My Experience With Highlander Center
Ever since I was a young girl I was bused to schools outside my neighborhoods. This was before official busing began. I was shuffled miles and miles to schools along with my visually impaired classmates to schools which were racially mixed because the neighborhoods were. I learned and loved and lived in outside of where my family and playmates were. Usually the buildings, classrooms, and/or teachers left somethings to be desired. In spite of these situations that were not always conducive to learning I managed to graduate. Even though it was and is difficult to overcome the stereotype that blind people are stupid or retarded as well as blind. I continue on.
I became friends as had close emotional bonds to people of color at a young age. I understood the concept of busing and intergration for I had already lived through it and survived. With the same fears and concerns that the now African American friends were experiencing and hearing the same arguments and concerns my own parents had expressed as I was to be bused. I knew what inferier education looked like. I had it. I felt this kinship to the struggles of the cival rights movement. I felt the pain and the desires of my classmates. I understood the directness of Malcolm X.
I endured being called names other than given most of my life. For the first 20 years I was called blind, four eyes, stupid. Just to name a few. Then when I made a life choice to have Black children I was called out of my name again. This time with use of the ugly 'n word'. This went on for another 10-12 years before the climate of fear of the mixing of the races ebbs a little.
During this time I had a cross burned in my front yard, was called out of my name on a daily basis for 4 years. I was not aware of that power of the hate behind that word until then. I still cannot bring myself even today to use that word even with the change of venue. I cannot stand it.
After the forced school beginnings. I redally worked with, lived with and loved Black people. I spoke and speak the truth. When I think something I speak it. I do not lie. I try to treat people as I want to be treated. I understood and supported the Civil Rights Movement but was too young to march during those times. But I had heard about Highlander and this place where they were training the Civil Rights Workers. I wanted to go there then.
But it was not to be. I was fired from a job directly due to discrimination for the company I kept. I was told so by the assistant manager. And before I lost that job was given every shitty job they could think of to try and made me quit. I did the shitty jobs and was finally fired anyway. But I learned another lesson in discrimination.
I told a my mother a story about a dog. If you hit and hit and hit a dog over and over and over eventually he will bite you. This is what I thought the Civil Rights Movement should be doing. Fighting back all the constant door slamming, name calling, take the left overs or nothing that I saw, that I felt, that I also had.
How is this non-violence stuff going to help. I didn't get it. But I wanted to go. I wanted to learn. I wanted to change things. For my friends, then my children, for me, and now for my Homeless People on the Streets. I wanted to know how to organize. How to get others to feel the pain. To find solutions to the discrimination. How to become more than the Beatnic Poet that rants and raves about injustice or discrimination. The disparities between the rich and to poor. I questioned the Cold War and how it was really no different that the things it was dead set against. I just did not get it. Still don't.
Our government has declained war on poor people ever since the official War on Poverty. A true misnomer. Because like so many things it blamed the poor for their condition and looked to making money for some rich sob with the guise of helping the 'less fortunate' .
And so I struggled with my live being poor, blind, 'unwed' mother. Back in the day it was 'unwed' not single parent. A much more accepting term. But the 60s and 70s if you were 'an unwed' mother. You might as well have had the plaigue. Another struggle of poverty. I finally bought a house. "cheap" little house. Was happy in my daily life struggles. But still felt the daily threats of living crossing the color lines. I had a pisol pulled in my face when I was homeless downtown. The perp, a Black man, who said he was on ferlough from proson and nothing to lose. He did not want to see me with a Black man. Whoa! That I never expected. I had never experienced any real threats from anyone in the Black community. I will call it that because it is where I lived. At the time I paid $3.00 a night for a room at the Ross Hotel. Sometimes if I got a little more money from a little job I would stay at the Savoy whaich was $12.00 a night or $50.00 a week. Willie my hero at the time panhandled for the money we lived on.
It was hard living then as now on the streets. It was easier in Mississippi. But my story is skipping around. I was homeless leaving home cause I could not stand it one more minute. And like a lot of kids just left. I was legally grown. But not able to live on my own. So it goes.
