Jesus, the Virgin Mary & the Black Revolutionary
It was September 5, 1961 and my first day of school in the first grade. There I sat in the middle of the second row at my little desk with the lift-top lid, arms extended, hands clasped, and my back as straight as a soldier standing at attention. This was the position I would assume for the next eight years at the beginning of every school day; we all would. There was probably about thirty of us, predominantly white, but we were a fairly culturally diverse group of kids, after all, this was San Francisco.
Our desks were arranged in six military-straight rows with just enough space between them to allow any nun or priest easy travel up one aisle and down the other without looking up from their texts as the class read, sang, or recited. This was before Vatican II and the nuns were still wearing the penguin suits — long black billowy habits and big white bibs that covered the chest and neck and hugged the chin like a vice. Their veils were made of a stiff white front-piece with the curvature of a nurses’ bonnet. It covered half the forehead, hid the hairline, and was draped with a black shawl that framed the face and flowed half way down the back. The only accessory each wore was a long string of marble-sized rosary beads that hung from their waists like nun chucks, with a huge silver crucifix dangling from the end, just inches away from their floor-length hemlines. All of the sisters wore a silver ring on the third finger of her left hand to show that she was married to Jesus, and therefore a bride of Christ.
On that first day, as we all settled in, each child was asked to stand and tell the class their name. Our teacher, a pretty young nun named Sr. Mary Sacred Heart, was flanked by two more senior nuns, Sr. Mary Bernard, the principal, and Sr. Mary Andrea, a mean, shriveled up old white woman, who would eventually terrorize us all when we became her third-graders two years down the line.
The class introductions were going along smoothly when Sister pointed to a beautiful, brown Mexican boy with shiny black hair. He stood up.
“My name is Jesus (pronounced “Hay-seus”) Martinez.”
He sat down and there was a pause. Sister did not ask the next student to introduce herself. Instead, the three nuns came together in a close twittering confab that ultimately changed everything for Jesus and me that day. When they turned their attention to the class again, Sr. Mary Bernard spoke directly to Jesus and said, “We think that nobody should have the name of Jesus, so we’ve decided that it would be better to call you Jesse.”
The boy looked around and said weakly, “But my name is not Jesus, Sister, it is Jesus.”
“But it’s spelled like the name of Jesus,” she said emphatically.
I have never forgotten the look on Jesus’ face, it was pure pain and confusion. I was hurt and confused too, but I was also mad as hell! Even at six years old I was f****** indignant. I couldn’t understand how somebody could just change your name on the spot, without even consulting your parents, or allowing you to pick your own new name if it just had to be changed. Something was wrong with this scenario but I didn’t have the language to articulate it. Yet, my little spirit was wounded because I knew this wasn’t just some minor infraction, this was a most egregious offense.
“Your name is Jesse, now,” the principal said, staring Jesus down with steely Irish blue eyes. She was a female version of Friar Tuck — a short, roly-poly, intimidating mass of a woman, made even more so with a jawline peppered with enormous moles, all sprouting wiry grey hairs. The only thing missing was her broom.
From the tone of her declaration there was no doubt that the discussion was over; and from that day, and for the next eight years until we graduated, we all called Jesus “Jesse”.
I didn’t know this was the harbinger of things to come.
By the time I reached the third grade I was seasoned in the ways of my Catholic school, and was already intuitively sensitive to certain types of biases — what we now call micro-aggressions. Again, I couldn’t fully articulate the things happening to me and some of the other children of color, but I remember many days when my face wore the same sad, forlorn look of Jesse on that first day of school.
It was Spring 1963 and the whole school was preparing to celebrate the first of May, honoring the Feast of St. Mary, who was also known as the Blessed Virgin Mary. Our third-grade class would do a musical vignette with one girl representing the Blessed Virgin. That girl would get to wear a blue shawl, and a wreath of real flowers on her head. She would solo the first verse of the official May Day song, Bring Flowers of the Rarest, and then the class would join in for the chorus and second verse.
