[No, this was not our trailer, but you get the idea.] Sammi, as we called her, made a great roommate. We moved into a trailer, unfortunately decorated in olive green, but with two bedrooms and two baths, one of each on either side of the kitchen and living room. She was also a wonderful addition to the music program, sometimes singing solo numbers. The song that became her signature piece was “Sweet, Sweet Spirit.” At some point in the spring, possibly as a tangent to what Sammi was trying to teach, a student asked her if she would ever marry a Black man. She said she would, if he was a Christian and loved God and her. And then all hell broke loose. Because our principal may have told me the truth—the school had not been founded to keep Blacks out—but he didn’t tell me the whole truth. Nowhere in our statement of conduct was written "Thou shalt not marry a person from another race," but clearly interracial marriage was a step too far. This was south Florida. I don’t recall now if parents got involved, but Sammi was called in to talk to the administration. She repeated her assertion and got a bus ticket back to her parent’s home. (She later met and married a wealthy man and has had a very nice life.) Incensed at the injustice of it, I wanted to resign in protest, but I had no Plan B, and I was a coward. Nobody asked my position on interracial marriage, so I stayed. This left me struggling financially, and minus a roommate. At the same time, tensions increased between the new science teacher and her roommate. I don’t know who decided it was a good idea or did the asking, but her roommate and I decided we’d live together the next year. We were both leaving for the summer to be with family, and I somehow got her to agree to take me and my cat as far as Indianapolis—not that it was really on the way to Colorado—where my parents would pick me up. As we were nearing the city, which I’d visited twice, my new roommate asked, “Where are we meeting your parents?” “At the Holiday Inn on I-465,” I told her. “Do you have any idea how many Holiday Inns there are on I-465?” she asked, not yet screaming. We pulled into the parking lot of the first Holiday Inn we saw, and there was my father, hauling a suitcase out of the trunk of his car.
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Baptist GirlI was a conservative Baptist girl who grew up to become a career Christian, working first in a Baptist school and then in a Baptist college. For about three decades, it was very good until it wasn’t, and I had to leave. But the Baptists formed me. This is my homage to the good times and good people of the world I left, finally, at forty-three, when I became an Episcopalian. These are my memories; others might disagree with my recollections. So be it. Archives
January 2024
Categories |