EVERYONE in my family has an Auntie Jean story.
There
was the time my big brother and cousins thought they were calling her
bluff about making them walk home from the rec center because they
wouldn’t stop clowning in the back seat. “Keep talkin’,” she said, as
she casually pulled into a gas station, reached back and opened the
door, then flashed the peace sign as we sped off without them. I could
see them in the rearview mirror, jaws almost touching the concrete.
Another
cousin, Alaric, becomes animated when he recalls announcing his plans
to have a girl over for the evening while his mom was out of town. “No
you ain’t!” Auntie Jean said, dashing his teenage dreams. “Not until you
clean this house!” She stood over him for the next hour, puffing on a
Newport and watching closely as he scrubbed each tile, fixture and
faucet until the girl would be able to check her lipstick in the
doorknob.
She
is our fierce Auntie Jean who doesn’t care what others think: the one
who will send her bacon back three times if it isn’t crispy enough, the
one who once hopped out of the car at a red light to dance in the street
to Maze’s “Happy Feelings."
But
the most famous story about her isn’t cute or funny at all. One day,
sometime in the 1960s, she, my mom, their siblings and cousins and a
bunch of other kids went down to Airport Road in their hometown,
LaGrange, Ga., as part of an organized effort to integrate the local
roller rink. They were teenagers and preteens, led by my grandfather,
Frank Cox, the Rev. Elijah Jackson and others — and they refused to move
when the white owner demanded that they leave.
The
man seemed so big to them, and he grew angry at their show of defiance.
Some say he loomed over them like something that emerged from the
backwoods of the county. Others say he was foaming at the mouth with
rage.
Auntie
Jean stood right in his face, staring him down, transfixed by the level
of hatred she had seen in his eyes. Her knees were buckling and her
hands were shaking, yet she stood and stared. As the story goes, he
reached into a drawer and pulled out a revolver, letting off a series of
shots into the ceiling above his head, sending everyone running for
safety.
It
took a long time for me to keep a dry eye whenever I heard that story.
The civil rights movement wasn’t just some historic event or fodder for
my middle-school field trip. It was real and part of our immediate past,
something that could have killed my mom, my auntie and their siblings.
Something as benign and innocent as roller-skating had to be fought for.
I
traveled home to Houston a couple of months ago when my relatives were
gathered there for a holiday. While lounging around my mom’s bedroom, I
happened upon a scrapbook she made during her senior year of high
school. She swore I’d seen it before, but I hadn’t. I had never seen
pictures of Willie, her high school boyfriend, who looked like one of
the Jackson 5. There were also pictures of her with a homecoming sash
across her chest, an obituary for the “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”
singer Tammi Terrell and a five-year plan written in pink ink.
And there was a newspaper clipping with the headline, “Skating Rink Closed; Negroes Turned Away.”
My heart stopped.
I
had definitely never seen this before. A piece of my family history was
right there for me to touch. That story, one that I’d heard countless
times, had helped shape me: I was the daughter and niece of civil-rights
heroes who fought for something as seemingly mundane as the right to
roller-skate. Now it was canonized in some obscure newspaper article
that my mother had thought to save all those years ago at the age of 18.
Excited for a further glimpse into my history, I began to read.
“The
skating rink on the Airport Road was closed Tuesday night after the
owner refused to allow a group of Negroes to skate,” it began. “Deputy
Mac Smith said between 50 and 60 young Negroes were at the rink when he
arrived to answer a call from the owner, O. L. (Tot) Underwood.”
In
bland newspaperese, the article explained that the officer gave Mr.
Underwood two options — allow them to skate, or close down for the day.
The owner, the article stated, chose the latter: “They were denied
admittance and left.”
It
said there was no further disturbance and described everyone as
orderly. And that was it. No mention of gunshots. No mention of
terrified teenagers. No mention of Auntie Jean in a standoff with the
roller rink owner.
I was shocked.
“Y’all?” I shouted. “This ain’t right!”
I
read it out loud to my mom, my Auntie Caroline, Great-Aunt Betty Ruth
and Auntie Jean, who were all sitting around my mother’s room with me.
“That’s a lie,” Auntie Caroline said, barely roused. “They sanitized it.”
Auntie Jean was quiet. She just kept shaking her head.
I was shattered.
I
wanted to believe the article. I write articles just like that for a
living. Journalists deal in truth, right? Had my entire family conjured a
tall tale and kept it alive my whole life? Was this moment of bravery a
gross exaggeration? Somebody had lied.
Then
I noticed, in that same pink ink my mom had used to write down her
teenage thoughts and aspirations, the words “He shot at us!” above the
headline.
Of course, I thought. History is written by the victors.
We
don’t just share memories because they’re funny and make us feel
nostalgic. We tell those Auntie Jean stories and Uncle Bus stories and
Granddaddy Frank stories because if we don’t, someone else surely will.
By filling my childhood with those anecdotes, my mom and her siblings
had entrusted me with our family record.
And
that record is foundational, letting me know that I came from people
who owned businesses and organized protests, folks who were passionate
about their beliefs and courageous enough to not back down even in the
face of life-threatening adversity. That family history — told through
sometimes hilarious anecdotes, sometimes muddled memories — gave me a
sense of pride. If they could accomplish such things, then I could, too.
I
sat on the bed, staring at the scrapbook in my lap as my mom and aunts
went downstairs for poundcake and coffee, talking about something else
entirely. They were far more nonchalant about what I had just read than I
was. I guess they were used to this kind of thing.
Not me. I stayed behind and took a picture of the article, with my mom’s notation written above, and uploaded it to Instagram.
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