Presumption of a Bold Girl

Think of the 1960s, a time of racial tension and riots in the streets. Your school has lockdowns with police stationed at the doors. You see the Disciples motorcycle gang roll up outside the school. You know they are a feared biker gang of black riders, and that they came from Chicago to see what’s up in your little town. Your small town is five miles up the road from the State Penitentiary, where you assume some of their buddies currently reside. You watch as they slowly circle the high school on their bikes, just observing. You wonder if they are silently daring the police to come at them - to cross the line. Imagine your fear of them as an impressionable high schooler - you don’t know violence except in movies like Easy Rider, Hells Angels on Wheels, and The Born Losers.

You’re friends with all the cliques in school: honor roll (you’re on it), hoods (you know the boy who “likes” you), blacks (you dance the Boogaloo with them), nerds (you understand them), general troublemakers (you tolerate and are nice to them), and bullies (you aren’t afraid of them, and they know it, so don’t try anything with you). You pass through a crowd of the hoods with no issues and hear their plans for an upcoming parking lot fistfight.

Now imagine that in the 1960s, you can walk through a large group of riled-up, angry black kids, and they open a pathway for you, smiling and greeting you.

On a sunny weekend day, you and your best friend decide you want to help with the tensions, so you go to a meeting you heard about in the black section of town, just over the line; the area whites pass through but don’t stop in. You know this area a bit because you’ve gone there to dance parties and to visit white friends who live on the verge or in the midst of the black section on the other side of the line.

You open the door to a building and enter. Inside, a group of mature black men and women discuss their community issues. Surprise! All heads turn to your white faces, surprised by your bold impertinence, interrupting a meeting at their church, for crissakes. You are daring and compassionate, never considering that their church is a place of safety, reverence, and community for black folks. You, a foolish teenager, have no sense that white skin is a threat to these folks.

Their silent stares give you pause, so many molten-chocolate eyes, looking at you. You stand near the doorway that you quietly closed after entering. The men are strikingly distinguished in dark suits, matching ties, and crisp button-down shirts. The women wear dresses, skirts, seamed hose, and high heels that match their brilliantly-hued outfits.

It is a formidable, foreign crowd, not what you expected: not at all like the cliques from school who are friendly and appreciate you. These are not familiar adults.

Your breath doesn’t quite fill your lungs under their united examination.

“May we help you?” The question rumbles from a man across the church and lands in your ears, but you stand silent, frozen in uncertainty.

“Child, you have come, uninvited, to our meeting. Do you have something you want to say?” asks the woman who is dressed in a shimmering lemon-yellow dress.

At last, you find your voice and say you have “come to help.” Their eyebrows rise in unison, like a rope that is lifted for people to climb under. You want them to understand, so you finish the sentence: “With the racial tensions,” and you two white girls sit down in a pew near the door.

Your presence is tolerated until finally a woman with perfectly coiffed hair approaches. As she approaches, the only sound in the church is her heels clicking on the floor, and your stomach tightens as fear creeps up your back. You hear her words, but you are captivated by her pale lip color and dramatic makeup.

“It is late. Go home.”

You leave and go back to the other side of the line.

            Copyright © 9/30/2026 by Andrea O. Corwin