negro Archives - The Race Card Project

You might hurt the man’s feelings

December 18, 2023 1950's, Buick, dad, different, Early 50's, father, hurt feelings, Lakewood, lesson, negro, NJ, Paul J. Mercer, pointing, school

Paul J. Mercer,
Lakewood, NJ

These words were from my father in the very early 50s. My Dad and I were watching the world go by waiting for Mom while parked outside the store she was in. We did not yet have a TV, I had not gone to school yet and I had no idea that anyone looked different than those people I saw at home or family get-togethers. Suddenly, my little hand rose to point at a man walking down the sidewalk by our ’49 Buick. A large hand gently pushed mine down as Pop offered these words. Using the accepted term at the time he said, “don’t point, you might hurt the man’s feelings.” He went on to say that the man was a negro and a brief history of where Negros came from. He left the lesson on slavery for a day when his 4-year-old was a tad older. A great lesson that provided many rewarding relationships with people of all ethnicities as I grew older.

Black horse will ride white horse

September 5, 2022September 5, 2022 1963, Black horse, black people, negro, PA, pittsburgh

Don
Pittsburgh, PA

Stated in spring of 1963 by negro at the time with no agitation or explanation. As a white person I thought comment strange not knowing the future implications to follow. Strange that statement has stayed in my conscience all these years. Always felt comfortable among black people.

Sequence: Negro. Colored. Afro-American. Black. African-American

February 3, 2022February 3, 2022 African American, Afro-American, Alonzo Felder, Black, colored, Durham, NC, negro, Sequence

Alonzo Felder,
Durham, NC.

Called by many names over the years.

White-skinned negro: community of one.

September 26, 2021October 21, 2021 Boston, community, frustrated, genetics, Jada Golden Sherman, MA, negro, white skinned

Jada Golden Sherman,
Boston, MA.

I’m so frustrated with people’s limited understanding and acceptance of genetics, and upbringing. The labels ‘white’ and ‘black’ are over-generalized. Especially when now that we have dark parents having white-looking babies, and white-looking parents having brown babies. Not all white people are…white, nor “white-minded”.My mother’s family is African-American, and many of them are really really light. As a child, on occasion I was made fun of because I come from a black family – making fun of my hair when it’s not straightened, or my dolls, or my name, or my momma. My mother was incredibly on-point, and progressive in the way she ensured that I view the world aware of who I am, her people’s beauty and also their struggle, and my part in it. I honestly feel like I don’t fit in anywhere.

I’m often exed out of communities that I want to participate in, and am pushed towards white communities because that’s where people think I belong. Now as an adult, I’m made fun of more frequently because I am white. People telling me, “No offense but I’d never hook-up with a white girl. Your lips are too thin.” I’ve been told that my acceptance into a historically black college was to fill their white quota, not because of my brain. As a school teacher in an urban district, I’ve been given grave looks of disappointment when going to interviews because they assumed by my name and résumé that I was not “white”. And yes, its easier for White folk to move along through society, but not when you’re trying to move along in non-white societies. I’m always against the current. The only time that I have felt peace is when I was introduced to the film, “Cracking the Codes”. This is really just a splinter of my experiences, observations, and understandings regarding race. I’m not necessarily complaining but it is exhausting not having any like-minded folks to discuss issues with, because in my experiences people are so divided into black and white groups.

White people don’t understand what I’m saying, and black people don’t think I know what I’m talking about and therefore don’t share knowledge with me. These are over-generalizations, but incidents none the less. I’ve also cut people off from my life after years of knowing them, because they will say the most scary racist mantras about black people. Most of the hateful things that I’ve heard about African-Americans have not come from Caucasians, nor republicans, but many many other ethnicities and Democrats! However, I have used my whiteness for the advantage of studying oppressive behaviors in white communities. There are indeed many different kinds of white communities. Some are just unaware of the real struggles people of color go through, and therefore don’t necessarily know how to change it. Then there are other communities that are disgustingly oppressive. The things I’ve heard!! So I’ve made it a habit of not telling people up front, what my background is because I learn more about them that way, and learn who to trust. Regardless of the limited “reverse-racism” I’ve experienced from African-Americans, it is nothing compared to the oppressive fear and hate I’ve observed other ethnic groups say about, and do, towards African-Americans. That I know to be true. Because of this truth, I want my voice to be heard and given a chance by the African-American communities I try and become a part of, because my insights are valuable. Also, I do not support the color-blind ideology.

