I Will Not Fear by Melba Pattillo Beals

Author:Melba Pattillo Beals [Beals, Melba Pattillo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Memoir;BIO018000;BIO026000
ISBN: 9781493413836
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2017-10-16T04:00:00+00:00

Mistakes and struggles are part of our human journey. The key is to forgive and pick ourselves up with the faith that life will improve because of lessons learned from our mistakes.

Nine

Single Parenthood

After the divorce, my daughter had to adjust to many changes in our lifestyle. Above all else, she missed her father because he had been a wonderful parent, playmate, and friend. She was also upset because I was forced to give up our lovely home that we had shared with her dad and move to low-income housing in the Sunnydale Housing Project. I would learn this project was an incubator for some members of the flamboyant and controversial Black Panthers.

It was 1969, a time when the Black Panthers based in Oakland, California, were growing in numbers and pressing their demands for equality. Newspapers across the United States reported on their actions. It was an environment I would later deem too dangerous for a single mother and her daughter. But back then, I didn’t know any better. I was doing my best. I considered our new living arrangement as a bridge—a temporary home because we were on the waiting list for San Francisco State University student housing. Our income was severely limited while I struggled to complete a college degree that would result in a good job and elevate our lifestyle.

About six months into our stay at Sunnydale, Kellie was still going to the metal mail slot in our front door each day, pushing it open with a pencil and peeking through it, in hopes of getting a letter from her dad. She would sometimes linger there peering out at the kids playing on our sidewalk because I never allowed her to go outside.

I felt fragile and afraid of life. I realized I was in a precarious situation in every way—financially, physically, and mentally. Kellie had (at age five) grown old enough to miss her dad and to face reality while still hoping Jay would be back.

Our life in the Sunnydale Housing Project was far from the comfortable middle-class one we had shared in our home on a sunny, pristine street. Gone were the well-mannered children she could play with outside each day. We no longer had friendly, protective, religious neighbors or our cozy sense of safety and late-evening family events. Sunnydale was an experience that would teach us to deal with life on its most primitive terms. Most of the people who lived there were on welfare. As I would learn later, many were living at the edge of society, having existed in extreme poverty most of their lives.

Take, for example, the two men who came every Saturday with what appeared to be a vegetable truck. The back of the truck was lined with wooden crates filled with lovely apples, oranges, peaches, collard greens, string beans, and many other fruits and vegetables. However, when I approached the truck, it became evident it was anything but a neighborhood vegetable vendor.

The driver lifted one of the vegetable crates and beneath

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