ACT & College Preparation Course for the Christian Student

Mammaw was an enigma that greatly bothered our arcane Southern society. Again, Mammaw was an iconoclast. She cared nothing about what others thought — except to irritate potential critics. For instance, Mammaw, a fourth-generation Methodist, loved to visit the Presbyterian Church because the pastor’s wife wore stylish dresses. Mammaw wore scandalous short dresses and, while she refused to inhale, she nonetheless carried a lit cigarette in her right hand to pique scurrilous busybodies.

She had to be punished. Banished from the country club, most felt that she was sufficiently castigated. But Mammaw was not penitent. In fact, when she married my grandfather — the wealthiest and most eligible bachelor in town — the town was only too happy to invite my grandmother back into the country club. She refused and all her offspring and generations following grew up as pariahs — without the benefit of Southern country club amenities. Mammaw never again set a foot in the Fitzgerald County Country Club — although she loved to have garden parties and social events in the House.

Mammaw had three sons. My dad was the youngest. Uncle Sammy was one of the most prosperous landowners in the area. Uncle Bobby went to Harvard and later became a Harvard Business School professor. My dad, who loved the House and Mammaw and black-eyed peas on New Years Day, stayed at the House.

Daddy Bobby, my grandfather, owned the House, but Mammy Lee ran it. Mammy Lee was in a long line of distinguished women of color who had raised us — what Lee called — white boys.

Armed with collard greens, black-eyed peas, and a sturdy dusting cloth, my Mammy Lee single-handedly maintained this fragile world that was 1965 Arkansas. Mammy Lee was parent, servant, and benevolent despot all rolled up into one. This 250-pound, five-foot tall, black woman was an awesome presence. Chewing tobacco, limping slightly, and occasionally rubbing a lucky Mercury-head dime tied around her foot with kite string, Lee enveloped us in her arms and propelled us forward through all adversity; she protected us from reality, and gave us false security garnished with pecan pies and encouraging words. Lee set perimeters for all our lives. “Mistah Jim,” she often scolded me, “I’se gonna spank yo’ bottom if you don’t pick up yo’ toys.” And many times she did exactly that!

I loved my Mammy Lee. I can still feel her as she held me and squeezed — as if a hug and a shake could cure anything! Lee showed me where to find the fattest fishing worms; she helped me dig for pirate treasure.

There was a desperation about Lee. Her world was changing quickly — too quickly — and her discomfort grew. I loved Lee, I loved my homeland, this way of life, and, in a way, they — Lee and my South — were one and the same. They were both grotesquely generous and subtly selfish at the same time. My mother could see it. Walter Cronkite could see it. Lyndon Baynes Johnson could see it. I could see it.

The Brown decision and federal soldiers entering Little Rock’s Central High School marched through our quiet land with as much destructive force as Sherman’s march through Georgia. This appealing, seductive land was mercilessly, if slowly, being ripped open for the whole world to see. And inside this enlarging cauldron, a young white boy and a sweet black lady were growing up together — and apart — at the same time.

In spite of the fact that Mammy took care of all of us, she was not allowed to sleep in our house. She had a very comfortable apartment next to our garage. I once asked my mother, “Can Mammy Lee sleep in my room? I need her!” My mother gently responded, “Nigras do not sleep in white people’s houses. Little boys sleep upstairs, Nigras must sleep downstairs.”

This was the beginning of the end of my world. I was learning very quickly that I was part of an upstairs/downstairs world.

Segregated schools, segregated churches, segregated doctors’ offices — we all knew our place, too. Mammy Lee never prepared me for the world that I had to enter once I left the placenta-like fairyland she had created for me within my home. Lee never warned me that I would sing, “Jesus Loves the Little Children,” in my fourth-grade Sunday school class. “Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight. . . .” The words still painfully lurk in my memory. Where was this world of which I so enthusiastically sang? Mammy Lee never told me that I would wipe the steam from my school-bus window and see African-American children standing with their tattered books — some of which I had discarded only the year before. As I peered into their consuming brown eyes, I felt a part of me die, I felt my innocence departing. Poor Mammy Lee could no longer solve all my problems with Vick’s rub and castor oil.

Maturity, young people, draws us into a place of cognizant reflection. I had no control over where I was born, or how I was raised. But there came a time when I had to take control of my life. In my case, that was in 1971 when I gave my life to Christ, when I was reborn. I took control of my life, and then I lost it. I devoted my life to advance the Kingdom of God on this earth as it is in heaven! There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.