Their house smells like anyone else’s

June 3, 2021 black family, first experience, house, ignorant, negro, New Jersey, PhD, smells, Steve Llanso, USA, white, white light

Steve Llanso,
USA

Pretty white and wholly ignorant, isn’t it?
Here’s the back story: I grew up in the ’50s and 60s in northern New Jersey in a town where all the black families lived on one road. There were three black students in a graduating class of 250 students, two of whom I knew from music and both of whom signed my yearbook.
My family’s attitude toward equal rights for “Negros” (not coloreds or worse) and race relations was classically liberal and tolerant. I had started reading memoirs like Claude Brown’s Manchild in the Promise Land and histories such as Lerone Bennett’s Before the Mayflower in high school. But I had no illusions about my “understanding” what it was to be a Negro in America.
The tiny college I went to in Illinois had 350 students, of which two were roommates and classmates. One showed me the “soul brother” handshake, proved to be worse at basketball than I was, and had fun with me and our tutor in an English class. The other was bi-racial and almost deaf. He and I had to concentrate on watching the other’s face when talking and enjoyed the exchanges. (He later earned a PhD in Math.)
After my first year of college, I got a job driving for a take-out fried chicken place. Yes, breaded chicken and French fries. Phone-in orders sent me everywhere within about a 10-mile radius of the store. One night I saw that I had an order for the road in my home town that I recognized as the black section. As I drove there, I didn’t think about the fried chicken stereotype or anything other than I had NO idea what kind of house I’d be delivering to.
I parked in front and knocked on the door or rang the door bell (don’t remember which). A resident (male or female, I don’t remember) let me in and had me stand in the entryway as they went off to get the payment. As I waited, I glanced at the small, tidy living room.
And then the thought hit me: “Their house smells like anyone else’s”. That comment stayed in my mind’s front-and-center section all the way back to the chicken store. What had I meant by it? Had I really carried that
Don’t think of it as an epiphany, think of it as a reorientation, a tug on preconceptions I didn’t know I had. It would be years before I studied with or worked with or even commuted with persons of all colors. Still later before I formed friendships. But it may have been that night delivering chicken that started expanding the spectrum of my awareness beyond the “white-light” band I typically lived in.

Excuse me, are you a Negro?

September 1, 2019February 21, 2021 1950's, elementary school, first experience, Jean Pierce Morrow, negro, PA, school, skin color, State College, West Philadelphia, white privilege

Jean Pierce Morrow,
State College, PA

I grew up in a suburb of West Philadelphia in the 1950s. My town had two elementary schools, and I spent my first four years at the completely white school. Then we moved to another part of town and I started fourth grade in the school with about a 20% black population. I didn’t know anybody, and at lunchtime that first day, looking for a place to sit in the cafeteria, I spotted a table full of girls with one seat left. I asked if I could join them and they said yes. Everyone ate in silence for a few moments, then one girl asked me that question. I thought about it a minute, realizing I didn’t know the answer. I knew race was connected to skin color, but I’d seen so many shades of skin that I wasn’t sure exactly where the dividing line was. I looked down at my own skin, and finally answered “I don’t think so”. After that we had a fine time. My mom later explained that they had asked me because they couldn’t think of any other reason why a white girl would sit at a Negro table. I’ve come to understand that experience as white privilege; I learned by accident at 10 what those girls had, for their own safety, been taught at a much younger age.

