“I was born in Bentonia in 1956. My dad was a sharecropper until my parents moved to Yazoo City, then my mother worked for white families like in the movie, The Help. We lived on Brickyard Hill. It’s an economically deprived area, but I called it the metropolis and didn’t know we were poor. My mama told me I was a princess and that I could do anything. I believed her.

There was no public transportation in Yazoo. The White families picked up the women in the mornings and took them home after work, but ‘the help’ had to sit in the back seat on the passenger side. Mama refused to ride in the back seat for anyone and drove herself.

During the 1968-69 school year, I was 11 years old, and Mama registered me and the other children in our family in the White school under the ‘freedom of choice’ rules at a time when only a few Black children attended the all-White schools. Mississippi schools were slow to integrate, and integration hadn’t happened in Yazoo. My parents were separated, and my dad lived somewhere else. But on the first day of school, he stood in the front yard and said, ‘You’re going to get killed trying to take her over there with those White folks’.

That was my last memory of my father, and I wondered why he would let mama get killed. He died shortly after my 12th birthday.

Changing schools was a tough adjustment. I had a social studies assignment to write about a historical person, so I wrote about Mama. The teacher put a big ‘F’ on my paper and circled it. The next day, Mama asked the teacher how I could pull up my grade. The tracher told her to take me to the library and find a real historical person. We went to the main library because the library for Blacks didn’t have adequate books. As soon as we entered the library, Mama was arrested for disturbing the peace. She was placed in the police car but told me to stay on the library steps until she returned. Mama was booked as a criminal but came back unharmed.

Mama didn’t raise me in racism. The family she worked for had a girl my age. We were friends but got into a fight about a doll and crackerjacks. She called me a ’nigger’ and I called her ‘peckerwood,’ and we started wrestling. Mama pricked our fingers with a pin and put our blood together, showing it’s the same. It’s a wonder Mama didn’t get fired, but she worked for a good family. They punished their daughter for calling me names, but they later fired Mama after she signed me up for the White school. The woman didn’t want to, but she was pressured to do it.

I was a confused child going to this new school where I wasn’t wanted. My math teacher called me the n-word, because she didn’t say negro right. I told her she shouldn’t be a teacher if she couldn’t pronounce words correctly. The school administrators called my mama, and she came up to the school and gave me more than the three licks. She tore me up.

I was 24 years old and about to get married when I told Mama she was wrong for how hard she was on me that day. She said, ‘I didn’t get you for what the teacher did to you. I got you for what you did to the teacher. I told you never to disrespect or sass a teacher, but you did it anyway.’

I am 66 and remember every detail of that day. I never liked math after that.

My English teacher was the opposite.  I won the school spelling bee and should have gone to the state competition in Jackson, but the school administrators refused to send me and picked the first runner-up. My teacher said, ‘If she can’t go, I’m not taking a student who didn’t win.’ That teacher didn’t just stand up for me, she stood up for what was right.

I remember every detail of that day, too, and I later chose to major in English in college.

On a dare, I stole an Eskimo Pie and put it in my notebook. I was caught by the owner and begged him to call the police instead of Mama. She had to leave work to get me and got so tired of whooping me up the street that she stopped to rest. She made me volunteer after school and on Saturdays at the Head Start Center. I cleaned and washed floors, but I discovered I liked volunteering and kept doing it after my punishment ended. I was later hired to work under the supervision of a strict Catholic nun as the community partnership coordinator at that same local Head Start Program.

I grew up different because my mama was different. Mama’s motto was ‘fight fair, forgive fast, and love a lot’. She taught me to share all that I have, write thank you notes, and say I am sorry. She stood up for me when I was right and got on me when I was wrong.

My favorite poem is ‘Desiderata’ because it is all of the lessons Mama taught me.

‘Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.’

Mama died 22 years ago, but I still live how she taught me: share everything I have to lift others up. I gave my life to helping kids and doing good for my hometown.”

Gloria, Part One

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Gloria’s story is a part of a series about the Weavers—people stitching our communities together, solving problems, and showing how to care for our neighbors. Send a message to Our Southern Souls to suggest a Weaver from your community to be featured on Souls.