Not much can be revealed about the short life of Charles' mother. Though born a Singleton, she was adopted by the Daniel Lewis Family. They lived in Springfield, Ohio, and Ruth most likely spent the greater part of her life there. Lewis Sr. came to know her while he was attending Wilberforce University in Xenia, Ohio, but did not talk about her to his children after her death. Whether she was a student at Wilberforce, Charles didn't know.
There is much I wanted to find out about my paternal grandmother Ruth and how her family coped after losing her at such a young age. Critical events are thought to be better recalled, unless too traumatic, in which case they can be suppressed. Some people say they remember things that happened at a very young age, but for whatever reason the rules of memory dictate, Dad cannot say much about the first decade of his life. When asked about his mother, he is quiet and gets a distant look in eyes peering back seventy five years.
"I have no personal recall of her," he finally answers.
There are bits and pieces of his early years Charles does remember. He remembers his father relating one story about his time at Wilberforce. He had a job on campus grooming and tending horses for the school's ROTC program headed by Colonel Benjamin O. Davis Sr. (Coincidentally, Davis would go on to become the nation's first black general and his son, B. O. Davis Jr., would follow in his footsteps, ultimately leading the
country's first black military pilots into the history books. The thought of these developments was almost inconceivable at the time.)
Lewis Sr. also related stories about being the second eldest of three sons and three daughters of Charles Allen and Gay Ankrum McGee, and growing up in a religious home. Charles Allen had been a slave until the age of six. In adult years, he became a Methodist minister, providing a strong spiritual foundation, and with wife Gay offered guidance and encouragement to their growing children. Gay's father, Charles Ankrum, was also an AME minister and a veteran of the Civil War.
Like most Negroes in this country, Gay and her husband Charles had mixed ancestry; hers was of Caucasian, Indian and African roots and his father was Scottish, but whether he was a slave owner or abolitionist is not known. Mixing of the races persisted despite anti-miscegenation laws against marriage or sexual relations between a man and woman of different races, especially between a white and a black.
Multiracial heritage prompted laws which defined racial identity in cases like the McGee’s. Just as brown eyes are dominant over blue eyes genetically, black lineage dominated. One thirty-second of black ancestry in the blood line, which equates to black parentage six generations passed, qualified a man or woman as Negro in most states with laws addressing racial identity.
Lewis Sr. was a prominent and handsome man. He was close to six feet tall and fair-skinned with dark wavy hair. While it might not have been apparent to the casual observer that Lewis was a Negro, he was never known to misrepresent his heritage. His wife Ruth had been brown skinned, quiet and unassumingly attractive in her own right. Their children spanned the colors between with Lewis Jr. being the darkest, Ruth very pale and Charles a honey color in the middle.
In the summer of 1921, Lewis Sr. was 27 years old and a widower faced with the prospects of rearing three small children alone. It is hard to imagine how their world must have viewed this motherless rainbow family. Though details of life in Cleveland remains behind the veil of lost childhood memories, periodic visits with Lewis' mother in Clarksburg and Morgantown, West Virginia, emerge in snatches. Lewis Jr., Charles and Ruth were put on a train in Cleveland and the conductor kept an eye on them until they were delivered into the hands of relatives waiting on the other end. The great “iron” steps onto the train looked pretty formidable to a little guy and while all of this was strange to Charles at first, he soon adjusted to the new adventure. When the time was right, the conductor let them eat the packed lunch, which was sent with them. For the rest of the trip they amused themselves as children are prone to do and the time passed quickly.
In Morgantown there was a boardwalk leading up to the house. Lewis Jr., Charles and Ruth played on it and school yard swings where Charles first soared high to momentarily escape the bonds of earth’s gravity. The time was not right, however, and one flight ended abruptly in a painful fall to the blacktop. Charles announced his distress for the entire world to hear as he ran to the house where Grandma Gay cleaned his wounded chin and dried his tears.
During those summer visits with Grandma Gay, she created a special place for them, one nurturing and comforting and filled with the love a departed mother could not offer. For that, I am grateful.
"Thank you, Mama Gay."
Patched up, Charles headed back to the swing set and unfinished business. The safer swing on the porch and the front step offered the best vantage point for family to gather to observe the end of the summer day. There they would relive times gone by, talk of hopes for tomorrow and watch events unfolding before them. During the evening and into the night, the aroma of fresh bread from the bakery nearby floated down the hillside and wafted through the valley.
Of course, things were not always so serene. Kids being kids, Lewis, Charles and Ruth got into their share of mischief. Charles took a turn throwing mud balls at freshly laundered sheets flapping on the clothesline, although he denied involvement in the prank. With both father and grandfathers being ministers, it is not surprising that playing church in the backyard was another favorite pastime. Mama Gay laughed at Charles' portrayal of the minister and, especially, the ending of his sermons. According to her version of the story, he was overheard delivering this closing line.
"Now it's time to sing one more song and get out of here."
"They tell me the story," Charles said, "but I don't remember anything like that either."
Sometimes the visits to West Virginia took place during the winter. An iron cook stove in the kitchen had to be stoked with wood. Helping fetch wood was the perfect job for a youngster underfoot. Often a treat was the reward and gingerbread was Charles' favorite. (To this day he still gets pleasure from the first bite of hot gingerbread cut from the corner of the baking tin.)
When Charles was eight years old, his father's work took the family south for a year, where Lewis completed a teaching assignment at Edward Waters College in Jacksonville, Florida. While it wasn't common for a Negro to have a higher education in 1927, Lewis was a graduate of Wilberforce College in Ohio, an accomplishment qualifying him for the appointment.
Lewis Sr. moved the children into a little cabin near the edge of town next to a sugar cane field. Cane fields were a place to play after school and the sweet taste of fresh cut cane was an added bonus. Crabs cooking in a tub over a backyard fire left indelible memories, as did Lewis Jr. being kicked by a mule he had the misfortune of following too closely.
Another recollection related to school and was not so pleasant. The Florida schools for Negroes hadn't kept pace with their northern counterparts and as a result, Charles had to repeat the third grade when the family returned to Cleveland.
In 1929, the stock market crashed, beginning economic chaos in America. Back in Cleveland, Lewis continued to be mother and father to children now eleven, nine and seven. Even in the best of circumstances they must have been quite a handful, but now resources were extremely meager and times difficult. Late in the year, Lewis moved on to Chicago, following job opportunities in social work.
Rather than keeping the children with him in the unstable situation they faced, he arranged for them to stay with Hershall and Harriet Harris, who were affectionately called Mom and Pop Harris. They lived in St. Charles, Illinois, about forty miles west of Chicago on the Fox River. By reputation and deed, the Harris’ were good people. Over the years, they had raised a number of children whose parents had been unable to care for them for one reason or another. Hershall worked in a foundry at the edge of town and although there were very few blacks in the area, the Harris’ were long time residents of the community.
Unlike Chicago, St. Charles was a small town providing a safe haven where the children were able to grow and thrive under the watchful eye of the close-knit Harris family. Mrs. Harris’ brother, William Luckett, who was a commercial artist, lived next door. He had a croquet court and thriving apple tree in the yard between their homes. The children