Careful teaching

A friend emailed me this morning asking rhetorically,  “At what age do people start hating other people?” His query drew to mind that Rodgers and Hammerstein ditty from South Pacific:

You've got to be carefully taught

You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!

I was on the verge of my eighth birthday when I started third grade under the stern but loving tutelage of Miss Pauline Singley [later to become the well-respected Dr. Pauline Singley Davis at district HQ; assistant superintendent, I think]. That was the class that had Ray Abt, John Mishne, Belva Blankenschoen, Carol Negenborn, and assorted other classmates of East European extraction who were soon to depart the neighborhood. [Any of you guys still around? Give me a shout out!]

One September day, shortly after that first semester started, less than 90 days after moving to our new city, my parents casually inquired as to how many Caucasians were in my classroom of 25 or 30.

Now, I had been an avid reader since pre-school, back when pre-school meant you hadn’t attended any kind of school, except maybe nursery, which I had had the good fortune to avoid. So I had a pretty good working vocabulary for a seven year old. But that “Caucasian” was a new word. What the heck were they asking about? I couldn’t answer their question with an approximate number until they explained some basic phenotype stuff to me.

I had no real concept of race before that first year at Miles Standish Elementary in Cleveland's burgeoning Glenville area. Born and raised in Washington DC, I had spent nearly the first eight years of my life in and around the marvelously sophisticated campus of Howard University, just up the hill from the Hill, i.e., the nation’s capitol buildings. I knew about Africans, whose fascinating accents could be heard all around the campus. But I didn’t know about white folks.  I didn’t know that my neighborhood school in northeast Washington was legally segregated — and remained so until after the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education.

After that storied decision my fascination with words led me to spend endless hours trying to decipher the nuances that distinguished the new words I began to hear with increasing frequency. What's the difference between de jure and de facto? Is "integration" the same as "desegregation"? 

I think the country is still trying to answer that last one!

Giants in Our Midst

My thoughts about this post arrived with that pre-dawn clarity that emerges where lots of the things one has been wrestling with for a long time suddenly find resolution. For me, the last few months have been full of multiple re-connections, recapitulations and reconsiderations. A Journey to Sankofaland, as Alice Coltrane might call it.



Sankofa, as many of you know, is an African term/concept where one looks to the past to prepare for the future. That has certainly been my situation as my late summer and early fall were periods of reunion and reflection, both real and virtual.



The first look back was especially congenial. Four of my confreres from the epic 1960s came to Cleveland for a mini-reunion. We had met at one of America’s most liberal colleges in one of the nation’s most tumultuous times — President Kennedy was assassinated two months after I arrived as a freshman; Martin King was assassinated two months before I graduated. Coming of age at that time and in that space, we bonded in ways that have held firm through more than four decades and sometimes scant contact. We did the downtown happy hour, a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame concert, a Saturday morning excursion to the West Side Market, and a mini-tour that encompassed a passage through my old Glenville neighborhood and University Circle before settling in my backyard for well-lubricated repast and talk.



The second look back came with the passing of a family member, Mollye Virginia Jackson Williams, a remarkably joyous, talented, and giving woman who died at 99. Only Alzheimer’s could have dimmed her matchless vitality, which sadly it did for her last decade or so. She was the last survivor of ten remarkable siblings. Read her obituary at the end of this post for a glimpse of those who have worked to redeem America’s promise.



The reunion theme continues for me as the first Andrews Family Reunion in over 40 years takes place this Thanksgiving in Dallas. Not yet sure that I will be there, but I am charged with contributing a piece on my father’s branch. In preparation I pulled out a Texas Trailblazers account of the life of my great-great grandfather, Robert L. Andrews Sr. (1865—1933). A re-read of his story as audacious businessman and civic leader in Houston [he lived on Cleveland Street!] inspired me on a recent milestone birthday to incorporate a new business named for his signature success.



I am a word aficionado. One of my earliest memories is sitting at my father’s feet in the living room of our two-bedroom Howard Manor apartment on the Howard University campus in Washington, DC. I read the comics as he sat in his wing chair, reading the news and stealing a few moments of daily respite. Both my parents spoke and wrote with precision, but it was probably from my dad that I came so early to love the sounds and rhythms of the English language. I still recall in my mind’s ear hearing with fascination hearing the word “Mordecai”. The word never made sense to me but I loved it.



It was only decades later that I realized that Mordecai Johnson was the legendary president of Howard University, where some of my parents’ friends, like James Nabrit, Jimmy Porter and “Dot P” were employed. Very belatedly did I come to appreciate that these adults were world-class achievers.



