I, Too, Am Tar Baby
This is a story about a Black boy growing up in poverty in the Jim Crow and Civil Rights eras who entered “white” society for the first time nearly sixty years ago as one of five Black students integrating an all-white junior high school. It is a story about the decades that followed, when the color of my skin was a defining factor in the quality of life I strived to make of myself and for my family. Like Ralph Ellison’s “invisible man,” I was seen but unseen. This is the story of a “native son” of the Deep South who witnessed and lived the problem of race in America in the post-Brown v. Board of Education decades. I recount many personal experiences of racial hatred and intolerance, how I responded to them, how they shaped my perceptions of me and of white society, and how those experiences helped to determine the course I was made to travel.
As a lifelong seeker of answers to perplexing questions about my humanness and inner spirit, this is also a story of a Black boy’s journey in search of knowing the essence of his individuality and earthly purpose. Accounts of my poverty-stricken upbringing, people who influenced my life, how I was educated, the work I did in adult life, and the bitter, racial hatred that I encountered are pebbles skipping across a murky pond of unexpected, inexplicable occurrences and inward reflections and intuitions that somehow protected, sustained, and nurtured me. Those occurrences and reflections had to be unearthed in order to discover and understand the deeper influencing part of me that I did not and could not consciously perceive.
Though masked by surface thoughts, feelings, behavior and beliefs, the innermost spirit, in all the negative and positive ways in which it manifested itself, was constantly stirring, pointing, and molding. More than race, my discovery and understanding of that hidden reality, at least in part, gave meaning to my misfortunes, mistakes, failures, and successes in life.
I recount moments of inner vision and revelation, but my search for individuation and the wholeness of me did not yield a daybreak, sunlit path to self-realization. For me, the voyage continues into dark, unseeing nights. I leave it to readers, hopefully younger generations of African Americans, to decide whether or not my journey, albeit incomplete, imparts any knowledge or truth that gives meaning to their own lives, despite the race, ancestry, and history, or circumstances and human conditions, that outwardly define their self-worth and potential.
This is a story about a Black boy growing up in poverty in the Jim Crow and Civil Rights eras who entered “white” society for the first time nearly sixty years ago as one of five Black students integrating an all-white junior high school. It is a story about the decades that followed, when the color of my skin was a defining factor in the quality of life I strived to make of myself and for my family. Like Ralph Ellison’s “invisible man,” I was seen but unseen. This is the story of a “native son” of the Deep South who witnessed and lived the problem of race in America in the post-Brown v. Board of Education decades. I recount many personal experiences of racial hatred and intolerance, how I responded to them, how they shaped my perceptions of me and of white society, and how those experiences helped to determine the course I was made to travel.
As a lifelong seeker of answers to perplexing questions about my humanness and inner spirit, this is also a story of a Black boy’s journey in search of knowing the essence of his individuality and earthly purpose. Accounts of my poverty-stricken upbringing, people who influenced my life, how I was educated, the work I did in adult life, and the bitter, racial hatred that I encountered are pebbles skipping across a murky pond of unexpected, inexplicable occurrences and inward reflections and intuitions that somehow protected, sustained, and nurtured me. Those occurrences and reflections had to be unearthed in order to discover and understand the deeper influencing part of me that I did not and could not consciously perceive.
Though masked by surface thoughts, feelings, behavior and beliefs, the innermost spirit, in all the negative and positive ways in which it manifested itself, was constantly stirring, pointing, and molding. More than race, my discovery and understanding of that hidden reality, at least in part, gave meaning to my misfortunes, mistakes, failures, and successes in life.
I recount moments of inner vision and revelation, but my search for individuation and the wholeness of me did not yield a daybreak, sunlit path to self-realization. For me, the voyage continues into dark, unseeing nights. I leave it to readers, hopefully younger generations of African Americans, to decide whether or not my journey, albeit incomplete, imparts any knowledge or truth that gives meaning to their own lives, despite the race, ancestry, and history, or circumstances and human conditions, that outwardly define their self-worth and potential.
This is a story about a Black boy growing up in poverty in the Jim Crow and Civil Rights eras who entered “white” society for the first time nearly sixty years ago as one of five Black students integrating an all-white junior high school. It is a story about the decades that followed, when the color of my skin was a defining factor in the quality of life I strived to make of myself and for my family. Like Ralph Ellison’s “invisible man,” I was seen but unseen. This is the story of a “native son” of the Deep South who witnessed and lived the problem of race in America in the post-Brown v. Board of Education decades. I recount many personal experiences of racial hatred and intolerance, how I responded to them, how they shaped my perceptions of me and of white society, and how those experiences helped to determine the course I was made to travel.
As a lifelong seeker of answers to perplexing questions about my humanness and inner spirit, this is also a story of a Black boy’s journey in search of knowing the essence of his individuality and earthly purpose. Accounts of my poverty-stricken upbringing, people who influenced my life, how I was educated, the work I did in adult life, and the bitter, racial hatred that I encountered are pebbles skipping across a murky pond of unexpected, inexplicable occurrences and inward reflections and intuitions that somehow protected, sustained, and nurtured me. Those occurrences and reflections had to be unearthed in order to discover and understand the deeper influencing part of me that I did not and could not consciously perceive.
Though masked by surface thoughts, feelings, behavior and beliefs, the innermost spirit, in all the negative and positive ways in which it manifested itself, was constantly stirring, pointing, and molding. More than race, my discovery and understanding of that hidden reality, at least in part, gave meaning to my misfortunes, mistakes, failures, and successes in life.
I recount moments of inner vision and revelation, but my search for individuation and the wholeness of me did not yield a daybreak, sunlit path to self-realization. For me, the voyage continues into dark, unseeing nights. I leave it to readers, hopefully younger generations of African Americans, to decide whether or not my journey, albeit incomplete, imparts any knowledge or truth that gives meaning to their own lives, despite the race, ancestry, and history, or circumstances and human conditions, that outwardly define their self-worth and potential.