Parents gave me Confederate flag: protection

March 2, 2019May 2, 2019 1950's, Confederate flag, ct, FL, gas station, negro, parents, protection, Seattle, Steve Morris, WA

Steve Morris,
Seattle, WA.

In the mid-1950s my father made a business trip from our home in Connecticut to Florida and back. He decided to make the trip by car, and to take my mother, my brother, and me along with him for a family travel experience. In the Deep South I witnessed undisguised segregation for the first time. I was 10 years old. At a gas station I asked the attendant why there were different bathrooms and drinking fountains. I told him my best friend in Connecticut was “a negro” (the terminology hadn’t changed yet). and I described how we did all the same things at school, and used all the same facilities. The attendant said, “Well that’s not the way we do it down here, sonny.” My parents, watching this exchange, sensed an edge — and perhaps a threat — to the man’s tone. They instructed me to address my questions to them in the future, and they bought me a little Confederate flag. I carried it everywhere, waving it around as I would have any other colorful souvenir. I was unaware of any meaning it might carry beyond its attractive surface. Years later my parents told me their side of the story, and explained that the flag was intended to smooth our journey through the South, and perhaps to provide a degree of safety. They had been more concerned than they let on, about the gas station attendant’s tone.

What happened to the word “negro”?

January 21, 2019January 21, 2019 Amy Connelly, clue, Jr., Martin Luther King, MLK, N word, negro, Provo, UT

Amy Connelly
Provo, UT

In teaching about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to my high school students, I had to pause and do some research when I ran across the word “negro” repeatedly used by Dr. King in both his famous “I Have a Dream” speech and “Letter from Birmingham Jail”. I did not know the appropriate way to approach the word. Should I allow my students to say it? What was the historical context behind the disappearance of this term? I assumed it had something to do with its similar connotation to the “n-word”, but I really had no clue. In the end, I allowed my students to read and say the word, with the understanding that Dr. King felt comfortable with it. If he used it, then why shouldn’t we in reading his words? As for somehow using that word in conversation and/or speech today, I have no idea.

Leave identity issues to other people

July 26, 2018July 26, 2018 African American, catastrophe, financial, Fort Worth, identity, integration, negro, Pan Africanism, People, Phyllis W. Allen, TX

Phyllis W. Allen,
Fort Worth, TX.

I am a sixty year old woman who has lived through segregation, integration, Colored, Negro,, Black, African American, segregation, marches, integration, Pan Africanism, opulent consumption, financial catastrophe and now I’m just me.

Daddy invited negro family to dinner.

June 17, 2018June 17, 2018 1962 Ohio, Alachua, DADDY, dinner, FL, invite, Karen Munroe, negro

Karen Munroe,
Alachua, FL.

1962 Ohio.

THEIR FIRST “NEGRO” HAD A TAN.

December 27, 2017December 26, 2017 class, Family, negro, RI, school, Smithfield, tan, Theil Baumann Ramsbe

Theil Baumann Ramsbey
Smithfield, RI

Everyone was so friendly when my family moved when I was in second grade. It was because, a classmate told me years later, they had never had a Negro in their class before. I am Caucasian but have olive skin that can tan deeply (although I never do this now!).

I didn’t know Mary was black.

July 6, 2015July 7, 2015 1964, 4-H, Black, camp, Carolyn Kay Conover, didn't know, Harrodsburg, KY, negro, you don't look

Carolyn Kay Conover,
Harrodsburg, KY.

It was 1964 and Mary and I had been friends since starting 1st grade together. We’d buy milkshakes at lunch. I’d buy chocolate and she’d buy vanilla. I really liked Mary. This year, Mary and I were going to go to 4-H camp together. We were so excited. We signed up together and planned to bunk together, she in the top bunk, me on the bottom. But when we got to camp we learned that was just not going to happen. When I asked why, I was told, “Well, Mary is a Negro” (the polite term in those days). I had no idea what this meant other than that we couldn’t bunk together. Mary, wherever you are today, I think of you often.