When Sr. Andrea asked for volunteers interested in portraying the Virgin Mary, my hand shot up in a flash. My older sister and I had already distinguished ourselves as singers within our school community, performing everything from Christmas carols to show tunes, and even liturgies in both English and Latin. We were a couple of quick-study musical theater babies and were often called upon to sing our two-part harmony. But I wasn’t even given a chance to audition and another girl chosen. Her name was Becky, a nice enough Italian girl, who, from the first grade up to now, had never sang a solo note. I was heartbroken but I accepted it, feeling that something wasn’t right, but not exactly knowing what that something was.
As rehearsals for May Day performance got under way, Becky struggled with the role, softly singing through clenched teeth and a frozen smile that made her look like she was growling. I was only eight years old and couldn’t understand why I had been overlooked for this coveted role that was given to a girl who wouldn’t (and couldn’t) sing. So, at the end of rehearsal one afternoon I summoned up my courage, quietly approached Sr. Andrea and asked why I had not been given an opportunity to try out for the solo. She looked down her nose at me and in a voice sopping with disdain and contempt said, “Because the Virgin Mary wasn’t a Negro.” She turned her back to me and walked away.
I was crushed. I felt like somebody had hit me in the face with a shovel. I had already experienced quite a bit of what I now recognize as racial bias, but this was the first time anyone ever told me directly to my face that I was not worthy, not good enough, because of the color of my skin. That it came from a mean, racist, old white woman, my teacher, a Catholic nun and bride of Christ, was especially devastating. She was supposed to be about the work of shaping young minds and saving souls, but here she was schooling me on the limitations and restrictions of my blackness. Even worse, there was no place to turn for comfort and refuge, not even at home. I had already learned that my father would not be bothered with something as trivial as the nuns’ brand of humiliation. He and my mother were products of the Jim Crow South and children of the Depression. My mother seldom spoke of her childhood other than funny family stories, but my father talked about his childhood often; incessantly when he was drunk, recounting every detail of violence and humiliation inflicted upon him and his father by white folks; and with each telling, the stories never deviated over the years; his voice saturated in a venomous rage as if those events had happened yesterday. He had seen unimaginable atrocities and so to him, the brand of discrimination I faced amounted to nothing more than hurt feelings. His directive was to get the same education the white kids were getting and don’t bother him with the rest. He was paying for my education and it was all that mattered, which meant I was on my own.
After the last rehearsal before performance day when it was undeniably apparent that Becky was in over her head, our teacher announced that instead of standing and singing the solo, Becky would sit in front of the class, still draped in blue under a crown of flowers, holding a bouquet while the entire class sang the song in unison to her! I thought my head was going to explode. Of all the racist macro-aggressions I had endured and witnessed as a little black girl in the span of just three short years, my important formative years, I finally understood that my blackness was not just abhorrent to the people charged with educating me, but to them, it was the benchmark denoting my unworthiness and limitations no matter my intellect or abilities. People who looked like me and Jesus were the racial others, which meant we were to be relegated to specific spaces outside of restricted territories we would never be allowed to breach. This realization set the foundation for my consciousness of racial inequality and social justice. It also incited my first, soft, left-turn away from Catholicism. Back then I didn’t know the Church as a covert institution of pedophiles, but it was certainly a bastion of white supremacy. By the time I reached high school, I no longer identified as Catholic.
When the big day finally arrived, the entire student body was all shiny and polished, like it was picture day. Several dignitaries from the archdiocese, both priests and laypeople were in attendance, going from classroom to classroom, escorted by our primary and vice principals. When they entered our third-grade classroom we stood up at attention the way we always did whenever an adult walked into the room. We were allowed to sit back down while one of the visitors commented on our good manners and enthusiasm. Then the performance began.
