Daybreak, Nightfall, Life

By J. Moffett Walker

Daybreak, Nightfall, Life is a nonfiction inspirational narrative. It isn’t just a narrative but an African American female’s memoir. Walker lived in Mississippi in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. Moreover, she refused to wallow in her limitations. Rather, she used those limitations for motivation and hard work to accomplish her dreams and goals. Most professional opportunities were off limits to her. One job available was working in homes—cooking, washing, cleaning, and caring for the large landowner’s children. The other option included hoeing and harvesting crops. Neither one of those careers appealed to Walker. Therefore, she completed high school, junior college, and senior college. Free public transportation became available just before she began high school. Walker grabbed that opportunity.

Elementary, high school, and college presented challenges. In elementary, she did not complain about using the secondhand books from the white schools. She realized she needed books to learn certain skills to succeed. Walker accepted her school, without running water or electricity, as a place to assemble, study, and learn academic and social skills.

Daybreak, Nightfall, Life shows how Walker used her limitations and turned them into reasons to work harder. Readers will see how Walker handled each limitation and difficulty faced. If Walker made it in life after living with White Only signs all her childhood, any person regardless of race can do it too. It’s attitude and willingness to work that count. Just try! Anyone can choose to complain and make excuses. Not Walker! She wanted to become an educator. She wanted to become a school counselor. She wanted to become an author.

God created each person uniquely. That uniqueness is enough to motivate one to accomplish his or her dreams/goals. That uniqueness is enough to help one understand what to do to prosper and enjoy life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 9, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796018387

Book preview

Copyright © 2019 by J. Moffett Walker.

ISBN:                Softcover                        978-1-7960-1828-8

                          eBook                              978-1-7960-1838-7

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a nonfiction based on the author’s life and research.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 05/06/2019

Xlibris

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CONTENTS

Foreword

Chapter 1 Living in a Danger Zone

Chapter 2 Love Birds

Chapter 3 The Scariest Day of My Life

Chapter 4 Digging & Plowing Up Roots

Chapter 5 Proud Past, Promising Future

Chapter 6 One Mississippi, Two Mississippi

Chapter 7 The Mischievous Me

Chapter 8 Separate-but-Equal Days

Chapter 9 Grieving

Chapter 10 The Holy Place and Spiritual Abuse

Chapter 11 A Second-Class Citizen

Chapter 12 Oglala Sioux Reservation and Me

Chapter 13 Sovereignty Commission’s Report

Chapter 14 Values That Make Me Tick

Chapter 15 Ethnicity: Then and Now

Chapter 16 Motherhood and Career

Chapter 17 The Gray Steel City

Chapter 18 Rewarding Experiences

Chapter 19 Unique Experiences

Chapter 20 A Time to Relax

Chapter 21 Back Home Again

Chapter 22 Unforgettable Times

Acknowledgements

Sources

About the Author

DEDICATION

I dedicate this book to my late parents, Fred Douglas Moffett, Sr. and Matlean Allen Moffett, the ones responsible for my being. They modeled values which shaped me into the person I am today. To my husband, children, and all families, especially those African American couples who raised families in the South during the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, I salute you! I dedicate Daybreak, Nightfall, Life to you.

FOREWORD

Have you witnessed a beautiful daybreak? I have seen gorgeous daybreaks. To me daybreaks are an unbelievable site to see, especially a Mississippi daybreak or sunrise. I saw clouds of darkness, but soon a bright, strong, marvelous light burst through the spacious sky. I remember hearing and seeing loud crowing roosters along with the melodious singing robins, mocking birds and the night-in-gales.

The mornings in the fall, usually October, I relished hearing and seeing flocks of wild geese trying to make it further south. Their togetherness always impressed me. I wondered how could birds be so organized and determined.

Actually, even a Mississippi sunset brought me a delightful natural place as the reddish and yellowish sun went down, allowing darkness to creep into my surroundings.

It’s another little precious girl, the midwife told my mother. I joined children born at the darn of World War 11, but I became another Mississippi second-class citizen, a Colored baby girl.

I like to compare my early childhood life, and later years too, with the sunrise in Mississippi. I thought of it as colorful, enjoyable and interesting. That does not mean I am saying everything was perfect. It certainly was not. Yes, I lived through darkness, the sunsets, with numerous disappointments, racial discrimination, and harsh mistreatments.

As I grew up and began to expand my outlook, it was time for me to begin school. Going to school helped me to learn more about my surrounding. Schooling for me began in 1944 where I sat at tables in a two-teacher wooden structure public school without electric lights, running water, or central heat. I could not catch a yellow school bus to go to school. The students that looked like me walked, two, maybe three miles to school. I was fortunate I rode to school with my parents, the teachers.

Can you believe I enjoyed sitting at tables during my entire elementary school years? We had a table for each grade. My mother taught grades pre-primer through third and my daddy taught fourth through the eighth.

Handle the textbooks with care, Mother used to say.

Your parents do not have the money to pay for books you damage.

I tried to handle my books carefully and enjoy them although they had been passed down from the white schools. The white students did not need them, but I knew I did.

