You Child: A Black Family's Journey as Seen Through the Prism of the Last Surviving Child

By Betty Bolden Hooper MBA

As “You Child” my name was rarely heard above the din of 14 siblings in a black family, who managed to prosper in the Jim Crow South and in the Midwest. We were disadvantaged but we were not impoverished! Our story cover 120 years and is filled with humor, pathos and wisdom. We were diverse and resilient. Unbreakable bonds unraveled and were retied. Laugher, insight and encouragement can be appreciated by not only our descendants but also people of color as well as white readers.
My parents were early entrepreneurs in the south. My dad redefined racial identity. My mother was part Choctaw Indian and a civil rights activist in the Midwest. We were Catholic. We weathered riots. One passed for white. Another organized a nationally-affiliated group. We excelled in the military. One was severely injured in Vietnam. We held once-restricted corporate positions. We carried on a life-long love affair with automobiles. Our themes and lessons are universal. We view the life of each sibling and the ways they moved through the world—in essay form, in birth order. There is overlap, of course; as I am the narrator and stories and lessons are told from my (You-Child) perspective. The lessons are collected and viewed through “You Child-Prisms”.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Apr 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9798765226421

Betty Bolden Hooper MBA

The author is the last of 14 siblings of a prosperous black family who thrived in the Jim Crow South and the Midwest. She is a first-time author with a background in corporate America. Her story spans 120 years. She is an intriguing storyteller who engages her audience with truth, honesty and humor.

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Copyright © 2022 Betty Bolden Hooper MBA.

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The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 979-8-7652-2641-4 (sc)

ISBN: 979-8-7652-2643-8 (hc)

ISBN: 979-8-7652-2642-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022905285

Balboa Press rev. date: 04/19/2022

CONTENTS

PREFACE

Chapter 1 HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

Chapter 2 THE PATRIARCH

Chapter 3 THE MATRIARCH

Chapter 4 THE MOTHER OF HUNDREDS

Chapter 5 THE MORTICIAN, PLUS ONE

Chapter 6 THE MILITARY MAN

Chapter 7 THE DAUGHTER RULER

Chapter 8 THE CHARMER

Chapter 9 THE HOSTESS

Chapter 10 THE EARLY HEARTACHE

Chapter 11 THE CHAMELEON

Chapter 12 THE BOSS LADY

Chapter 13 THE LIFE UNREALIZED

Chapter 14 A MOTHER BY ANY NAME

Chapter 15 THE GENTLE SOUL

Chapter 16 YOU-CHILD

Chapter 17 YOU-CHILD PRISMS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

AUTHOR NOTES

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

THE POET

REFERENCES

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DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to my son, Earl Leroy Hooper, Jr. (affectionately known to all as Lee). Thank you for taking a grieving mother into your home and patiently, and with quick-witted humor, helping her breathe again. I know I embarrass you by saying this but, you are my greatest blessing.

In loving memory of my warrior mother and Mother of Hundreds, Martha Edwards Bolden (April 22, 1904 –July 25, 1995) If I inherited a tenth of the strength and grace that you embodied, I am immensely grateful.

In loving memory of my beloved daughter, my best friend, my ride-or-die person and family poet, Deirdre Michelle Hooper Ferguson (September 16, 1964 –December 18, 2014). Deirdre, you were the truest friend anyone could have and the person whom I aspired to be when I grew up.

PREFACE

Who are you? Do you have a name? Do you have a name that you recognize is meant to summon you and you alone? For the largest part of my childhood, the name given to me at birth was never used. Did it make one feel unwelcome? Probably. Did it make one feel undesirable? Sometimes. When you are the youngest in a family of fourteen siblings (yikes!), you learn early to be seen and not heard. You vacillate between wanting attention and being happy to be ignored. Did one feel like a surplus? Most of the time. Your presence was not a priority. Over time, being that invisible person becomes okay.

