The Color of My Heart

By Judith A. McGee

Forty six years hadnt wiped away the memories of 1955 and 1956. I still was fearful someone from the past would harm me. Time stood still and I pictured the people exactly as they were then. As I looked around things were even more dismal now than they were fifty years ago.
As we drove past the High School my mind drifted back to the morning I was summoned to the Principals office and I could hear his voice and feel the viciousness that spewed from his mouth We dont want your kind here, and if your Momma and your Daddy will agree well be glad to send you to reform school at Chilacothe.And I can guarantee you well lynch that nigger if he shows up at the Homecoming next week!
I was scared to death. I had to warn Andy. That night I found out his parents had whisked him out of town. What was I going to do?
The bus ride to Denver seemed endless. This would be the farthest I had ever been from home and I had NEVER been this far by myself. My life as I had known it was over. Why had my parents kept the real ugly truth hidden from me? Could I, a fifteen year old girl, survive the hatred in America that I was just learning about. Thank God I would be safe with Andy. We could conquer racism with love, couldnt we?
Although the U.S. Supreme Court decision to legalize Interracial Marriages in Amercia with the Loving v. Virginia case was establisted in 1967, Andy and I were the first Black/White Interracial Couple to legally be married in Colorado ten years earlier in 1957.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jan 30, 2006
• ISBN: 9781467064248

Judith A. McGee

Judi and her husband Mack reside in Henderson, NV.   She retired two years ago and is enjoying the freedom of doing what she wants, when she wants.  She loves to travel and spend time with her family and friends and has recently started volunteering her time to educate women on the many symptoms and dangers of heart disease.  She is also the Nevada Director of  ”A Place for Us National” and continues to be an activist for issues pertaining to Interracial and Multiracial families.  She is an active member of Green Valley Baptist Church, Pastor: Rob Boyd.   She served as A Notary Public for the State of California for several years; was a Licensed Insurance Agent, member of the National Business Women’s Association and Lion’s Club and Northern California Director of A Place for Us National from 1988 to 1997. .

Book preview

© 2006 Judith A. McGee. All Rights Reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 01/23/06

ISBN: 1-4208-8159-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4670-6424-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2005908059

Printed in the United States of America

Bloomington, Indiana

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Book Design Creation by Judith A. McGee

Cover designed by Ola Adeniji

All pictures and articles in this book are the property of Judith A. McGee

Contents

THE RETURN TO MY BEGINNING

CHECKING OUT OUR OLD HOUSES

SPECIAL CHRISTMASES

DULLSVILLE

THOSE FIRST YEARS

MOMMA

DADDY

GROWING UP WITH OUR GROWING FAMILY

SKELETONS IN THE CLOSET

DADDY’S FAMILY

TERRIBLE INFLUENCES

DANCE FEVER

THE BIG DAY

MY FIRST DATE

MERLE

HIGH SCHOOL

THE DAY MY WORLD FELL APART

THE ANTI MISCEGENATION LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

THE LETTER

THE SET UP

SONNY

(HOBART, II)

SUSAN

CHERYL RENEE

TANYA

PATRICIA

HOBART, III

(RASHEED JEROME)

MY SON

MY SIXTH KID

CAPTAIN

ALONE AND LONELY

TRIP TO TULSA

THE SIXTIES

ELLEN

FLOYD

ELLIE

THE MAN ON THE BIKE

MACK

WEDDING BELLS

MACK’S FAMILY

RACISM HITS AT WORK

A BIG SURPRISE

SURPRISE #2

SEEMINGLY IMPOSSIBLE

JAN AND PAUL

CINDY AND MARVIN

STEVE AND RUTH

GOOD MORNING AMERICA SUNDAY SHOW

THE CALL

DAD’S FINAL CHAPTER

I AM A LIVING TESTIMONY

MY GRANDCHILDREN

LIFE IN SALINAS

NOW

WHEN THE TIME COMES

REFLECTIONS

BEYOND THE HORIZON

NOTABLE INTERRACIAL MARRIAGES IN THE BIBLE

SOME FAVORITE SCRIPTURES THAT COMFORT ME

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

This book is dedicated to my devoted husband Mack, who has stood with me for the past 23 years, and for living his own words….."We are not in this marriage for anyone else, we are in it for each other."

