My First Day of School

My First day of School

I finished my breakfast and excitedly hopped off my chair and headed for my bedroom to get dressed. “Leslie, put your dish in the sink please!”, my mother called out. I walked back and hastily grabbed my cereal bowl and dropped it noisily in the sink.

My mother laid out my clothes for the day then asked me to come sit down next to her for a minute. I remember her giving me the normal admonitions about behavior, etc. Then she took my hands and told me to look at her and pay attention. She always did that if it was something important. It helped her keep my attention a bit longer. Mom proceeded to explain that today was an unusual first day of school. To the best of her ability, she explained to me as simply as she could about the new integration at my school.

At age five, I hadn’t had any real opportunity to interact with anyone who wasn’t white with the exception of my grandmother’s housekeeper and cook in Florida, where I had spent my first two and a half years. I can tell you that I loved her; she in turn adored me and I have fond memories of her kindness and affection. I cannot ever remember my grandmother being anything but kind and respectful to Mollie B. In fact, my grandmother made sure that Mollie never lacked for food or any necessities after she retired. My grandmother lived on a fixed income, but every month she would go shopping the last week of the month and take groceries to Mollie because she knew how hard it was to make food stretch on a limited income.

As I listened to my mother explain so beautifully that God made everything in color, including people, my young mind understood that analogy. I remember her saying how boring it would be in the world if all flowers were the same color. I was far too young to understand the history of African Americans at that time, but I am so grateful that my mother did her best to help me understand what racism was and how to cope with people who behaved that way. In fact, I distinctly remember her saying that if we had any black children in my class that I should go out of my way to say hello and be kind and friendly. She told me that those children would be scared and nervous because of how mean other people had been to them. For 1965, that was to my mother’s credit.

An hour later we walked down the steps, hand in hand as we sang a favorite song. My first school was only a block and a half away. Before even crossing the street, a roaring sound like muffled thunder could be heard, interspersed with voices that spewed hatred and obscenity. My mother held my hand tightly and reassured me not to be scared. “People are saying mean things and shouting, but I won’t let you get hurt!” I clung to her hand tightly and as we approached the screaming mob, hid my face in my mother’s skirt. Police were holding back crowds of angry white people, some of them our neighbors, including the lady who lived next door to us with her children. They held up signs and threw rotten vegetables and fruit at anybody who tried to enter the school property. Then somebody threw a rock and there was a surge that almost broke through just as we got to the entrance of the schoolyard. Our neighbor called out to my mother by name and screamed “N----lover!” I had never heard that word before, but I knew from my mother’s face it was a bad word.

That day will always be with me. It fundamentally shaped my view of the world and my feelings towards people who are different from myself. By teaching me in simple words that I could understand and by setting an example of doing the right thing, even when it could be dangerous, my mother gave me the gift of tolerance and the ability to look past the physical and see the person inside. No matter what her other faults were, I am profoundly grateful to her for teaching me to love my fellow human beings for who they are, not what they look like.

There is one anecdotal aside that was another connection to the Kennedys. Robert Kennedy sent his daughter to kindergarten at my school the same year. Sadly, she was in the morning class. But I would see her get picked up many times that year by a limousine and chauffer. She was a beautiful little girl and was always impeccably dressed. And she was sweet. She would always wave and smile when I waved to her. That little memory is a reminder of the six degrees of separation between us and others. We are often closer to people than we think and connected in ways we may not realize. We were connected by history and by our experience of school for the first time; a school in honor of her uncle, President Kennedy and by our experience of attending an integrated school for the first time in Boston.

We were children born in a year of optimism and hope. Three years later, our childhoods would be marked by the darkest act imaginable; the killing of President Kennedy. There would be more assassinations, more wars, more political corruption and social unrest to come. We would see the world change in ways we never imagined. But no matter what, that initial optimism that radiated from President Kennedy still stays with me. I cannot think of him without grief. Yet I always remember what he stood for and what he fought for.

As we lost his brother Robert and then Dr. Martin Luther King before the end of the decade, we were only children still, but we heard the stories around us. They gave us hearts longing for justice and mercy. They fortified our souls against difficult challenges in our society. They strengthen me still. They still call out for us to continue the work they left unfinished. In the midst of perhaps the most racially divisive period in our history next to the civil war; let’s honor their lives by continuing to fight for social justice, equality and for the good of all humanity.