Your name gets lost in the shuffle. Trying to identify which child is needing something, misbehaving, or generally getting on your nerves, is a chore, not to mention impossible. I was always on the end of a long list, e.g., Odessa, Mary, Ceola, Margaret…. You-Child. I was so often called You-Child that I did not expect to hear my name. The older ones began to tease early on. It was a running joke for family to refer to me as You-Child. As an adult, I embraced it! You-Child was the exceptional one. You-Child was the stylish one. You-Child was the smart one--the one most educated. You-Child was the one everyone entreated for a favor, because You-Child was the responsible one. You-Child was the one always late. I took to signing birthday cards and Christmas cards as You-Child. I am not sure my mother appreciated the joke, but she laughed anyway!

I am writing this book from a You-Child point of view. I was the one ignored but often privy to all the family’s secret dynamics. I was at the center of it all but also quietly on the edges, waiting to be acknowledged or my name to be called. I probably heard and saw more that I should have. I probably understood even less. It is only through the Prism of hindsight and life experiences that I can perceive the goings-on and understand more.

I try to tell my family’s stories without judgement and with as much candor as is permissible. I love them all in varying degrees. I cannot say that there is no bias in my recollections. Some I knew better than others. You can imagine, with such an age span between the older ones and the youngest one (me), there is little possibility for equal closeness. I have run across people in four-person families who are not only not close but also not on speaking terms! We made sustained efforts to bridge the gaps of age and geography. We were joined together by parents, circumstances and love. We made the best of it.

If you’re looking for skeletons to fall out of the closet, you’re going to be disappointed. There is no rattling or tattling going on in this book. (The outlandish parts are well known in the family. I just have the audacity to share them with the younger members and the world.) The popularity of ancestral look-ups are great but for black people there is little to find.

This is the story of a black family who managed to navigate their journey with grit, love and humor. Our story is unique and it is, in many ways, also conventional. It is a story of overcoming obstacles but not your typical urban story. We never lived in public housing nor were we ever on Welfare or Relief (as it was once called). I do not disparage anyone who trod this path in their journey; however, it is not the setting of our story. We were disadvantaged but we were not impoverished.

Our parents were pioneers in the broadest sense of the word. They moved onward while guiding 14 human beings through life. They prospered in the Jim Crow south and managed to also succeed in the Midwest. They nurtured their children while creating a life of their own. They survived in a harsh world and they thrived. They made no excuses. They hustled while obtaining their goals. We inherited our survival skills from them. Thriving was expected.

This book was not meant to be a memoir. It is more a biography or chronicle. It is a narrative about each family member and their relationships within the family. As I recall my parents and each of my siblings, I recognize that each of us had different experiences and different traits. This is what made our family exceptional. Our distinctiveness was honed by our lives, loves, joys and disappointments. Perhaps I protest too much. As I review our stories, I have come to the conclusion that, whether this book is a chronicle or a biography, it is not mine alone. My story is only a portion of the fabric that is my family’s historical tapestry. It is a patchwork quilt. I am a section of the quilt. The entire quilt is a beautiful creation that is only complete when all the sections are woven together.

I have presented our stories in birth order and in essay form. This may cause a feeling of disjointed leaps of thought or puzzled reflections that may not occur had I presented our story in chronological order. Bear with me. It is worth finding out how each story plays out according to the path each sibling chose. There is some overlap, of course. I can only tell the stories from my perspective and my vantage point. By no means am I the star in anyone else’s story. I am only an observer.

We have taken pride in our careers. We have advanced in the military. We have ruled over a chapter of a major organization. We have crafted charm into an artform. We have opened our homes and hosted family and friends. We have passed for white seeking liberation. We have led by coercion and persuasion. We have mothered many children that were not our own. We were severely injured in the Vietnam War. We held advance degrees and once-restricted corporate positions. We carried on a life-long love affair with automobiles. We have led interesting lives. We have tried to gently walk on this earth.