This has me devouring In Search of the Talented Tenth: Howard University Public Intellectuals and the Dilemmas of Race, 1926-1970. Written by University of Akron professor and Cleveland resident Zachery R. Williams, the book examines and argues the important relationship between individual achievement and community culture. While my attraction to it is deeply personal and visceral, I cannot read it without considering its implications for my Cuyahoga arrondissement. I will be reviewing this book soon in this space. I will conclude for now by saying that the book — while focused on a single institution during a defined time —raises questions about race, class, achievement, education, identity, accessibility and community that are arguably more fundamental than our recent county governmental reorganization.

Footnote:

[1] Nabrit was a key member of the legal team in Brown v. Board of Education and later served two terms as Howard’s president. James Porter was a distinguished artist and professor at Howard. His wife, Dorothy, perhaps my mother’s closest friend, was a world-class librarian and archivist. She started and developed Howard’s Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, which has been described as “the finest collection of black research materials in the world”. My mother, Marjory J. Andrews, was an instructor in Howard’s School of Music.

Appendix:

Mollye Virginia Jackson Williams

April 25, 1911—6 September 6, 2010

Mollye was born in the Allegheny Mountain mining town of Pocahontas, Virginia on 25 April 1911 and died on 6 September 2010 at Judson Park, Bruening Health Center in Cleveland, Ohio. She had been a resident of the Judson Retirement Community since 1997.

Mollye was the ninth child in a family of ten, and the fifth daughter of Robert and Ida Perrow Jackson. Her father worked as a clerk and butcher in Elliott’s General Store, which was privately owned and was in competition with the local (mine owners) company store. Robert’s facility with the Hungarian language enabled Elliott’s to serve the immigrant miners and their families, thus providing a vital edge over the company store.

Mollye began her education in the public schools of Pocahontas and attended high school in Bramwell, West Virginia. In accordance with her parents’ ambition that all of their children attend college, Mollye became the family’s ninth college graduate, finishing West Virginia State College at Institute, W. VA. She later earned a Masters Degree in Business Administration from Columbia University in New York, and a second Masters (of Science) Degree in Special Education from Virginia State University. She was a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority.

Blessed with boundless energy, high spirits, humor, and a generous nature, Mollye loved nothing better than engaging in talk, light-hearted pursuits and mischievous high jinks with family and friends. Yet, most of her adult life was devoted to helping others. As a young girl, fresh out of college in the 1930s, she took a series of teaching positions at ill-equipped one-room schools for Negro children, operated by the State of Virginia in its rural counties. Here, in addition to dedicated teaching, Mollye also raised funds from the community for books and teaching material, often supporting her work with her own meager salary. She became a one-woman civic committee, organizing and conducting small, makeshift “fairs” and bazaars to raise what funds she could. She also solicited donations of old clothes from adults and, using her sewing skills, set about cutting them down and remaking them to fit her children.

Upon her marriage to Rev. John Francis Williams, Mollye enthusiastically added the responsibilities of a Baptist minister’s wife to the demands of her teaching career. Tapping a deep well of kindness and charm, she assumed an active role in church affairs and became a valuable asset to her husband’s ministry as his calling moved them to Wheeling, WV, New Orleans, Newport News, VA, St. Paul, MN, and finally to Cleveland, OH. With each move, Mollye contributed her efforts to the activities of the local community, and continued her work as a tireless educator and organizer. She was a teacher of the deaf in Newport News. Her last position was with the Special Education Department of the public schools of St. Paul, MN.

In spite of her public responsibilities, privately this little dynamo of a woman remained the same girl who had grown up in a kind, close-knit clan, who never failed to come to the aid of a friend or family member in need. Mollye often said that her family “might not have been rich in material things, but was blessed with an abundance of love.” Although she had no children of her own, she took a benevolent interest in the raising of her eight nieces and nephews to whom she was their beloved, fun-loving “Aunt Mollye” of the brilliant dark eyes and the uniquely raucous infectious laugh. A perfectionist in all things, she was a patient but exacting taskmaster to this younger generation.

Raised to be the quintessential southern lady, Mollye maintained a seemingly effortless, yet impressive standard of living throughout her life. As mistress of the various parsonages she and her husband called home, she created attractive, immaculate surroundings, imbued with an atmosphere of style, whimsy, comfort, and ease.

Mollye Williams leaves behind a legacy of fond memories of loving devotion to family and friends, hard work, good deeds, and numerous lives made better for her having touched them.

