In Carolina: Growing Up Black in the '40s

By Mary Mebane

Mary Mebane is lecturer in composition at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. The two passages on these pages are excerpted from her just published autobiography, Mary (Viking; $12.95). A lifelong teacher of literature who was born in Durham County, N.C., in 1933, Mebane in her book recounts with insight, compassion and anger what it was like growing up female and black in the South before the civil rights revolution began.

The Morning Bus to Durham

I got on the bus and sat on one of the long seats at the back that faced each other. There were three such long seats--one on each side of the bus and a third at the very back that faced the front. I liked to sit on a long seat facing the side because then I didn't have to look at the expressions on the faces of the whites when they put their tokens in and looked at the blacks sitting in the back of the bus.

By custom the seats behind the exit door had become "colored" seats, and no matter how many whites were standing, any black sitting behind the exit door knew he or she wouldn't have to move. The disputed area was opposite the exit door. This was no man's land. White people sat there and black people sat there. If the back section was full, the next black passenger who got on sat in the no man's land seat; but if the white section filled up, a white person would take the seat. The white people, though, could sit anywhere, even in the colored section.

The seating didn't really bother me that day until the white section up front was almost full and the black section was full. Now, if the driver took on more passengers than got off, it meant that some of the newcomers would have to stand. And if they were white the driver was going to have to ask a black passenger in no man's land to move so that a white passenger could sit down.

A black man in a blue windbreaker and a gray porkpie hat was sitting in no man's land, and my stomach tightened. I had never been on a bus on which a black person was asked to give a seat to a white person when there was no other seat empty. Usually, the black person automatically got up and moved to an empty seat farther back. But this morning the only empty seat was beside a black person sitting in no man's land.

The bus stopped at Little Five Points, and one black got off. A young white man was getting on. I tensed. Would the driver ask the black man to get up and move to the lone empty seat farther back? The white man had a businessman's air about him: suit, tie, polished shoes. He saw the empty seat in the colored section, hesitated, then went to it and sat down. I relaxed a little when the bus pulled off without the driver saying anything.

At the next stop another white man got on. The whole colored section tensed. The only seat was beside the black man in no man's land. Would he stand the few stops to Main Street, or would the driver make the black man move? I looked at the other men and women, who studiously avoided my eyes. There was one woman whom I had noticed before, and I had been ashamed of her. She was a stringy little black woman. She looked as if she were a hard drinker. Flat black face with tight features, dressed in a tight boy's sweater pulled down over a nondescript skirt.

The white man who had just gotten on the bus walked to the seat in no man's land and stood there. He just stood there. He would not sit down next to the black. Two adult males, living in the most highly industrialized, most technologically advanced nation in the world, a nation that had devastated two other industrial giants in World War II, faced each other in mutual rage and hostility. The white one wanted to sit down, but he was going to exert his authority and force the black one to get up first--so that they would not have to sit side by side. I watched the driver's face in the rearview mirror.

"Say there, buddy, how about moving back?" the driver said, meanwhile driving his bus just as fast as he could. The whole bus froze-- whites at the front, blacks at the rear. They didn't want to believe what was happening was really happening. The seated black man said nothing. The standing white man said nothing.

"Say, buddy, did you hear me? What about moving on back?" The driver was scared to death. I could tell that.

"These is the niggers' seats!" the little lady in the strange outfit started screaming. "The Government gave us these seats!" I was startled at her tone and her statement--no man's land seats were not regarded as back of the bus. "The President said that these are the niggers' seats!" I expected her to start fighting at any moment. Evidently the bus driver did, too, because he was driving faster and faster. "I'm going to take you down to the station, buddy," he said.

The white man with the briefcase and the polished brown shoes who had taken a seat in the colored section looked as though he might die of embarrassment at any moment. By that time we had come to the stop before Main Street, and the black male passenger rose to get off.

"You're not getting off, buddy. I'm going to take you downtown," the driver called. He kept driving as he talked and seemed to be trying to get downtown as fast as he could.

"These are the niggers' seats! The Government plainly said these are the niggers' seats!" screamed the little woman in rage. I was embarrassed at the word nigger but I was proud of the lady. I was proud of the man who wouldn't get up.

The bus seemed to be going a hundred miles an hour, and everybody was anxious to get off. The black man stood at the exit door; the driver drove right past the A. & P. stop. I was terrified. I was sure the bus was going to the police station to put the black man in jail. The little woman had her hands on her hips and she never stopped yelling. The bus driver kept driving as fast as he could.

Then, apparently, the driver decided to forget the whole thing. The next stop was Main Street, and when he got there, in what seemed to be a flash of lightning, he flung both doors open wide. He and his black antagonist looked at each other in the rearview mirror; in a second the windbreaker and the porkpie hat were gone. The little woman was standing preaching to the whole bus about the Government's gift of these seats to the blacks; the white man with the brown shoes practically fell out of the door in his hurry. I followed the hurrying footsteps. The people who devised this system thought that it was going to last forever.

