A true story…

When I was a very litttle girl (yes, LONG ago, lol), we visited my grandmother in the mountains of Virginia for the first time in my memory.

I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.

It was the first time in our lives we kids had grass to run in, to roll around on. In the project where we lived, there was only concrete. For all of our short lives when we’d never had enough food to eat, fruit grew on trees here. The air was fresh, the water clean and pure. We napped in the grass, ran wild through the weeds. We gathered blackberries for grandma’s homemade pies, and danced in sudden summer showers, marveling at the huge rain barrels that collected the water. And we watched the sky grow glassy-dark from the steps of her porch, amazed at how many more stars there were in this sky. This sky beneath which we felt so rich and free.

One day we walked through the woods. It was less than a mile or so from grandma’s house, and everyone there knew her. She’d lived there forever, and everyone seemed to adore her as we did.

I came upon a piece of paper, tacked onto a tree. Curious, I walked over to the tree to read it.
As I said–I was very young. But not stupid. I could read what it said. I simply didn’t understand.
Very carefully removing the tack from the tree, I took the paper in hand and raced back to the house to show it to my mother. I wanted her to explain what it meant.

When I showed it to her, she became very still, very quiet. She asked me where I got it, and showed it to my grandmother. Then she went into the back bedroom, folded it carefully, and tucked it into the Bible she’d carried in her suitcase.

Still our of breath, I watched every movement she made. “Momma? What does it mean?”
“Nothing. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Momma? I read the note.” I felt like crying. “How can people talk about other people like that?”
“Because people are not always very nice. Because they don’t know any better.” She looked like she wanted to cry too–but there was also anger, I think. She smoothed my hair and put her Bible away. “Now go back out and play. While you still can. And stay closer to the house, okay?”

I was old enough to know what the Klan was. And to read that they were having a meeting in the old firehouse on a Thursday night. And I recognized hatred when I read it, and fear of “the mud race”, the “nasty, juicy-lipped niggers”, and how they threatened society.

My mom kept that paper in her Bible for a long time. I don’t know if it’s still there. I didn’t go back to read it, didn’t need to. I will always remember what this child found in the woods of the South.

Things are better now. Not perfect—just better.
But bigotry comes in many colors, sizes, religions, even genders.

Remember the Dream.