The book is also dedicated to my four loving children; Susan, Tanya, Patricia, and Rasheed. My eleven wonderful grandchildren; Manuel, Jr., Tramaine, Troy, Ebony, Hasani, Porscha, Jason, Charles, II, Amber, Jeremy, and Jay. My gorgeous great grandchildren: Joseph, Jacob, Destiny, Laurie, Elena, Charles, III, Jaelyn, Jordyn, and Mya, and for all the future generations to come.

To my daughter Cheryl Renee. No matter what happened, I love you. You really had the best but it is up to you to follow your heart and your beliefs.

To my Momma…

I will forever love you and I miss you so much.

A very special thank you to Steve and Ruth White. Who through their love, friendship, and insistence convinced me to tell the world of the hardships I endured in hopes of helping to create a better world for interracial couples and their children, and who constantly promote a color-blind society and racial harmony for all.

Sadly there are people in this world who say they have never had a friend, a real friend. I have been exceptionally blessed with many true, sincere, and loving friends and I would be remiss if I did not include them. They have been a part of my life for over twenty years, and I truly believe they have been vessels of God to confirm His existence on days that I faltered in my faith. Thank you for being you…….

Phyllis Bittiker       Paul Collins (deceased)

Eleanor Brownlow (deceased)       Janis Collins

Ellen Stone (deceased)       Lacy Jones

Anthony Vann       Cleo Vann

I would also like to thank Calvin Demmon, Staff writer of the MONTEREY HERALD newspaper, who wrote such wonderful articles about me and my family and the effort I put forth on the Multiracial Category Initiative. Another thanks to Dana King for the hard work she did on the Good Morning America segment that featured my entire family; and the camera crew who were so nice and patient with everyone. Thanks to my late Daddy for his valuable contributions to my book. Thanks to my brothers: Bob, Greg, and Larry Bittick and their families for their understanding, love, warmth, and wonderful visits. Thanks to Cindy and Marvin Denton for being there when I needed you, my good neighbor Phyllis DeVaull for letting me ‘vent’ and being close at hand when I needed her. Vera Porter I deeply appreciate your friendship and am thankful God brought us together for a season. Thank you to all my church friends in Salinas, to all of my coworkers in Salinas and Henderson who really encouraged me to write my story. To my cousins Steve, and Janie and their spouses Sharon and Don for their gracious hospitality, my Pastor Rob Boyd for his prayers and for his confidence in me. Alice, and Dolores (my crazy cousin in law and sister in law) you make me laugh and bring me out of my funk. To Mary Lou Winge, my dear friend of many years I thank you for your inspiration and love. To my daughter Tanya whose expertise was invaluable in proof-reading my manuscript and who gave unlimited constructive criticism of which I will always be indebted. To my devoted son, Rasheed for all his hard work in preparing, scanning and captioning the items for my Photo Gallery. A big thanks to Andy for telling my children and grand children our story and confirming the things we went through together and after our lives as man and wife came to a close. Thanks to Jackie Browdy, Mary Gustus, Cheryl Norwood and her late mother, Carrie, Janice and Andre Shields, Yvonne Meeks-Lovelace, Elder Steve and Monique Lattimore for your encouragement and prayers during some very trying times. To Manuel, Sr. for never failing to love me in spite of myself; Joe Brownlow, Rev. Victor and Linda Berry, The Dawsons, and Trish Ernest (I’ll always love you as my own daughter).

mom_me.jpg

THE RETURN TO MY BEGINNING

Forty-six years had passed before I returned to the town where I spent the first 15 years of my life.