This book is a book for any and everyone. It is not written only for the descendants. There are universal themes that are evident in all families. There are melodies to be heard by bi-racial persons who can relate to a complex world that questions their authenticity. There is humor as we watch family dramas. There are gems to be found by reading about the lives of quirky people who managed to make it. There are insights to be gotten from meeting damaged people who hurt because they are hurt. There are signs of hope when weak people find strength. There is encouragement to be gathered from seeing imperfect people attain their goals. We discover that if we keep putting one foot in front of the other, the hill can be climbed. The biggest lesson learned is not to give up.

Other lessons to be gleaned from this book are:

• There are addictive patterns in families that should be acknowledged but never followed.

• Self-love is a not only important but essential. The absence of it is soul-destroying.

• It is more important to be your own person rather than the person others expect you to be.

• Haters can be allowed to hate but they cannot be allowed to hold you back from your dreams.

• Unresolved self-worth issues are often the source of manipulative behavior.

• We can learn from the mistakes of others without echoing the refrain.

• Goals can be reached by hard work, hustle and grace.

• A strong union can be forged when two people recognize each other’s strengths and are willing to allow each to excel in his/her chosen arena.

• Marriage is a church-sanctioned, society-honored and praise-worthy tradition. However, it is not for everyone.

• You cannot make everybody happy. The key is to work on your own happiness and bring others along with you, if possible.

• Help can come from the unusual places. We cannot get caught up in the who/what/why/where. The trick is not to reject it when it is offered.

This book could easily be one about racism. Racism was and is the Elephant in the room that pervades the lives of the nation. It is an Elephant that hovers over all interaction between the citizenry, government and industry. I could blame the Elephant for some of the failings in my life and probably be justified in railing against a system that has made success more difficult for black people and women. To completely do so does not leave any room to accept accountability for poor decision making or responsibility for errors in judgment. To give the Elephant a pass is beyond blind and naïve. Optimistically, we can only move forward in hopes of achieving progress--to the day that race will play a smaller role in the construction of our lives. Until that time, we can only dance with the devil and maybe teach him a few new steps. Unfortunately, the Elephant is a huge, ungainly dance partner!

I am not a psychologist. I am not qualified to analyze my family’s journey. What I do have, in hindsight, is the ability to recognize the life lessons that I garnered from my family and realize how those recollections affected my life. I refer to those recollections and insights as YOU-CHILD PRISMS. They are sometimes foggy yet sometimes they are spot on!

A prism is an optical glass which separates white light into a spectrum of color. Used figuratively, it is a clarification or distortion afforded by a particular viewpoint. This definition seemed relevant as I was the youngest member of the family and the repository of their struggles, lessons and achievements. I am able to present insights and lessons garnered from my family and also extrapolate those lessons to the larger world.

Without question, we have been impacted by all the ancestors that went before. Our ancestors were slaves. They were Choctaw Indian. They were white. They were farmers. They were city dwellers. They were religious. They were secular. We were shaped by the nuclear family of sixteen people into which we were born. We were as diverse as we were similar. We were flawed and we were awesome! Our lessons are weighty. Our themes are universal.

Our roots were planted over 120 years ago. We struggled. We stumbled. We persevered. In other words, by the grace of God, we not only survived but also thrived.

As a senior, senior citizen and the last surviving member of the original core family, I am delighted to tell our story. I am blessed to still be here and able to do so. Over the years I have witnessed the unravelling and retying of many knots. I have tried to stick slavishly to the truth, wherever it led. Any discrepancies of ages or dates is strictly the fault of the imperfect memory of an elder person. (HEAVEN FORBID!) I beg your forgiveness.