Black Wasn't Beautiful

In the fall of 1951 during my first week at North Carolina College, a black school in Durham, the chairman's wife, who was indistinguishable from a white woman, stopped me one day in the hall. She wanted to see me, she said.

When I went to her office, she greeted me with a big smile."You know," she said, "you made the highest mark on the verbal part of the examination." She was referring to the examination that the entire freshman class took upon entering the college. In spite of her smile, her eyes and tone of voice were saying, "How could this black-skinned girl score higher on the verbal than some of the students who've had more advantages than she? It must be some sort of fluke." I felt it, but I managed to smile my thanks and back off. For here at North Carolina College, social class and color were the primary criteria used in deciding status. The faculty assumed light-skinned students were more intelligent, and they were always a bit nonplussed when a dark-skinned student did well, especially if she was a girl.

I don't know whether African men recently transported to the New World considered themselves handsome or, more important, whether they considered African women beautiful in comparison with native American Indian women or immigrant European women. But one thing I know for sure: by the 20th century, really black skin on a woman was considered ugly in this country. In the 1950s this was particularly true among those who were exposed to college. Black skin was to be disguised at all costs. Since a black face is rather hard to disguise, many women took refuge in ludicrous makeup.

I observed all through elementary and high school, in various entertainments, the girls were placed on the stage in order of color. And very black ones didn't get into the front row. If they were past caramel-brown, to the back row they would go. Nobody questioned the justice of this--neither the students nor the teachers.

Oddly enough, the lighter-skinned black male did not seem to feel so much prejudice toward the black black woman. It was no accident, I felt, that Mr. Harrison, the eighth-grade teacher, who was reddish-yellow himself, once protested to the science and math teacher about the fact that he always assigned sweeping duties to Doris and Ruby, two black black girls. Mr. Harrison said to them one day in the other teacher's presence, "You must be some bad girls. Every day I come down here you all are sweeping." The science and math teacher got the point and didn't ask them to sweep any more. Uneducated black males, too, sometimes related very well to the black black woman. They had been less indoctrinated by the white society around them.

Because of the stigma attached to having dark skin, a black black woman had to do many things to find a place for herself. One possibility was to attach herself to a light-skinned woman, hoping that some of the magic would rub off on her. A second was to make herself sexually available, hoping thereby to attract a mate. Third, she could resign herself to a more chaste life-style--either (for the professional woman) teaching and work in established churches or (for the uneducated woman) domestic work and zealous service in "holy and sanctified" churches.

Lucy had chosen the first route. Lucy was short, skinny, short-haired and black black, and thus unacceptable. So she made her choice. She selected Patricia, the lightest-skinned girl in the school, as her friend and followed her around. Patricia and her friends barely tolerated Lucy, but Lucy smiled and doggedly hung on, hoping that those who noticed Patricia might notice her also. Though I felt shame for her behavior, even then I understood.

A fourth avenue open to the black black woman is excellence in a career. Since in the South the field most accessible to such women is education, a great many of them prepared to become teachers. But here, too, the black black woman had problems. Grades weren't given to her lightly in school, nor were promotions on the job. She had to pass examinations with flying colors or be left behind. She had to be overqualified for a job because otherwise she didn't stand a chance of getting it--and she was competing only with other blacks.

The black woman's training would pay off in the 1970s. With the arrival of integration, the black black woman would find, paradoxically enough, that her skin color in an integrated situation was not the handicap it had been in an all-black situation. But it wasn't until the middle and late 1960s, when the post-1945 generation of black males arrived hi college that I noticed any change in the situation at all. He wore an Afro and she wore an Afro, and some times the only way you could tell them apart was when his Afro was taller than hers. Black had become beautiful. It was then that the dread I felt at dealing with the college-educated black male began to ease. Even now, though, when I have occasion to engage in any transaction with a college-educated black man, I gauge his age. If I guess he was born after 1945, 1 feel confident that the transaction will turn out all right. If he probably was born before 1945, my stomach tightens, I find myself taking shallow breaths, and I try to state my business and escape as soon as possible.

When the grades for the first quarter at North Carolina College came out, I had the highest average in the freshman class. The chairman's wife called me into her office again. We did a replay of the same scene we had played during the first week of the term. She complimented me on my grades. Then she reached into a drawer and pulled out a copy of the freshman English final examination. She asked me to take the exam over again.

At first I couldn't believe what she was saying. I had taken the course under another teacher; and it was so incredible to her that I should have made the highest score in the class that she was trying to test me again personally. For a few moments I knew rage so intense that I wanted to take my fists and start punching her. I have seldom hated anyone so deeply. I handed the examination back to her and walked out.

-- By Mary Mebane

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