What the Crow Didn't See

By Daniel Watson

Randall Riley, a young black American, grew up in the forties and fifties in Cisco, Texas, where Jim Crow Laws were enforced—even celebrated—and separate-but-equal did not exist. He is determined not to be a victim of the Crow, as the racist laws and those who enforced them were called by the Blacks. He gives a firsthand account of the malevolent segregation in the Colored High School, as it was named. He knew segregation had set him up for failure and vowed not to let that happen. Throughout his lifetime, he kept that vow and never allowed segregation to psychologically destroy him. On the contrary, the Crow motivated Randall to overcome his roots and achieve success. He excels in school, despite substandard conditions, attends college on a full scholarship, and becomes the first Black student to be accepted into, and graduate from, medical school. While in high school, he meets and falls in love with Claudine Hall, his future wife, a young white woman who taught at the white high school. He wins the respect of many people, and after years of hard work, Randall is a world-renowned cardiologist.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9781638145400

Book preview

Chapter 1

September 1, 1944, on his first day of school, Randall Riley was escorted from the playground to the principal’s office.

Randall and his best friends, Betty Ward and Billy Stafford, were playing in the sand during recess. They were throwing sand up into the air and watching the wind blow it away. Some of the sand landed in the hair of Miss Kellie Jones and Miss Portia Lee, who were talking under a sycamore tree while watching the kids. They had spent hours the day before at the beauty salon getting ready for the first day of school. When the sand rained down on them, they were furious. They promptly took Randall and his friends to Principal Edwards’s office. He was sitting at his desk, which was at the back of a long, narrow room. He rose when Miss Jones and Miss Lee entered. He told Randall, Betty, and Billy to sit on the bench and wait; Randall sat nearest the principal’s desk. Principal Edwards walked the teachers out of the room to get more information. When he returned, he took a long leather strap from the coat hanger behind his desk and folded it into two halves. He sat on the front edge of the desk. You kids are in big trouble! Randall looked at his friends; their heads were bowed, and they were crying. Randall looked directly at the principal. His mother had told him to always look an adult in the eye. He watched as Principal Edwards began to rhythmically hit the palm of his left hand with the belt at the fold. Randall realized what was going to happen. It would be his first whipping. His mother once had given him a stern verbal warning. His stepfather hadn’t even done that.

Now, he was to be whipped by a stranger. He looked at the strap and wondered how much it would hurt. No matter what, he vowed not to cry. He remembered playing the game of switch with Betty. They would break a long twig off a tree and take turns hitting each other on the back of their legs. The one being hit couldn’t move any part of their body. Randall learned, if he timed Betty’s swing, just as it was about to hit the back of his legs, he would flex his hips slightly which enabled him to move forward with the blow, reducing the sting. The first one to move lost the game.

Principal Edwards got up from his desk and told the kids to stand and turn their backs to him. He gave three lashes to Betty, and she cried. Three to Billy, he cried. Then it was Randall’s turn. When Principal Edwards delivered the first strike, Randall executed his maneuver. He felt a sting on his legs. He quickly realized that an adult man could hit much harder than a little girl. After the third strike, he felt his legs burning. He tried his best not to, but he cried. He hated being whipped, and he hated the person whipping him. He was determined to never again put himself in that position.

Randall was born in the small Texas town of Cisco. He was the only child of Gertrude (Gertie, as was her preference) and Thomas Riley. Thomas was the only child of Sid and Mae Riley, who were descendants of slaves; they had moved to Cisco after emancipation. Thomas was a tall, dark-skinned, angular man; Gertie had her father’s light skin color and her mother’s beauty. They made a striking pair. Gertie and Thomas were married over her father’s objection. He didn’t object because of the blackness of Thomas’s skin, but a grown man who still lived at home would never be good enough for his daughter. Thomas’s mother had died during childbirth. He had been raised by his aunt and his father, a porter on the Southern Pacific Railroad; his route was Texas to California and back. Sid died of TB two weeks before Randall’s first birthday.