ONE

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

At the beginning of the 20th century, America was an agricultural society. New machines for use in farming were invented in this period, but horses, oxen and people still provided most of the power that operated the machinery. While farmers now produced cash crops (crops grown for sale), they were still remarkably self-sufficient, often making or trading for nearly everything required by their own families. (Library of Congress, Rise of Industrial America)

This was the world into which Gresson and Martha Bolden were born. The South was farmland and most blacks were tillers of the soil. Slavery had ended in 1863. The self-sufficiency of the black farm was more about necessity and freedom from want. It was a hard life yet there were dreams of better days and different occupations. It was a time of daydreaming while working under the blistering sun.

War broke out in Europe in the summer of 1914. Thousands of U. S men were drafted into the military and women took jobs producing supplies needed in the War effort. The postwar years saw a wave of civil rights activism for equal rights for African Americans, and the passage of an amendment securing women’s right to vote. (Library of Congress, Progressive Era to New Era, 1900-1920)

The changes in the larger country had little effect on the young people toiling on the farms of America. The good fortune experienced in the cities did not trickle down to people with little means and fewer prospects. Black farmers were stuck in a time-warp and found themselves praying for change and deliverance. Leaving the farms was the only avenue open to escape poverty and participate in the promise of the larger country.

The widespread prosperity of the 1920s ended abruptly with the stock market crash in October 1929. The problems of the Great Depression affected virtually every group of Americans. No group was harder hit than African Americans. (Library of Congress, Race Relations in the 30’s and 40’s)

The Great Depression had ended in the mid 1930’s, but it had taken a toll on white and black families. White families blamed some of their fallen circumstances on the black people whose presence reminded them of a by-gone era and a need to house and feed a horde of unskilled labor. Those black families who could did not hesitate in their journey from their rural homes to urban areas in the north. These families were the first waves and the true beginning of migration, as approximately six million African Americans left the south for the urban Northeast, Midwest and West.

Those who did not join the first wave continued to struggle in the rural south. The Jim Crow south was a hostile, barren landscape for black people. (Racism was rampant but let’s not dwell on that Elephant in this story!) If they were still living on farms, black people generally knew a hard-scrabble (often sharecropper’s) life. They worked back-breaking long hours and were barely able to put food on the table. They rarely had adequate tools to work a farm. They planted what they could and ate what they planted. The birth of children was looked on as presenting another mouth to feed rather than a wondrous life event. Those who could supplemented their income by picking cotton on neighboring land. They were paid—but just barely. Leaving the farm presented a road to change but not necessarily a road to a better life. (I was given this description by my mother. Perhaps others have a less harsh memory of the rural south at the beginning of the 20th century. These were the conditions she remembered and the conditions from which she fled.)

Black people owned very little in turn-of-the-20th century Jim Crow South. They inhabited space at the largess of their white neighbors. They rarely owned stores; they simply worked or shopped in them. They rarely owned homes; they were simply inhabitants. They rarely owned businesses; they were simply stewards. They were not priests in Catholic churches; they were parishioners. They were ministers in black churches but found their lot not much better than that of their flock. Black people had little power. They were simply allotted power as was deemed tolerable by white people. Any real vestige of power was considered a threat and either mildly abided or eradicated.

The lives of most southern black families revolved around their church. The ministers shepherded a flock of tired, hard-working people praying for a better life. The church was the refuge for the devout, elderly, hungry children, abused wives and repentant sinners. It offered hope. It offered solace. It offered redemption. The church was also the site for job postings, help needed and charity disbursement. Ministers were pillars of the black community and more than the person conducting weddings and presiding over funerals and christenings. Their counsel was sought for all aspects of life in the community. They knew who had and who had not. Their job was to shuffle the resources of the community to even out the pain. They were a welcome Sunday dinner guest and equally welcome at the Saturday night social gatherings. The church was central and essential.

Once people moved to the larger cities and towns, they lost the moorings provided by the rural church. Individualism was a hard row to hoe without the church members to lean on. Most black people sequestered into ghettos and poor areas, seeking kindred souls. There were churches available in the cities and towns, but there were more people needing the services of the church. Ministers were no longer on first-name basis with all of their flock. They were more familiar with the haves than they were with the have-nots. Besides, there were too many have-nots waiting for the handouts the church was able to provide. The hope usually found in the church was displaced with disillusion and despair.

