NAME: Ira Grupper
EMAIL: irag@iglou.com
DATE: 02/28/2009

TITLE: Discrimination and the Civil Rights Movement: My Personal Struggles

LABOR PAEANS—February 2009
by Ira Grupper
(published by FORsooth, newspaper of Louisville, Kentucky chapter of F.O.R. [Fellowship of Reconciliation] )

When those of you who receive the print copy or the email copy of this, your columnist will have recently returned from a trip to Vietnam, and will have missed the deadline for putting the February column to bed. The March number will focus on the Vietnam trip.

Your humble scribe is most honored to turn this month’s column over to a dear friend and colleague. We have known Lillie Elaine Lowe-Reid, and her family, for well over forty years. She, and they, contributed in providing the strength and majesty and inspiration for a Civil Rights Movement in the 1960’s that re-routed a tributary of the river of history from a stinking path of infestation to a sparkling sweet-smelling rolling glistening flow.

Discrimination and the Civil Rights Movement: My Personal Struggles

by Lillie Lowe-Reid

There are thousands of stories that were never told and that history never recorded. One such story is mine, and the story of my family. I was born in 1957 in rural Columbia Mississippi. I lived there until December 1990. I started school at age 5 and at that time all the schools were segregated.

My parents, two of my mother’s cousins, and several of our family friends, I remember being very active in the Civil Rights Movement. I am sure there were others. I remember our home was often busy with strangers and some familiar faces. One of my first memories is of a march down Main Street, Columbia Mississippi. I don’t remember how old I was, but I was very young. Almost too small to keep up with the pace, feeling like I had to trot.

I remember we were running a little late, because my mother had eight of us to get ready, and when we arrived, the march had already started. We ran to fall in with the others. I remember my heart pounding so fast and feeling panic because there were police in riot gear with dogs and their billy clubs out.

People were singing, so I joined in. The more I sang, the better I felt. “Twas Grace That Brought Me Safe Thus Far and Grace Will Lead Me Home”. That was the first of many marches that I participated in.

One day, my parents sat us down and told me and two of my sisters that we would be going to the “all white school” when school started in the Fall. We knew something was brewing because we could hear lots of talk at night about what might happen. My parents, other relatives and some white civil rights lawyers and other white people from New York would stay up half the night talking. Being as nosey as I was, and still am, I tried to hear what they were talking about. I was in the fourth grade.

I am often asked by people who know some of my history, “Did they prepare you for what to expect.” My answer is always: how do you prepare someone to be discriminated against? Even an adult cannot be prepared for that. No matter what you say to someone, especially a child, you are never prepared.

When school started, two of my sisters and I waited nervously for the school bus to arrive. Lola was in the second grade, I was in the fourth and my sister Delores was in the seventh. Boy, were we scared, but trying not to show it. We were told not to show fear because that would make us more vulnerable.

We were picked up and on the way to school we could hear name calling, stereotypes shouted at us, like “stinking nigger,” etc. The driver told us to sit together so we would not cause trouble. Not only were we different ages, but we were different sizes and heights. Despite this, we were dropped off at the wrong school, even though we tried to tell the driver. I stood outside waiting for the bus to pick me up and take me to the right school.

That entire week was hell for me. I was a pretty bright child, academically, but can remember getting low grades for work that I knew to be correct. My grandmother had been a school teacher of a one room school. She still taught, in her home, classes for people who wanted to learn to read and write. She was good at math and English. My mother taught me to read, and I could read at the age of four. My mother chose to work with the Head Start Program as a Teacher and did that until she retired.

I, along with three other African American children, attended Columbia Elementary School until school fully integrated. It was the second half of the seventh grade. For over three years, I was in a panic mode, taking in everything that went on around me. Those years changed me profoundly. A lot of things that happened in those years I cannot remember or choose not to remember.

Not every teacher was mean and neither was every student. I will say, however, that everyone seemed curious about what black people were like, even though most did not use the word black. They used the word they normally used at home and did not think anything about it.

I remember a student asking me if I had been burned and if that was why I was the color I was. When I said no, she wanted to know why my skin was so dark. When slavery was discussed in class, I remember one teacher making comments about my grandmother probably being a slave and my mother was probably a maid. I was attacked many days by students. One teacher would leave the room while I was insulted, things thrown at me and other times both males and females would often just come up and physically attack me. I learned to be a pretty good fighter myself; I had to in order to survive everyday.