Jumping forward again. After I got my first house. By then I was pregnant with my 3rd child. And still racism was an influence in my daily life. My neighbors had no quoms in pulling weapons out on us or threatening my kids, myself or my men (only with one at a time but did have more than one in the 15 years I lived in that house). It was frustration to watch and listen and be on edge for that many years. It was my life though. I learned that the Poliece were not my friends as I had been taught and they surely were not my children's friends. As my friends often told me. So I learned lesson untaught. I learned to speak harshly and quickly in order to protect me and mine. I learned to use my quick wit to my advantage and leared to art of arguing (debating). Victim I have been. Victim I learned how not to be.
Bus ride for 17 years. Everyday to work I went. On this but I befriended a little Black lady. I had no idea what influence sho would have on my life. I just knew she was so sweet and I would be upset when the other Bus Driver would not help her carry on her many bags of groceries. TJ, a great, friendly, caring bus driver helped her put her bags on but the relief and alternate drivers would not. So I started getting off the bus and helping her. We talked and talked about everything. Three of the five days a week I rode, she did. I did not know until years later that she feed the homeless at Edgehill UMC with her own money and time.
I was working as an outreach worker as a VISTA Volunteer for a literacy program based in several of Nashville's housing projects. The Director of that program talked me into going to church with her. She said a interracial church and we, my children and I would be welcomed there. So I went with her. And there was Mama Laura, which I had been calling her for 2-3 years before I went to the church. It was to my great pleasure when I finally went to see Mama Laura right there in the 3 row center. Singing her heart out. I was at home.
Found out she cooks 2 days a week for the homeless, started the Luke 14 Feeding Program. Finally got funding for improving the kitchen and supporting the program. She server love first, food second, then her love of God. The homeless were served, never having to wait in a lines like cattle. They were her guests of honor and she fed lots of people. They don't know how much she honored them. But I do. And I will never forget or let it be forgotten. She never even offered Grace until after the meal. Because she didn't know how lone or how hungry her guests were. She prayed a prayer of thanksgiving after the meal was eaten. She was indeed a special person.
She told me a story about her best friend. That she had gone to Highlander with back in the 60s. Both of them were from Birmingham AL. And Mama Laura was a college professor at Tuskegee. Her friend was a maid. They were part of group that was involved in organizing the civil rights civil disobediance in Alabama. Her friend seemed to her was not listening. She busied herself with picking up after the others there and cleaning up in the kitchen. Washing cups and spoons and little plates. Helping set room and getting water or coffee for others. Mama Laura was sure she was not learning anything being shared with them.
When they returned to Alabama after their two week training at Highlander they all had discussed what they could or should do to change the conditions there. Her friend refused to give up her sear to a younger, while male and the action stared the bus boycotte. Her friend was Rosa Parks and she will forever be remembered for her role in history.
Again, through Mama Laura, I knew for sure that I wanted to go to Highlander. I was blessed to meet several folks from Highlander that attended a UMW National Confrence. I was blessed to eat with them. I begged to for them to offer a training that people like me could attend. They head my plea and put together the Threads Program and offered scholarships and travel for some of us who could not pay. It was so awesome. I met so many people that I love today that are working for justice and a living wage and for the rights of imagrants and the housing for the homeless and who want our mountains free from stripmining (Mountain Top Removal) same thing. All our dirvese poor peoples movements coming together, learning, listening, growing becoming more. Doing more. Understanding more. Building power and action and finding and sharing hope and joy and filling in the gaps for each other. Seeing first hand what and why we do what we do. It was awesome.
If you have a chance to send someone to Highlander for the training. Send them. If you are an advocate in need of stradigies, supports and revitalizing by all means register for the upcoming Threads program. It is multi lingual, multi generational and multi issued. It is a diminstration in popular education, history of movements today and yesterday and sharing of lives most impacted by oppression and working towards systems change.
I am forever changed for having gone and wish I could go again. Good luck with your continued work Highlander. To you my hat is off and head bowed low. Keep on doin' the thang!!!!