Becky, decked out as the Virgin Mary, got up from her desk, walked to the front of the room and took her seat. Sister gave a signal to the rest of the class and we rose to our feet. I looked around the room at all of my smiling classmates and the expectant faces of our teachers and visitors, and when the pianists keyed the introduction, (there was a piano in every classroom back then) I did the unthinkable. I stood there, folded my arms across my chest, poked out my lips, and refused to sing. It was an unthinkable act because I hadn’t planned it. My posturing was an innate response to injustice and discrimination and it felt wonderfully natural and right.
As the class continued singing, I scanned the faces of my authority figures all sporting a variety of expressions from indignation to consternation. Here I was, eight years old, committing my first act of subversion in front of visitors from the archdiocese. I even made direct eye contact with Sr. Andrea, unconcerned by the murderous look on her blotchy red face. I glared right back at her like a proud little hellion.
When the performance was over, our guests moved on to the next classroom, and we continued our day. I expected to be reprimanded by the waddle of angry penguins still looking at me and shaking their heads, but nobody said a word. We simply finished our school day and I went home, knowing that my parents would eventually be getting a telephone call, and I would die by my father’s hands. I was on pins and needles for several days but the call never came. Weeks later it occurred to me that the nuns couldn’t tell on me without telling on themselves, and who would look like the bad guy then? Checkmate!
During the remainder of the school year, beyond the summer, and on into the fourth grade, I was asked by one teacher or another to sing a solo, but I always declined. In my first three years of Catholic grammar school, I had learned one of life’s most valuable lessons. I realized not the nuns, or even my father, had cornered the market on power. I learned I had power too, and I was determined to refine it.
I grew up in a household where there was absolutely no censorship on reading materials whatsoever — which was one of the greatest gifts my parents ever gave me. Age was no restriction. Being a voracious reader, by the time I was in the sixth grade, I was well-read on subjects like Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and the Cuban Revolution, Nelson and Winnie Mandela’s struggle against apartheid in South Africa, Gandhi’s fight for India’s independence from British rule, the plight of our Native Americans, and apartheid American-style known as Jim Crow. I learned of the United States’ involvement and interference around the world and our governments’ support of dictatorships from Haiti to the Philippines. Then there was the escalating hot button issue of the day — the war in Vietnam, a conflict that divided families and the nation far beyond its ending in 1973. And to this day, I still remember how I wept when I read The Diary of Anne Frank, another little girl just like me, caught up in the madness of psychopathic Nazi white supremacy.
Growing up in San Francisco in the 1960s put me smack dab at the epicenter of every significant cultural and social revolution sweeping the nation, and ultimately the world. I had direct contact with flower children from all around the planet, members of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense from Oakland and my own Bayview neighborhood, as well as writers, musicians, artists, and even world-class astrologers. Stepping out into the world each day was like attending a master class and I was in my element. Every day new words became part of my personal lexicon; words like colonialism, imperialism, racism, segregation, sexism, Womanism, and on and on, while the Summer of Love played out simultaneously with the Black Power Movement, and the second wave of Feminism.
I participated in anti-war demonstrations, and marched in support of Caesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta and their fight to unionize migrant farm workers. I sang and danced as a member of a political street performance troupe, and became a regular at various literary and political workshops and protests on the campuses of San Francisco State and UC Berkeley. These things led to my working the polls during state and national elections, and I’ve spent years traipsing about in underserved communities to increase voter registration. Even today in my “seasoned” years, I continue to fight (and write) against racial supremacy and social injustice in all its ugly incarnations.
Through all of these learning experiences I came to understand that there are people struggling all around the world, waging valiant battles and even dying in their quests for justice and equality. Then, and now, I am proud to be in that number. I like to think I would have ultimately found my way to all of my books and teachers because I have lived my life in search of understanding, but there is no doubt in my mind that I became a Black Revolutionary for the People the day a Catholic nun changed Jesus Martinez’s name.
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