I couldn’t understand why I had a stomach ache and stains in my panties for a few days. Just when I began to worry about this, it went away. It was probably something I ate. After four weeks it happened again, and a deep red residue was a little more than stains in my panties. I did my best to keep it under control with toilet tissue, but soiled my skirts a couple of times. I still didn’t know what this was all about and worried that I was injured ‘down there.’ On about the third afternoon of this second time around, I got in bed with my mom, a day sleeper whom we never disturbed, crying, “My stomach hurts and my panties keep getting dirty!” She seemed only a little surprised, but went to her lingerie drawer and pulled out a book. We read the book together, she showed me how to use a complicated uncomfortable belt/hook/pad contraption, and went back to sleep. I was not yet twelve years old and was totally perplexed about what was happening to my body. From the book we read, it would happen every month forever! What was this all about?
Later that afternoon, after Mom awakened we had a chat. It wasn’t the kind of detailed and informative chat mothers and daughters have today with questions answered and the sex angle added in. It wasn’t even as informative as the film they show girls in school these days. Instead, using her nursing text, she explained how the menstrual period occurred every month, told me not to get wet during this time, and not to play with boys any more. That was it! In talking with my friends, most of them did not get as much information as my mom gave me. We filled in the blanks with misinformation about pregnancy, birth control, and what actually happened during sex.
I was embarrassed that this inconvenience came every month and tried to keep it a secret outside my little circle of best friends, since most of my contemporaries had not yet entered this phase.
I was embarrassed, too, that my breasts moved around. When I jumped rope, I crossed my arms over my chest. I asked my mom if I could have a bra, but she said I was too young to have one. I didn’t understand what this had to do with age; it seemed that volume was more important. The next year, after suffering embarrassment with bouncing breasts, I was thirteen years old, and had a big piano recital. We selected a dress from the women’s section that was a little more grown up than previous recital dresses. Mom decided this dress required a bra, for which I was fitted at the Missy Shop. Since this first bra was a size 32B, I think she waited too long.
The walk to junior high was a little longer. We walked the same route we had taken for the past six years, but now we passed both the cow pasture and our former elementary school, crossing another big street. It was about a three-mile walk.
In junior high, students were grouped by ability in the academic classes, although the staff assumed they had disguised this fact. Our groups were numbered, indicated by the written number after our grade level, 7-1, 7-2, 7-3 and so on. It didn’t take us long to figure out that the scale went from 1 to about 10, with 1 being the highest achieving and 10 being the lowest. Most of my friends were 7-2 or 7-3. The bulk of the higher numbers were filled with the growing population of the Negro children who had moved into the school district.
English and History classes were a breeze, but Math was harder at the 7-1 level. This was a time when some teachers used a method of teaching by telling and showing, which didn’t work for me. After a whole class period of being told how to do three-digit long division, with several kids coming to the board to do a problem, we were assigned homework with an entire page of this kind of problem. I worked hard that evening, but I couldn’t estimate well enough to complete a problem reasonably. Being the verbal kid I was, I wrote a note to my teacher on my paper, “I don’t understand.” and didn’t complete the assignment. The next day she went over the instruction again, using the same procedure as the day before, after which she made the comment that someone had written on their paper I don’t understand. She went on to say that same person obviously didn’t pay attention. I think it was my dad who later taught me this type of division after he answered all my questions about “why?” This incident stayed with me and as a result, years later as a teacher, I never used demonstration as a sole technique for learning. I always taught using methods that required interaction and questioning. Throughout my schooling, I hated doing a page of arithmetic problems and avoided it whenever possible. In Algebra and particularly Geometry, I excelled. I don’t understand this phenomenon, except that maybe the experience with long division may have caused a block about completing rote arithmetic problems.
I continued music in school. I learned to play a few other instruments, but concentrated on the clarinet in band class. This was my first experience in Marching Band. Music was taught using interactive techniques and, unlike long division, I learned quickly. I still remember the clarinet part to our fight song. I continued my outside piano lessons and gave recitals. Music was OK, but still not at all interesting nor exciting for me.
What was interesting and exciting was the fact that we had a Negro teacher at our school! This was a first for me. Mrs. Jackson taught Home Ec in a class that had six little kitchens. Even though my electives were music classes, I gave something up to have Mrs. Jackson for a teacher. It was wonderful. She was a large, brusque woman, who was also kind, instructive, and knowledgeable. I had been cooking for a while because my mom worked nights and my real time with her was when I cooked with her every evening, so most of the information was not new. But Mrs. Jackson taught us a lot about becoming women and running a household.
Before taking the cooking part of Home Ec, you had to take the first half as sewing and make your apron. It was there that I leaned to use a sewing machine. After which Aunt Lizzie bought me one and I sewed on my own. I created gowns Mom wore to the formal dances that she attended with my dad.
The second Negro teacher was even more interesting and exciting because he was a man! Mr. Kennedy came when I was in ninth grade. He taught Math. He was young, handsome, and dressed like Rock Hudson. I felt so proud that someone who looked like me was the coolest, best-looking, and most popular teacher on campus. He taught us more than Algebra. He taught us about character, laying the foundation for self-confidence and achievement. Today he says I was one of his best Algebra students. Too bad he couldn’t tell that to my 7-1 math teacher. He rose through the ranks, achieving the position of superintendent for several districts. During the last few decades of the twentieth century, in his role as “father” of Black Education in California, he helped scores of black students achieve high levels of success.
Junior High School was not Junior, it should have been called something different, like “Growing School.” Throughout my career as an educator, I always preferred to work with the Junior High kids. This was always an easy assignment to get because most of my colleagues disliked teaching the early teens, calling Junior High the “armpits of education.” Junior High kids are loyal, inquisitive, questioning, eager to learn, and show the most growth—just as I was.
Dr. Kennedy—the go-to man
We were knocked for a loop during the last year of Junior High. Without warning, out of the blue, Fred Kennedy appeared in room B3. Just the year before, we received our first Negro teacher in the form of Mrs. Jackson, for which we were pleased. But a man! A handsome man, a well-dressed man wearing cool shoes, an articulate man, a deep-voiced man, a Negro man—this was a bequest from the gods!
Dr. Kennedy came to us through the traditional route taken by Negro educators Negro colleges. He graduated from the Tuskegee Institute but in order to teach in California, he had to take courses again. Most of these southern graduates went to the University of Southern California (USC) for extra coursework. His graduate degrees were also completed at USC.
Dr. Kennedy’s mentorship was by example. He encouraged us, taught us how to stand up for ourselves without the risk of being too aggressive. The minuscule, but precious, space between subservience and uppity-ness was where we needed to operate. These are some of the principles I remember:
One should make an articulate request rather than a demand because a demand assumes power and puts you in the uppity side of the space.