Oddly enough there was even more turmoil when we fully integrated. There was no longer three or four African American students to pick on, there were many more to fight back. Another thing I remember to this day is during the process of working through integration, how many young black males were placed in special education classes when they were not in special education before. Most were just a little louder speaking, or a little bigger and not quite used to injustice in school. These young men somehow developed “emotional, learning and behavior problems”.

When my sister Delores reached the twelfth grade, school was fully integrated, and elections were held for homecoming queen. My sister was nominated, and won. You see, there was no such thing as run off yet and Delores was the only African American running. It had always been whoever got the most votes won. Of course, now there are run offs. Anyway, I remember sitting in my math class with my teacher, Mrs. Chain. When the announcement was made that my sister had won Homecoming Queen, Ms. Chain fell to the floor and began sobbing. I really felt awkward and remember thinking, oh boy, I am in trouble now. We began to get all kinds of threatening phone calls telling my mother that if she wanted to keep her daughter alive, she would not let her get on that float. My mother asked my sister if she wanted to ride the float and Delores said “I won and I am riding the float”. She did, but with men on the top of buildings looking for possible shooters. White men often drove down our lane where we lived trying to intimidate my mother. My father worked as a truck driver and was often away.

Because of my parents and our Church’s involvement with integration and desegregation, my father was nearly killed. After leaving a meeting one night, the building where the meeting was held was bombed. The men had just made it to their cars when the bomb went off. We could hear the noise from where we lived. Also, one morning when we arrived at church for Sunday School, we found our church, which was in walking distance from our home, full of bullet holes. We heard shooting the night before but did not know it was our church being shot up.

I myself have had many Jim Crow experiences. Some that come to mind are:

1. Not being able to go to the front of a burger stand. There was a window at the side that said Colored.

2. Going to the movie theater and having to go up to the balcony where blacks had to sit.

3. Not being able to try on clothes in the store. We could buy them, we just could not try them on and we could not return them.

4. One experience I will never forget is going to the dentist with an overwhelming toothache. My mother took me early one morning. We got up when it was still dark to get there early. I had been in pain for several days and the night before could not sleep. When we arrived, we had to go around back and wait in the colored waiting room, which had wooden floors and wooden benches for us to sit. We waited for what seemed like forever, I know it was past lunch because someone came and asked if we would like for them to pick up some hamburgers for us from the stand nearby.

I could not eat because my tooth, gums and jaw were so swollen. Finally the nurse came and told my mother the dentist would see me. He took me in very matter of factly; I was so afraid, and still am to this day, of needles.

He pulled the tooth and sent me home. When my mother and I left the dentist office, it was getting dark. We had been there ALL day.

5. Another very frightening experience for me was the voting precincts. My parents worked to help people register to vote long after the Voting Rights Act was passed. I remember how uncomfortable we were made to feel, the looks and mean stares. Even when I vote as an adult, the voting polls still hold an uncomfortable feeling for me. We were made to feel like we were doing something we did not deserve to do and were participating in something we were not supposed to have.

Despite my experiences in school, I was able to push through all of that and accomplish many things at Columbia High School. I was a cheerleader, was in the National Honor Society and was elected into the Hall of Fame, was Senior Maid, and was the Editor of the Annual Staff.

One thing that I have learned through all my experiences, is that you can change laws, and laws can change behaviors--but not minds and attitudes.

Experiencing the things I did in life made me want to help others who society was not so eager to reach out to. I went to College at the University of Southern Mississippi and obtained a Bachelors in Social and Rehabilitation Services. I began working for a Community Action Agency, assisting the economically disadvantaged and disabled students to obtain work experience, employability skills and obtain their GEDs.

I went back to college in 1998 and completed a Masters in the field of Education and Psychology with a Masters in Counseling Psychology. Since then, I have worked exclusively with the disabled population, first with Helen Keller Services for the Blind, then the Epilepsy Foundation of America, The Center for Education Advancement, and finally with New Jersey Protection and Advocacy, now Disability Rights New Jersey, where I work today. Working with these agencies, I still see the need for mainstream America to open up and make room for the talents of hard-working people with disabilities, and not categorize and stereotype those with disabilities.

Contact Ira Grupper: irag@iglou.com


April, 2008 Newspaper
http://www.ccds.org/newsletters/labor_paeans_Apr08.html