A revelation overwhelmed me that this place…this town….still possessed the gloominess it had when I was a child. People speak of their hometown in a loving way. Streets lined with shade trees, nice homes, churches, and schools. A sense of belonging. To me, only a portion of that existed in Joplin then, and I saw none of it this day. As I rode down the main drag with friends it was discouraging to see businesses boarded up with no sign of life. Like so many small towns in the United States, businesses had moved to the outskirts of town to the strip malls or shopping centers trying to survive. For a few minutes my memory drifted back to the Joplin Music Store, to Christmans and Newmans Department Stores, to the Orpheum Theater, to Zales Jewelers, the drug store where we bought Cherry or Vanilla cokes, the real ones, not like the canned ones of today. We drove past the old Joplin Senior High School where it seemed all hell broke loose for me back in 1955, North Junior High (now called Middle school), West Central Elementary and Lafayette Elementary. The High school was now a vocational school. Lafayette had been repainted (and probably redecorated) to house women and children who have been abused. North Junior High and West Central looked exactly the same as they did back in 1955. The mom and pops store that was like a part of West Central was gone and only the slab of cold concrete remained. I think the population was around thirty thousand back then and appears to be less now.

Several people told me Joplin does have some notoriety in this decade, it has a high incidence of people being arrested for operating Meth labs. Of course that really didn’t surprise me for history will tell you that the James Gang, Bonnie and Clyde and a few other notables spent time in Joplin. I don’t know if my negative feelings towards this town are a result of its history, or whether the general charisma of Joplin itself prevents it from being a nice place to live or just because it’s Dullsville. The house where Bonnie and Clyde had a shootout with the police is still standing, complete with bullet holes.

Joplin was a mining town, and as such, had a lot of dangerous mine shafts and holes within the city limits. It also had lots of chat piles which filled up with murky water that turned green and was home to all kinds of poisonous snakes. Even as kids, there were areas we had to be careful around. Parents were always in fear one of their children could be walking across a field and suddenly disappear because a mine hole had opened and swallowed them whole. When I was born most of the men were miners or serving in the Military. As a matter of fact, my Daddy was a miner. He died at the age of twenty-four of tuberculosis (TB). I was just a baby when he died. Sometime later the mining industry disappeared. I don’t know what people did for a living. It didn’t concern me then because I was taken care of and loved by my Mother and my Grandma Grace.

CHECKING OUT OUR OLD HOUSES

The opportunity arose to go and look at the area and houses I lived in as a child. The littler than small house I remember living in as a child was still there and still looked the same. It was if I was coming for a visit. It apparently had been painted at one time or another but it still looked as I remembered. Unbelievable. Like all people who return to their original birthplace or hometown I wondered why such a ‘big place’ like Joplin was now so small and insignificant. It amazes me how the perception of things changes from childhood to now. The streets that had once looked so big, now are mere sidewalks in my mind. The house looked more like a play house than full sized.

Next on the list we were to see the house where I had lived most of my young life. I knew a lot of changes had been made to it because developers had bought pieces of the lot a little at a time. By Joplin standards it was a beautiful house. It was big with a screened in porch going all across the front. There had been snowball bushes all along the front of the house too. We gave them that name because they had big beautiful clusters of tiny little white flowers that seemed to bloom most of the year. The house was built up pretty high from the street and there was a retaining wall that went around the entire sidewalk. It was a corner house so the lot was pretty big. At the tender age of nine and having always lived in small houses, in my eyes this place was gigantic! From the sidewalk you would have to walk up four steps to the walkway, then to enter the screened in porch you would have to walk up four more steps! All of the rooms were big and there was plenty of room in case our family grew later on. There was a huge basement where Momma would eventually put her wringer washing machine, grandma would put all of her canned goods and homemade pickles, and a table Dad used to snip the tails off of the newborn cocker spaniel puppies our dog Betsy had. There was a big back yard completely fenced with a separate garage that was barely standing. Behind that was the alley, typical for Joplin, where we would ‘cut through ’to get someplace else.