First mistake was bringing the Negro

June 28, 2015July 2, 2015 crime, Erie, H. Ulfheim, holocaust, mistake, neanderthal roots, negro, PA, primitive, repercussion, slave, tribal

H. Ulfheim,
Erie, PA.

The first mistake was bringing the negro to America. The next mistake was making him a slave and giving him a sense of belonging. The third mistake was letting him learn. The fourth mistake was freeing him, and the fifth mistake was giving him fair treatment, which he abused. Now he thinks he is entitled to commit crimes without repercussions. Entitled to special treatment because of previous treatment. Entitled to special rights that nobody else should have because “slavery”. Much like how the jews justify anything with “Holocaust”. If we never brought the negro to the country, he never would’ve advanced past his tribal, primitive, neanderthal roots.

Eisenhower’s Negro caddy was too slow.

March 26, 2015December 24, 2015 Caddy, Eisenhower, Karen Brinkman, negro, New York City, NY

Karen Brinkman,
New York City, NY.

Cleaning out my mother’s attic, I came across a vase wrapped in a newspaper page from 1957. This sentence was in a short article about the firing of “Cemetery” Perteet, President Eisenhower’s long time golf caddy.

Learn more about Karen’s 6 words in The Milwaukee Journal

Many southern Negroes never learned reading

December 15, 2013 cleaning woman, falls church, learn, negro, reading, school, segregation, sharecroppers, southern, Ted Hochstadt, VA

Ted Hochstadt
Falls Church, VA

This is approximately what my mother said to me when I asked her why our African-American cleaning woman could not read the word I asked her about from my second grade reader. The conversation with my mother occurred in Brooklyn, NY almost 65 years ago, but I still remember that my mother went on to talk about “Negro” sharecroppers, segregated schools, and the black migration to the north in search of employment opportunities for themselves and educational opportunities for their children.

You think I’m Black. I’m not.

July 2, 2013July 2, 2013 Black, CA, categories, colored, negro, Omari N.F., Race, Santa Barbara

Omari N.F.
Santa Barbara, CA

Race is something we made up and nothing good has come of it (valiant struggles to overcome its many ills notwithstanding). 20 years ago I’d have been called Negro, 40 years ago ‘Colored’ and today Black. Truth is I am none of the above. There’s only one race, human. My problem with race is all the connotations and baggage that comes with it. If I’m Black I’m ‘supposed’ to talk a certain way. For many people, Black is synonymous with poor, ghetto, dangerous. Again, I’m none of the above. Just as we’ve evolved so it’s no longer appropriate to call me a nigger, someday it will no longer be okay to call me Black. If you want to know what I look like or where my ancestors were from, I’ll gladly tell you I’m a person of African decent. But let’s move away from these loaded, sloppy, insidious categories we call race.

Race: Nonexistent. Humanity is a continuum!

May 15, 2013February 3, 2015 50's, continuum, humanity, Joe Gandalf, negro, Pickens, SC

Joe Gandalf,
Pickens, SC.

At age 5 I was told that “negroes” (the polite term in the 50s) were no different from any one else. Little kids believe anything their parents tell them. An entire lifetime has never shown me differently.

…but, Daddy, what is a Negro?

January 24, 2013January 23, 2013 baby, DADDY, Gaithersburg, Harvetta Asamoah, MD, negro, parents

Harvetta Asamoah
Gathersburg, MD

At 4 years old, while watching attacks on TV with dogs (at that age dogs terrified me under any circumstances), trembling, and listening to my parents loudly discussing it, this word, “Negro” puzzled me. So I raised my small voice, patted his knee and finally got Daddy’s attention, “What, baby?” “Daddy….what’s a Negro?” After a short breathless pause, his booming laughter made me smile. He lifted me up, hugged me and said” YOU, are a Negro.”

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