Freedom's Children Read Free Page B

When I’d see them, I’d say, “What are they even talking about in there?” It looked like they were always out in droves at church. And yet they weren’t any nicer to their fellow man.

MYRNA CARTER—BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA
    My grandmother was very, very outspoken. She was a great inspiration because she was not afraid of white people. And I just loved that. We called her Big Chief White Cloud. She had a lot of Indian in her. I never will forget the day the insurance man came to the house and made the mistake of calling her “Auntie.” She said, “Do you have a black Auntie? I’m not your Auntie, so don’t you call me Auntie no more.” I was in elementary school when that happened.
    During the fifties freedom was something that we only read about. It was a fantasy, in a sense. We felt that being free was being able to go where you wanted to go, do what you wanted to do, without fear. When we traveled, we could not use the restrooms even at service stations. We had to stop on the side of the highway. Daddy would always let the doors stay open, and that would be like a cover to protect us from the oncoming cars.
    We couldn’t take advantage of things we saw other people doing. If we were in a store first and some white came in, they would stop waiting on us. We would have to wait, and we could not interrupt. I remember something that happened once in either Loveman’s or Pitzitz, where they have drawers with hats. This salesperson was showing some white people hats. Another white lady began to open the drawers and look at hats. A black lady standing there thought that while she was waiting she could do the same thing. So she opened the drawers. The saleslady acted like she had committed a crime. She told her, “You don’t go in those drawers. You wait until I get to you!” That stayed with me a long time. I was about ten or eleven when that happened, and I could not understand it.
    When I was about the same age, I used to go to Silver’s five-and-ten-cent store. I loved sugar wafers. They had strawberry, chocolate, and vanilla ones sitting in a glass case on the counter. I was showing the saleslady what I wanted, but I noticed she was not getting them out from the case where I could see them. I asked her where they were from. All she said was, “I’m getting these cookies for you. Do you want them?”
    I found out they were the old cookies they had taken out and replaced with fresh ones. She was giving me these old ones from a box underneath. She truly was mean. I told her I did not want them. Whenever I would go in Silver’s again, she would always recognize my face. She knew I was the one who refused to take those cookies. When I went back, I would not let her wait on me.

PAT SHUTTLESWORTH—BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA
    I remember getting out of high school early one day. I was about fourteen. Some of my girlfriends and I went downtown to go to the movies. We decided to get hot dogs, hamburgers, and pop before we got to the theater because in the theater we didn’t get the same caliber of goods as white people got. There were about fifteen or twenty of us, and we went in this restaurant. Most of us ordered two hot dogs, or a hot dog and a hamburger, and the big 16-ounce pops. You know how you splurge your allowance when you’re with your friends.
    The man opened all the bottles. When he fixed everything, we asked him where we could sit to eat. He said, “Oh, you can’t sit in here.”
    I said, “We can’t? After buying all this food, we can’t sit in here and eat it? Well then, we don’t need it.” He used a couple of choice words, saying that we had to buy it.
    I said, “I don’t have to buy anything. I’m hungry, but I can go where I can be accommodated the way I want to be accommodated.”
    â€œWhat am I going to do with this food?” he said.
    â€œWhatever you want to do with it. We