Gertie’s father, Stanley Schuster, was white; her mother, Dora, was a Panamanian Negro with light-brown skin. Stanley owned a twenty-thousand-acre cattle ranch twenty-five miles outside of Cisco. He met Dora while traveling to Argentina, where he bought new breeds of cattle to introduce into his herd. He would often spend the night at a hotel in Panama City where Dora was a registration clerk. Stanley was struck by her fine figure, lovely facial features, and waist-length black hair. After a first awkward attempt to ask her out, they began dating every trip Stanley made. Soon he was making unnecessary trips just to see Dora. He asked her to marry him and move to Cisco. Her parents had some concerns. They told her being married to a white man would never be accepted in the segregrated south of the United States. They didn’t want her to be subjected to the cruelty of the Jim Crow Laws. Dora was in love with Stanley, and no objections from her family would deter her.

Stanley had given his future life with Dora a considerable amount of thought. They would be married in a border town by a justice of the peace who had as much authority in South Texas as judges did in other jurisdictions. Dora would be listed as a Black Mexican. During slavery in the US, Mexico had given runaway slaves sanctuary; soon there was a small colony of runaways living just across the border. As men migrated toward the interior, they met and married Mexican women. Their offspring ranged in color from brown to black, their hair from wooly to straight. It was common in this part of Texas for white men to marry Mexican women. They were married without incident.

Stanley and Dora began their lives together. They had a daughter, Dorothy, who died at two from a fever; a year later, Gertrude was born. Ten years later, she was joined by twin boys, Columbus and Paul. Gertie adored her brothers. She became their mother-substitute after Dora died when the twins were eight. Stanley took Dora’s death very hard. He sank into a deep depression. When he wasn’t sleeping, he was drunk. Gertie was thrust into managing the ranch, for which she was ill prepared. She had little help from the lazy foreman. Each day, Dora would make the twins breakfast, and they would go outside to play. Columbus would get into mischief, while Paul would blow into a hollow stick, pretending it was a horn. One day, when he was in town buying whiskey, Stanley bought him a bugle. Paul would go deep into the pasture, away from the unpenned cattle, so he wouldn’t spook them while blowing his bugle. After a few weeks, the sounds became not just bearable, but pleasant. When the twins turned eighteen, they joined the army. Stanley died on the day they enlisted. The ranch was auctioned off to pay debts and taxes. There were no assets left for Gertie and the twins. Before her father’s death, she was in the process of divorcing Thomas. She had grown tired of his drinking and verbal abuse; when the abuse became physical, she left. Gertie lost her husband and her father in the same year.

Randall was a mentally gifted child. He could read and count to one hundred at three; at five, he could write and do all four arithmetic functions. He loved numbers. Gertie was determined that her only child would succeed in school; a good education for Randall was imperative.

Gertie worked as a nurses’ aide at the clinic owned by doctors Harvey and Paul Ring. She was smart and a quick learner. Dr. Harvey taught her how to do the work of a registered nurse. She would assist him during surgeries on colored patients. When Randall was eight, Dr. Harvey let him observe, from behind a window, the removal of a colored child’s tonsils.

Randall’s parents divorced when he was three. Gertie hadn’t dated for nearly a year when she agreed to meet her friend Helen Brown’s brother, Josh. Gertie and Josh soon became a couple. When she determined that Josh would be a good father, they were married. Randall was five.

Josh and Gertie lived in the colored section of Cisco. Cisco, the county seat for Brooks County, had a population of 2,200. Although Cisco, located in the south-central part of the state, was not as notorious as towns in the eastern part of Texas, with respect to abuse of Negroes, Cisco religiously observed Jim Crow; its white citizens enjoyed all the privileges of Crow, as Negroes called it and those who enforced it among themselves. The law gave every white person, even the ones with the least intellect, absolute power over every Negro. Older Negroes would say, Mr. Lincoln gave us freedom; Jim Crow took it away. Negroes limited contact with whites to the minimum.

Gertie told Randall, Always try to avoid trouble out there. Just make it home where you’ll be safe. This was not even close to a guarantee; Randall knew it was just an expression of a mother’s love and concern. He knew whites could invade their home with impunity. He had experienced it firsthand one day when he arrived home from school and saw a car parked in the driveway, both garage doors were open, two white men were standing inside.

Randall asked, What are you doing?

We’re installing a garage door for one of you, people, and we wanted to see how yours was hung.

Did you get my parents’ permission to open the doors?

