Dear Senator by Essie Mae Washington-Williams

Author:Essie Mae Washington-Williams [Essie Mae Washington-Williams and William Stadiem]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780061743085
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2007-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

Heart of Dixie

WHEN I RETURNED to Orangeburg in September 1947, the Willie Earle issue had helped to polarize the nation and send the whites of South Carolina back to their barricades. President Truman was more than infuriated by the farce of southern justice. He said so when he addressed the NAACP in Washington that summer and he devoted his energies to his President’s Committee on Civil Rights, which issued a scathing and revolutionary report that fall entitled “To Secure These Rights.” It declared Truman’s war on discrimination. But below the Mason-Dixon Line, it was the South that felt that war had been declared on all that it held dear. Truman was demanding that Congress enact sweeping legislation protecting black people at the polls, in schools, at work, in their travels, and in the military. As I rode that awful hot and muggy Seaboard Railways segregated coach down to Columbia, I had a feeling I would be traveling in air-conditioned comfort and plush seats in the not-too-distant future.

Again, at State, it was college as usual. I was rushed for a sorority, which is where most of the social life took place for sophomores and older. The two top “Greeks” as we called them, were Alpha Kappa Alpha and Delta Sigma Theta. I was honored that both came courting me, especially since good grades and college achievement were even more important in these black sororities than looks and style. They wanted “leaders,” as the Greeks were active in lots of charity work and tutoring in the community, not merely giving parties. I chose the Deltas, who were known for maintaining the highest grade average on campus. The initiation was anything but brainy. I would have to walk to class a certain way around campus for a week, two steps forward, one step back. The “Delta Walk” looked spastic; that was the point. Then my new “sisters” fed me what they said were slithery, slimy, and nasty worms. This test of my loyalty and sisterhood, not to mention constitution, was in truth cold spaghetti. Once the hijinks were over, I got back to my studies. I took more American history. We were entering dramatic times, I sensed, and I wanted to be armed with knowledge.

I also discovered men. Or they discovered me. Being in the sorority gave me a new confidence, a sense of belonging that being the governor’s daughter did not. The sorority was all positive reinforcement, and it made me sure of myself. Furthermore, to earn extra spending money, I took a series of clerical jobs on campus. On Sundays, my friends and I attended the local Presbyterian church because the preacher there gave the best sermons. I was busy all the time, and that served to enhance my self-esteem.

The first person at Orangeburg I began dating was a man in every sense of the word. At twenty-five, Matthew Perry was five years older than I was. He was what you would call a Big Man on Campus. I met

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.