This depersonalized collective noun spoke to the fact that my parents and their friends had few interactions with whites that were truly personal. “The White Man,” as my parents called “them,” controlled politics and the economy. Objectively, white people had all the power and blacks had none. And like so many of their peers, they rigorously controlled their environment to preserve their dignity and their pride. They were of the first generation of middle-class blacks to attend historically black colleges - institutions that previously had been for the children of the black elite. They were teenagers during the Great Depression, old enough to remember but too young to adopt the overly cautious financial habits of their parents. They were both born in the South at the height of segregation and racial prejudice - Mother just outside of Birmingham, Alabama, in 1924 and Daddy in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 1923. They were convinced that education was a kind of armor shielding me against everything - even the deep racism in Birmingham and across America. John and Angelena were prepared to try just about anything - or to let me try just about anything - that could be called an educational opportunity. Anyway, the logic of my argument aside, Mother and Daddy got the point and abandoned their attempt at really early childhood education. Perhaps I somehow already understood that my mother believed in good grooming and appropriate attire. Finally I told my mother that I didn’t want to go back because the teacher wore the same skirt every morning. Each day we would repeat the scene, and each day my father would have to pick me up and take me to my grandmother’s house, where I would stay until the school day ended.
I was terrified of the other children and of Mrs.
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