We don’t need permission, boy. And they left the garage. Randall went into the garage and locked both doors, and then he went into the living room where he had an unobstructed view of the garage. He watched as the men tried the latch and measured the door frame before leaving. When they got home from work, Randall told Josh and Gertie what had happened.

What did you do? asked Josh.

I asked if they had your permission to open the doors. One of them told me they didn’t need permission.

What did you do then? asked Gertie.

I went into the garage and locked both doors, and then I went into the living room and watched them through the blinds.

I don’t want you confronting men like that. Josh and I will take care of it when we get home, said Gertie.

Shouldn’t we notify the police?

No, said Josh. It would be hopeless. The police would just side with them. Randall knew he was right. He didn’t want to force the issue so as not to make Josh feel any more impotent. He knew if two Negro carpenters were insane enough to open a white person’s garage door without permission, they would be arrested and become acquainted with Sheriff Barnes’s whip.

Chapter 2

The residential area in Cisco spread out from the town’s square into every direction. White’s resided closest to town. There were two colored sections: one was north of the town square, past the white section, just before the northern city limits sign. Seven Negro families lived there; each family had a small farm. The main crop was corn. During the season, only the roofs of their homes could be seen from the road. The Negro Methodist Church was also located there. The second colored section was south of the town square and south of the white residential section beyond the railroad tracks. Most Negroes lived in this section, including Randall, Josh, and Gertie. North of the tracks was a buffer zone where some Negroes lived; these were legacy properties. These homes would be passed on to relatives or sold to other Negroes and occasionally to whites. Whites could buy real estate owned by Negroes, but Negroes could only buy real estate from other Negroes, not that the Crow didn’t allow it; whites simply wouldn’t sell their property to Negroes.

Cisco’s municipal facilities extended over every white section of town. Water, sewer, garbage disposal, a swimming pool, and electric and gas lines were connected with no cost to the home. All roads were paved; the paved roads stopped at the railroad tracks. The colored section had no paved roads, no city water (they dug wells for water), no sewage system (all homes had an outhouse except for a few with septic tanks). Electric lines were strung along the main street; each home could access electricity if the homeowner paid to connect to the power grid. The city brought in a large tractor once a year during the summer to grade the road and skim off the weeds to expose the clay and sand.

The only facility that wasn’t separate and unequal was the football stadium. The white high school used it on Friday nights. The colored high school used it on Saturday nights. The downtown business area was a square surrounding the courthouse. To the north was Cannon’s Drugstore, to the south was Getty’s General Store, to the east was Cale’s Theater, and to the west was Gamble’s Department Store. Red brick covered all sides of the courthouse; it was joined by four feet of gray stone from the ground. There were north and south entrances. The grounds were immaculate with manicured green grass from the stone to the street curb; no one was allowed to sit on the grass. This was one of only two places downtown that had a colored restroom with a drinking fountain; Getty’s General Store being the other. The colored restroom in the courthouse was in the basement; it opened into a small corridor. The drinking fountain was in a corner. The corridor led into a larger room that had a latrine and a sink on one wall and two open stalls on the other. Both sexes had to use the same restroom; a Negro man would stand guard when a woman was inside.

Schools were controlled by an all-white school board with a white superintendent for both white and colored schools. White schools were located on the east side of town, north of the tracks in white neighborhoods. Colored schools were located south of the tracks in the colored section. The colored school was a campus of five old buildings, four of which were once schools in the county that had been consolidated. The four buildings were hauled onto the campus and dumped on the ground, leaving the foundation beams as the only support for the building. The janitor, Mr. McAfee, had to continually repair the cracked floors. The original campus building housed the elementary school; the four others housed the principal’s office, junior high, and high school. There was a toilet area for boys and male teachers. It consisted of a long board with four holes cut into it; it was built on an incline at the back end of the property. The toilet had no floor or ceiling; it was surrounded on three sides by tall tin sheets. When it rained, the clay became slick as ice; it was impossible for the three uphill holes to be accessed. A fall was an experience to be avoided. There was a latrine behind the toilets built with a seven-foot tin sheet folded into a U-shape and nailed to wooden posts, which were anchored into the ground. On either side of the latrine, a single seven-foot tin shingle was erected to provide privacy. Fronting the toilet and latrine was a shack that housed athletic equipment. The shack had benches in front that the boys used for changing clothes before and after each home game; there was no facility for the visiting team. The back housed the equipment behind a floor-to-ceiling piece of wire mesh and a locked door. The girls would change in their toilet area before basketball games. The toilets for girls and female teachers were in the back of the property on the opposite side of the boys and the male teachers. It had a wooden roof and floors and a door that locked from the inside. The only water source for the entire school was a fountain with a single spigot located outside on the wall of the elementary school building.