She is preceded in death by her four brothers, five sisters and her husband of more than fifty years. She is survived by four nieces and nephews: Miss June Morgan of New York City, Clintona Jackson Hare, Esq. of Morristown, NJ, Stanley Jackson, Esq. of Detroit, and Elbert Hendricks, PhD, of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Building Community across Cuyahoga

I have been speaking with a lot of our community’s political leaders lately in the aftermath of last month’s volcanic decision to smash the existing political compact.

There were many civic-minded citizens on both sides of the question of how best to reform a Byzantine system of government that promoted nepotism, encouraged inefficiency, rewarded mediocrity, and tolerated corruption. But the decision was made in the crisis atmosphere that typifies much of our community decision-making: winner-take-all snake-oil salesmen on one side and we-are-all losers demagogues on the other.

The voters were fed up, thanks to a tanking economy accompanied by blaring headlines signaling widespread corruption. In our collective wisdom, amidst despair over the economy and disgust with many of our politicians, we have jumped into the treacherous waters of structural reform. Next up: selecting a captain and a crew to steer our vulnerable county ship.

My discussions about leadership with some of our most savvy and successful politicians — including some at the top and several on the rise — have led me back home. I want to talk about my mother.

Maybe that’s because I write this on Christmas Sunday morning, an especially sacred day in my household, and often the busiest day of the year. My father, re-channeling his inner Oliver Wendell Holmes, had at age 40 been called to his first pastorate by one of Cleveland’s oldest black churches, Mt. Zion Congregational Church. My mother, a music professor at Howard University, resigned her job and came to Cleveland with her husband and two grade school children to start a new life in the bustling Midwest metropolis that 1953 Cleveland seemed to be. She was 38 and I had no idea that her earthly life was more than 3/4 spent.

She might have known that, however. Several years earlier, she had undergone a double mastectomy, undergoing radical radiation that left scars and disfigurement that I can still see. Radiation burns and extraordinary edema notwithstanding, she was beautiful both inside and out.

The church was in a precarious position. Its last pastor had moved onto a bigger church in Chicago. The last church home had been sold and converted into a nursing home by new ownership. Sunday service was held in two small meeting rooms at the Cedar YMCA. The church office was down the street, sharing a suite of rooms with a dental practice. The dentist was a church trustee who lived upstairs from his practice. There was a parsonage in Glenville, with a huge sycamore tree that dwarfed the two-cent postage stamp of a lawn.

And there was a choir. It seemed to sing only dirges.

But the church congregation was not without assets, primary among which was a core of faithful members. These included several leaders who even in de facto segregated Cleveland of the 1950s were accomplished professionals and community leaders.

But about that choir. My mother, Marjory J. Andrews, became the organist and choir director sometime in that first year. Within no more than three years, she had five choirs going, for everyone from preschoolers to the transformed Chancel Choir. It was the latter where her impact was most dramatic. The Mt. Zion music ministry became known throughout community. Its repertoire included Tchaikovsky, Handel, Beethoven, and prominently featured brilliantly arranged Negro spirituals.

On the Sunday before Christmas, Mt. Zion Vesper Service began at 6pm. If you weren’t there early you either had to stand in the back or along the sides, or sit and hear through loudspeakers from an anteroom. Worshippers came from all over, from Lakewood and Rocky River to Chagrin Falls.

My soft-spoken mother was a totally dedicated, demanding, professional. She was upbeat and optimistic, and she accepted no excuses for anything less than excellence. Her approach began to attract some of the area’s best singers and musicians, a process accelerated by the Church’s buying property in University Circle and building a magnificent sanctuary.

The choir included at least a dozen solo-quality singers, blended together in near perfection with supporting voices. Members were schoolteachers, basketball coaches, grad students, housewives, engineers, and probably a couple of roués. They were black, white, straight, gay, young and seasoned.

Long story short: I never thought of my mother as a leader, though clearly she was. She was my mother. I did understand that professionally she was an accomplished and dedicated musician who, despite the severe physical limits under which she labored as a result of her cancer, always found the stamina to practice.

But with half a century to figure it out, I realize that my mother was not just a leader in her profession. She was a builder. And she worked with everybody. She built an outstanding music program by focusing on the mission. She never sought personal acclaim and did everything she could to enhance the ensemble over any individual. And she found a place for everyone. If you couldn’t sing especially well, maybe you could maintain the music library.

She never assumed that your social status, skin color, or previous condition established your talent or worthiness in support of the common endeavor. And she never accepted that excellence and equity were incompatible.

I could say more, but I hope the point is made. Cuyahoga is a venerable institution with a rich history. We face daunting challenges that are both real and spiritual. Our choir sings dirges. We have lots of talent, though we stifle much of it.

We seldom focus on excellence and equity as partners.

We need builders who will focus on our joint mission to create a healthier community and not worry about who gets the credit.