You Knew Mrs. Williamson Was Black, Right?
Mother Caught Me Story-Tellin’
Mother’s last school teaching job was in vocational home economics before she left our town to return to college and get her Ph.D. She taught girls how to cook and sew. Although she’d had other jobs, this was the one I knew she liked best.
Vocational home-ec was different from other classes she could have taught. Her students learned very practical things besides home-making skills. They learned to work together, plan and produce meals and clothing, and to help others. Mother taught them how valuable it was to be themselves.
In the late 50s, vocational home economics was the first educational area in Texas to allow teachers of the subject from racially separated schools to meet. The school districts built neighborhood schools, but the neighborhoods were far apart when it came to people living together. And it was before Brown vs. Board of Education.
I was in 9th grade when my mother arranged for me to meet her at the high school following one of those meetings. She and another teacher were talking on the steps of the school. Mother told me to wait with her colleague while she went to get her 56 Plymouth to give us rides home.
The teacher and I just talked together, chatting about what they were learning and her asking about my education. Mother pulled in in the green tail-finned two-door, and I hopped in back. She took Mrs. Williamson to her house, and I jumped in front again.
Mom said, “You knew Mrs. Williamson was black, right?” And I said, W-well, sure.” But she knew I was story-telling, as she enjoyed calling it. Honestly, it hadn’t registered then.
Today, seventy years later, some old ways of thinking are rolling up like the proverbial worn-out scroll in the temple. As the new scroll of racial understanding is unrolling, there seem to be a few wrinkles in the papyrus yet to iron out.