Directly behind our house on the other side of the alley lived Dr. Dickey, a chiropractor. He had a very unique backyard. Surrounding the garage was a green, slimy pond which was filled with lily pads of all sizes. Occasionally you could see a big goldfish plodding its way through the murky water. Little, big, and huge toads were everywhere, sitting on a lily pad basking in the sunlight. The area around the pond consisted of hundreds of petite cactus that had millions of teeny prickly thorns on them. There was a concrete pathway that led from the back door of his home to the garage. Just south of the back door on a concrete slab was a cage approximately five square feet in size. The cage housed two crocodiles! Me, my brother, and a couple of neighborhood kids used to climb up on the roof of the garage and try to jump past the pond and the cactus. One time I jumped just short of the grassy clearing and landed dead center of the cactus! Man! I never had anything hurt as bad as those thousands of little thorns stuck in my hands and my knees! My brother ran home and got Momma, and she painstakingly pulled every one of them out of my stinging hands and knees. I didn’t get into trouble for jumping off the roof. Momma said I learned my lesson the hard way! We used to gather small tree limbs, go over to the Croc Cage and jab those sticks at their mouths. We had no sense and definitely had no perception of the death that could be caused by being eaten alive or swallowed whole by those angry animals. A couple of years later we saw Mrs. Dickey with a brand new purse and matching shoes.

Well, we were nearing Seventh Street now. I recognized a few houses but a lot of them had been boarded up or torn down. We got to Seventh and Harlem and there stood an automotive parts store! The house I loved so much at one time was gone. To me, it was the final chapter of my life in Joplin. All of my relatives had either moved away or died and there was no way we would ever come back.

Sadly, I don’t ever remember us having new or even nice furnishings. Momma never got new furniture although she never complained. I know she was hurt and probably even a little jealous over the fact that Aunt Nell refurnished her house every two years or less if the styles changed, come hell or high water! Our house stood on the corner of Seventh and Harlem. Seventh Street was the main road and had really heavy traffic going to use Route 66. We lost a lot of puppies and had many funerals in those days. They would wiggle through the wire fence, fall off the retaining wall and run into the street and meet eye to eye with a semi truck or some other vehicle..

They were the cutest puppies, though. Some were black like Betsy and every once in a while, one of the litters would produce a light brown, or commonly called ‘blonde’ puppy. Usually she would have four or five puppies in a litter. I think Momma and Daddy sold them when they were weaned. Eventually Betsy got too old to have puppies. I don’t remember being told what happened to her. She was there when I left Joplin.

SPECIAL CHRISTMASES

I really only remember three Christmases when I was a kid. The first was when I was nine years old. I saw Daddy getting gifts from the closet and putting them under the tree. I knew then there was no Santa Claus. A couple of days later I asked Momma to tell me the truth about Santa. She told me there wasn’t really a Santa but not to EVER tell Bobby. She told me she would tell him when he got old enough. Well like any good sister would, I told him when he was five.

My worst Christmas memory was when Momma and Daddy bought me a boy doll that was the size of a two year old. Momma even put some of Bobby’s old clothes on him. That year Aunt Nell, Uncle Clarence, Steve, Janie, and Jim came over for Christmas dinner. My doll was bigger than Jim but he wanted to carry it around. As usual, if I made a fuss over something involving the younger kids I got in trouble. I did not want Jim to play with my doll. Pure and simple. In the struggle to get it away from him, the doll fell forward and hit the floor furnace register. When I picked up the doll the glass eyes were ‘coo-coo’. One eye went back into the dolls head and the other eye came out the front on a spring and just hung there! I started crying and when Momma saw what had happened she got mad at Jim. Aunt Nell got mad at her and Momma said Aunt Nell would have to buy me another doll. Aunt Nell cussed Momma out, and they left. A little later Momma called Aunt Nell to apologize, just so they would come back to our house and eat dinner. When they came back over nothing more was said about my doll. Not that day anyway. I didn’t get a new doll and I never played with my cockeyed doll again!

The last Christmas I remember at home was when I was thirteen. I looked older than my age and was very mature. I had a job at a drive-in and because of that I was able to get a seventy five dollar charge account at the newly opened Zales Jewelry Store in Joplin. I bought me a Sterling silver ID bracelet with my name engraved for free. I also got Momma a service for eight set of dishes. Remember I said Joplin didn’t have any buses. Well I carried those dishes home having to rest every few feet. It must have taken me two hours to walk the thirteen or fourteen blocks from Zales to our house on Harlem Street. Momma loved those dishes and I can still hear her telling people how her daughter not only bought the dishes but walked home carrying them from the store.