Jobs were few in the city and consisted of more hard labor. Blacks were considered unworthy of trust and were not given jobs befitting their intelligence or aptitude. A number of black people developed skills that were in demand by whites as well as blacks. These skills were mostly those of service. Black men became post diggers, day-laborers, deliverymen, garbagemen, street sweepers and stock boys. Black women became maids, housekeepers, nannies and cooks.

In the cities and small towns there was a decent living to be made by anyone willing to toil and hustle. Mouths were fed, rent was paid and there was money left over for the juke joints that proliferated across the South. To those juke joints came Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Lead Belly, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Blind Lemon Jefferson, and more. These artists traveled what was called the Chitlin Circuit, playing in halls, barns and anywhere folks were looking for a good time. They sang a form of Delta Blues to which their audiences could relate. It was a better life than living in the country but still a hard life for a young ambitious man.

Horses were being replaced by automobiles and blacksmiths gave way to auto mechanics. In the hierarchy of laborers, the auto mechanic was well regarded. Before the age of computers, a good auto mechanic could listen to the roar (or purr) of an engine and tell you what it needed. Everyone needed a mechanic to tune a newer car or resuscitate an old one! Mechanics did not work in dealerships but in backyard shops or on the side of the road. Shade-tree mechanics were the names given to these creative workers. They could be found plying their trade under the aforementioned shade of a tree. Their services were always needed by somebody and competition was keen.

Gresson Lamarr Bolden, a mechanic from New Orleans, Louisiana, married Martha Potis Edwards on a date between 1929 and 1931. I am vague about the date because 1) I was not there and 2) no one ever said for sure. I read a newspaper article about my mom where the date was 1931. The date was given by one of my sisters so I am not sure of its accuracy. My dates are extrapolated from the births of my siblings and the WAG factor. Throughout this book I’ll be using many Wild A** Guesses (WAGS) and assumptions about dates, so bear with me. Things that happened before my time HAPPENED BEFORE MY TIME! So, if you have to have a start date, this is the best I can do.

At the time of their marriage, they had five children between them. Gresson was already the father of two children, Gresson Jr. and Mary. Martha, a widow, had three children, Leroy, Odessa and John. They began their combined family in Mobile, Alabama. Without sounding like an obituary (well maybe it does), from this union they had nine children, Mary Belle, Edwin, Ernest, Ceola, an un-named stillborn child, twins Margiree and Margaret, Edward and Betty (hereinafter known as You-Child). The family remained in Mobile, Alabama until such time they were a part of the second wave of the great migration north.

Gresson and Martha carved out a life in Mobile. To say that they were doing well would be an imprecise conclusion. It depended on who else was in the comparison pool. White communities were flourishing in post-World War Two south. Soldiers were returning from war and taking jobs previously relegated to blacks. Black communities were getting by. The Boldens were a part of a burgeoning, ‘down the Bay’, community of black people and considered comfortable by some. Bro Bolden had his own automobile garage behind the house. The garage consisted of a three-sided structure that provided shade and security. He and his customers no longer relied on the domain of the shade-tree mechanics. Black and white people came to the garage rather than constantly calling him out for work. Bro Bolden loved automobiles and passed on that love to all his children! Like a horse whisperer, he could listen to an engine and detect automobile problems and correct them to the satisfaction of owners and onlookers alike. He was not only good at it but did so with friendship and good humor.

Miss Martha had a beauty shop attached to the home which saw a steady flow of women seeking her services. Her many female customers enabled her to keep abreast of what was going on in the community. The house was large enough that she could work at home but still be available to her children. She employed an ageing housekeeper to help manage the children while she worked. There was always a demand for good mechanics and beauticians. They both worked long hours in their own businesses but never seemed to be