Randall wondered how the teachers and students who stayed on campus during lunch hour washed their hands. There was no soap. The only time he saw anyone using soap was one day when Miss Jones asked him to hold the knob while she washed her hands, using her own soap. Luckily, he went home for lunch every day. Washing his hands before eating was one of Gertie’s commandments.

The white schools had cafeterias. The colored school did not. The white school had a gymnasium. The colored school did not. There were eight schools in the colored high school athletic district. Cisco was the only one without a gym. Randall was envious of players who had gyms. He was bitter when he learned they also had science labs. The other district school’s players hated playing basketball at Cisco because they played outdoors on a dirt surface. The day of a game, a tractor would scrape and grade the clay and dirt surface. The coach would mark the base, free throw, and midcourt lines with white paint. Cisco players dribbling the basketball knew where each spot of clay versus sand was. They avoided the sand to maintain control of the ball. Randall would dribble down the middle of the court, which was smooth clay, avoiding the base lines where sand held the ball. He would stop at the top of the free throw line, elevate three feet, and drill his jump shot. No one could block his jumper because he could elevate three to four feet vertically before launching the shot. It was funny watching the other team’s players dribble down the court and have the ball fly away after hitting a pebble in the sand or not bouncing up from it. In Randall’s senior year, all of their basketball games were away.

The white superintendent, at the insistence of a few devout segregationist board members, assigned the teachers in the colored high school to teach a specific subject. A teacher with an English degree would be assigned to teach math. A math-degreed teacher would be assigned to teach English. A science-degreed teacher would be assigned to teach civics. The only teachers assigned to teach his or her degreed subject were history, agriculture, and physical education. All books were second-hand after first being used by white students; colored students had the task of reading books with missing pages and words crossed out with black ink. From time to time, the superintendent would make unannounced visits to the school to ensure that each teacher taught his or her assigned subject. Principal John Edwards devised a scheme to have all teachers teach the subject of their major and not the ones the superintendent had assigned. Each teacher had to be prepared to instantly revert back to their assigned subject if the superintendent made an unannounced visit. Some teachers were reluctant to disobey the superintendent, but they were more afraid of incurring Principal Edwards’s wrath.

After school, Randall would walk home with Billy and Betty. Betty’s seventeen-year-old sister, Mora, and several of her high school friends would pounce on Randall, who they thought was the cutest kid ever, and cover him with bright red lipstick kisses. Gertie was tired of cleaning lipstick off Randall’s face. She called Principal Edwards and together they hatched a plan. Randall would stay in the Principal’s office after school to give the girls time to get home. He could then walk home unmolested.

So Randall’s second meeting with Principal Edwards wasn’t for a disciplinary reason. His very own mother had sent him there. When Gertie told him to go to the principal’s office after school, he told her he didn’t want to go. She told him the reason, but he didn’t want to go back to the office where he had been whipped. Gertie told Randall that Principal Edwards was a good man and wouldn’t hurt him again.

Randall entered the office and found Principal Edwards sitting at his desk. He told Randall to have a seat. He pointed to one of the two chairs in front of his desk rather than the bench where he had sat with his friends. Randall was uneasy as he looked into the face of the man who had whipped him. Principal Edwards told him that he admired him. Randall was surprised but said nothing. Principal Edwards explained that when he had whipped his friends, they just stood there and accepted their fate. When it was his turn, Randall attempted to do something to avoid the pain. He told Randall he liked that he had tried to solve the problem. He said difficult problems could be solved by thinking harder, studying harder, or working harder. As Randall listened, his attitude toward Principal Edwards began to change. After all, he thought, How could he hate a man who admired him?

Randall learned that Principal Edwards had been a math major. He had a master’s degree in mathematics from a university up north. Randall told him he liked arithmetic. Principal Edwards went to the