One thing I do remember about every Christmas at home was the ugly Christmas trees we always had. I often think, especially during the holidays that Momma must have been given each tree because tall or short it would only have about ten branches on it and they were staggered! It seemed like every year about half the balls would get broken. Either by my little brothers or one of the three dogs we had over the years. I’m not sure whether it was Pug, Betsy, or Duke but it’s more than likely they did it rather than my brothers. Momma used to take a wad of icicles and just throw them in the trees and I remember Aunt Nell used to put them on their trees one by one. It sure makes me chuckle when I think about it now. Momma wasn’t into decorating but she could sure make candy for the holidays! I kept up the candy-making tradition until a couple of years ago. My family wants me to resume making different kinds of Fudge but it is becoming more and more difficult. I would much rather teach them to make it.

DULLSVILLE

I don’t remember Joplin having any county fairs, 4-H activities or anything that resembled fun like you read about in books and magazines which portray small towns. Maybe they did and we just never went to one. I do remember there would be an occasional carnival and there was always Summer Bible School or Bible camp.

However, there was one highlight in my young life. It was the time when Gene Autry came to town and I got to pet his horse Champion. I loved horses and still do.

There’s a story about when I was around four years old my grandma took me to the Five and Ten cent store. She was busy looking at fabric and happened to look up in time to see a lady yelling about some turmoil outside the store.

In those days and in that small town we had a horse-drawn milk wagon. Someone yelled there was a child sitting on the pavement petting the back leg of the horse. Grandma looked around, didn’t see me and ran outside the store. Sure enough there I was sitting in the street petting the hind leg of the horse! No one wanted to move for fear the horse would step on me, or worse yet, kick me in the head! Grandma patiently (and quietly) walked to the side of the horse, grabbed me by my hair and yanked me back towards her before I even had time to feel the pain in my head from her pulling my hair so hard!

Years later when we had gone to Ponca City to see my great aunt and uncle in a rodeo I did get kicked by a foal when I walked behind it and it was spooked! It really hurt a lot so I’m glad it was a young horse and not a full grown one.

THOSE FIRST YEARS

My mother took lots of photographs of me growing up and they reminded me she spent a lot of time with me when she wasn’t working. It was unusual for women to work in those days, unless it was at a defense plant. But my mom had to work to support us. I have pictures of her working at Nabisco Company and some other place where they made leather goods. Momma told me she got fired from Nabisco for giving broken cookies (that had been thrown away by the company) to the local Convent for the orphan children.

There are more photos showing us going to the movies, and some pictures showing me riding in my little pedal car. I think I was one of the few kids who had a pedal car, and I had a scooter, too. There was a store in Joplin which sold these items but they were very expensive. Momma saved her money and grandma added to the amount and they bought both toys for me. Not at the same time, however. In those days most of the metals were being used in the World War II effort and it was almost impossible to get tricycles, skates, and of course, pedal cars and scooters. Copper was rare so instead of pennies we had Mills. They were red and it took 5-10 mills to make a penny. Sugar, heating oil, and gasoline were rationed. I remember standing in line with Momma to get the sugar and heating oil ration slips. We didn’t have or need a car so we never had to stand in the gasoline lines for the slips.

I remember Momma always reading to me and teaching me my ABC’s and how to print my name. After all, I would be starting kindergarten soon and she always wanted me to be ready. My teacher was really surprised when, on the first day of school, I could print my name, count to a hundred, and knew my ABC’s. Funny, I still remember that. It brings to mind the only time I remember my mom being angry with my grandma. She sat a bowl on my head and gave me my first hair cut. My Shirley Temple curls were gone and Momma was so mad she cried. Thank goodness it was the last week of Kindergarten.

Some of my early childhood memories are of my grandma spending a lot of time in our kitchen and I can still smell some of the goodies she made