Two weeks after they settled into their trailer home, Colleen got the courage to send her parents a taped message. Things weren’t going as she had hoped.
“Testing, one, two, three. Hi, Dad, Mom, you know it’s me. I was … Oops …”
She couldn’t tell them the truth, especially her father. He was already concerned that she had wanted to quit her teaching job to marry Miguel and move away to be an army wife. And the world he had promised her was in upheaval. The assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Robert F. Kennedy had shocked the country. Anti–Vietnam War protests and civil rights marches were fueled by anger. The North was no better than the South. He didn’t have to remind her how the Newark riots had police on alert and had closed the store that Colleen worked in part-time. The future was uncertain. Her father reluctantly relented when he saw that she was resolved to live her own life.
Miguel was drafted a year out of college with a 1-A classification. His advanced training assignment in Fort Polk was basically a guaranteed ticket to Da Nang Air Base. But the luck of the draw placed him in drill sergeant school and gave him eighteen months guaranteed in the United States, so they moved up the wedding date. When the school year was over, Colleen resigned from her teaching job. Wars influence lovers to live for the present.
Her parents admired Miguel’s grit and determination. His family was part of the recent surge of Cuban immigrants who had fled Cuba when Castro turned to communism. When he was thirteen, his parents and eight siblings had left a comfortable life behind them and started over from nothing. Miguel had exchanged his dreams of a major league baseball career for an after-school paper route.
Colleen couldn’t let her father down. Or herself.
She pressed the rewind button.
“The cassette player is really cool. Thanks for the gift. I’ll tape a message every day or two and mail it when I fill the reel. It’s hard not to have a phone. Use the number for our landlord in an emergency. He’ll take calls for us if we don’t overdo it. I thought you’d like to know about our trailer. I have to admit I was surprised to see it. Turquoise is a color I like to wear, not live in. We decided not to go to New Orleans for our honeymoon. Instead, we went to Sears to buy an air conditioner. The salesman asked us how big our place was. ‘Two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a living room,’ Miguel answered. What a joke! We should have said that the entire space was eight feet wide and forty-six feet long. Miguel installed the air conditioner last weekend in the living room window. When it’s on full blast, it could blow you right out the door. More soon. Bye for now.”
That was all she could reveal. She was worried about getting a teaching job. The previous year, she’d had four offers. Every town needed teachers. She’d had such confidence that it would be simple when she’d gone to the school board office the week before.
The low building was framed in painted cinder blocks and had a red tin roof, a metal door, and a small, square window. It looked like the VFW hall at home in New Jersey. Colleen spotted a large metal plaque that read KETTLE CREEK PARISH SCHOOL BOARD. She walked in.
The office was crowded with upset people attempting to make appointments. Behind the desk sat an equally distraught woman who kept repeating the same answer: “I’m sorry, but the superintendent is not available.”
Colleen scrutinized the room, then sat down in a chair by the doorway next to a woman who appeared a bit more patient than the rest. A tight smile from her felt like an invitation, so Colleen asked, “Are all these people applying for teaching positions?”
The smile slipped away as the woman’s mouth opened in surprise. “No, darlin’, they’re trying to keep their positions. The school board is in some kind of trouble with HEW, and rumors are flying. Didn’t you read about it in the morning paper?”
“HEW?” Colleen asked.
“Health, Education, and Welfare, or maybe it stands for ‘hate every white.’”
The woman gripped the pocketbook on her lap when two more people pushed through the doorway and bumped her chair.
“Oh my. I came here to get an application for a teaching job.”
Her source shook her head. “Maybe you should come back tomorrow, or even next week, when things settle down.”
Colleen took the advice and traded the office’s chaos for the cushioned corner booth in the luncheonette across the street.
“Hi, darlin’, you look a bit overcome. What’s happening at that school board office?”
“I’m wondering the same thing. Do you have a newspaper I could buy?”
The waitress smiled as she handed Colleen a menu. “Just made a batch of my Luzianne iced tea; it’ll cool you right down.”
“That sounds perfect. Thank you.”
“See if you want anything else while I get that tea. And yes, we have newspapers for customers. I’ll bring you one.”
Refreshed by the cool drink, Colleen scanned the paper. Nothing about schools or teachers in the front section. Then, on page nine, after the Little League schedule, a headline popped out: “School Board Tells of Plan for Faculty.”
Her hands clenched as she read that the superintendent had presented a list of teacher assignments for approval to the school board for the fall session. The list was completed to meet the guidelines of the 1954 Supreme Court’s order on school desegregation and federal enforcement of the court’s 1964 order. Robert Finch, secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW), had scored a victory in the bitter struggle over school desegregation. The superintendent was not ready to make public announcements until he met with principals and teachers.
So that was the reason everyone was storming the parish board office. But the Brown v. Board of Education decision had happened fifteen years earlier, followed by the Civil Rights Act ten years later. And what had that teacher meant when she’d said HEW stood for “hate every white”?