I made myself believe I was privileged being able to read from those second-hand books regardless from whence they came.

I need to tell the world how I faired during elementary, high school, junior and senior college days under the separate-but-equal system.

In this memoir I used the words: Colored, Negro and African American to reflect the time period they were used

Daybreak, Nightfall, Life tells the story about what happened to me, the second-class citizen Colored child as I grew up, graduated from college and began my career in education, retired and returned home.

I want to show the world that daybreak and nightfall became symbolic of my life’s story.

This memoir shows how this Mississippi second-class citizen faired teaching in Mississippi, South Dakota and Indiana. I also will show what it takes to raise a family in an inner city. It shows how I faired studying at a top ten institution, Purdue University and counseling middle school students in the Steel City, Gary, Indiana.

Hopefully, on the other hand, Daybreak, Nightfall, Life will inspire and motivate anyone facing difficulties and let one know nothing remains the same. Besides, it will show how courage, positive attitude, hard work and determination can change one’s destination.

CHAPTER 1

Living in a Danger Zone

The large crowd had just left when a herd of policemen and their hungry dogs stampeded our campus.

We will make those ‘niggers’ stay in their place. One city policeman spoke those words to a fellow officer.

Yes, let the dogs go! That will teach those ‘niggers’ a lesson.

I did not know if I would live or die. I thought if the policemen didn’t kill me, the dogs would maim my body so badly I would wish I were dead. I thought, with a messed up body, what good would I be living?

As I walked alone, across what I had believed a safe campus, on my way from my psychology class to my dormitory room in Sampson House, I saw and heard more than what I had expected. Other students scattered on the campus said they saw and experienced similar trauma.

It was a dazzling gorgeous beautiful Mississippi spring evening with the sunset beginning to take place.

Before all this commotion, I felt free to go and come as I wanted to on my college campus. I admit the Church Mothers at my home church, Little Zion, had warned me before I left for school, Be careful when around policemen. Sometimes white policemen become trigger-happy with Colored folk. I understood that to mean be careful around police officers on the streets when I went down town. Here, I was on my college campus minding my own business. Yet, those gun toting men and hungry dogs seemingly were after me. I was facing a perilous situation.

Let’s talk loudly so they can hear us, one policeman remarked.

I hate trouble makers.

The policemen and their vicious dogs stole my self-confidence. They frightened me, a senior living on Jackson College campus. I was looking forward to graduation within about six weeks.

Growl…Growl I heard from the biggest hungry dog as he leaped into my path. Why me? I wanted to ask the policeman. Then the next dog joined him and began snarling barks that sounded as loud as gun shots. He jumped in my direction with his mouth wide-opened ready to strike. He missed me by a few inches.

We almost got us a nigger gal," one officer said.

All this happened in 1961 a few weeks before I expected to walk across the Jackson Municipal Coliseum stage to claim my Bachelor’s degree. I had been thinking about my mother and my daddy walking across that same stage, the previous year, and receiving that same degree.

I had heard the great Marion Anderson sing "He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands," and other songs on that stage. I had heard E. Frederick Morrow, the first black to serve in an executive position on a United States president’s cabinet, speak there. Morrow served as Administrative Officer of Special Projects under President Dwight Eisenhower.

Until that violent eventful day on my campus, Jackson College seemed like a home away from home. After completing a two-year institution, Utica Junior College, Utica, Mississippi, I knew I had chosen the appropriate senior college.

I could not call my parents. They had no phone. Oh, how I wanted to talk to them!

I had taken a course, The Bible as Literature, from the nationally known Margaret Walker Alexander, author of For My People, a poem, and later Jubilee, a historical neo-slave novel. The late Dr. Walker was writing Jubilee while I was in her class. One beauty of her class was sharing as she developed her plot and characters. She motivated and inspired me to follow my dreams and write. Much later, I began publishing because of her and a late Purdue University instructor, Professor Charles Tinkham who taught me in a graduate level creative writing course.

When I was about ten years old, I began praying asking God to allow me to find someone who would be a good husband and a good father, if we had children. I met Tommy Lewis Walker, my friend, who later became my husband. It all happened coincidentally. My parents knew his aunt, the late Emma McGowan Lathon, who was from Edwards, my home town. She taught in Corinth, Mississippi, Tommy’s home town. She married Tommy’s uncle, the late Floyd Lathon, after she began teaching school in Corinth. Once she came back home to Edwards to visit her elderly mother, the late Elnora McGowan, Daddy and Mother provided Aunt Emma’s transportation to Jackson to catch the bus back to Corinth. While traveling on their way to Jackson, Aunt Emma told my parents that she had two nephews in school at Jackson College, and she wanted them to meet me. Further, she told Tommy and the late Julius Lathon, her nephews, that she wanted them to meet me. I met Tommy, and we began to go to the cafeteria and library together.

1.jpg

Picture of Tommy Lewis Walker, Sr.

Although my name was on the perspective graduating list, I still had to pass the courses I was currently taking that grading