he was not very happy about it.
After our children were born I went back to teaching in 1964. Integration was coming but not very rapidly and without the major problems as in the "Deep South". I had dead end jobs the first two years-hired for classes that were temporary by the same principal. In 1966 he hired me again to do
remedial reading, two days a week in his white elementary and three days a week at the colored elementary. Why me? When I was in California I had taught two years in a school that had mostly black and hispanic students with only a handful of whites. At the black elementary school I was treated extremely well with no discipline problems. I believe that the children who were sent by their homeroom teachers had had a strong lecture on how to act in my room. I did this for two years with the second year spent entirely at the black school. I borrowed old sets of readers from the white school, got Weekly Reader type newspapers, and used Reading Labs with the students. The Reading Labs were a great help, because they had folders with stories, questions, and skill exercises on levels of increasing difficulty. One box might have second and third grade levels, with about ten folders on each level, and a number of levels per grade..A student moved ahead at his own pace.
The students were first tested to find at which level they should begin. I did have to watch for cheating because there were answer keys which they used to check themselves. I checked them frequently and tried to impress on them not to just copy the answers. (Some tried.) I had some students from upper grades who were very poor readers but had been pushed along. One girl asked me one day what good were all these folders. I asked her at which level she had begun. She said "purple". So I got a purple folder from the box and had her compare it to where she was. She just laughed when she saw how far she had come. Another girl who was in the eighth grade went one day after school into her sixth grade teacher's room. She said, "Mrs, _______, write something on the board, I can read!" I know of at least one that went on to college. No, I can think of two. I hope there were more. I remember some years later one fellow stopping me outside the grocery store telling me who he was and very proudly that he was in college.
While I was still spending time at the white school, one day in a faculty meeting one teacher asked the principal what was he going to do when the schools integrated and he was given black teachers. The principal responded, "I don't know what I will do when one comes in the front door." That day did come, but first we had something called, I think, "student choice". The year of that I had been moved to junior high as girl's p.e. teacher. A teacher had quit to take another job just days before school was to open and they quickly moved several people around in covering that position. I had 3 elementary p.e. credits so I was moved. I would have to take courses to continue but had no desire to do that. A number of blacks had chosen to attend the white junior high. And there were problems between some of the white girls and some of the black girls. In the same day I was accused by a white girl of favoring the blacks and by a black girl of favoring the whites! I pointed out that I favored good behavior from whomever.
I was glad when that year was over and as I had been promised was given a regular job teaching third grade in an elementary school. The schools were fully integrated that year with the black teachers and white teachers, white kids and black kids all in what somebody called "the great fruitbasket upset" after the children's game. Integration was no problem for me though a few were unhappy for awhile. They soon got over it-or quit. After 4 years at that school I was moved again-to balance the white-black ratio to another elementary school and was reunited with the first principal, the one who who had hired me three times. My other principal tried to send someone else but he chose me. There were a number of black teachers there but that bothered him not at all and he was the same to all. I stayed at that school until I retired.
Oh, and all the signs around town? They are long forgotten. Not to say it is perfect. There is still some friction sometimes. The great number of hispanics has changed the equation, too. I think it is more personalities than it is color.
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