Water Fountain Walls
Sometimes our chains are hidden in plain sight
I hesitated.
Not sure if she noticed. But I still remember that moment. Standing before me was a beautiful, enchanting girl - a new friend - asking me to dance. And I hesitated.
Not because I was otherwise committed. Not because I did not want to dance. Not for any other reason I would be unashamed to admit.
I hesitated because her invitation threw me into conflict. I wanted nothing more than to enjoy her company that night. But that meant crossing a line. I’d never seen a White boy dance with a Black girl before.
Some walls are invisible until you stumble into them. Like furniture, they’ve been there so long they’re part of the landscape. That’s especially true if the walls were erected and covered with ivy before your parents were born.
My mother was a planter’s daughter. Our family-owned a cotton plantation near Bayou Boeuf in central Louisiana before the Civil War. My grandparents reared nine children on the same land, farming it with the help of Black employees who didn’t join the Great Migration.
Imagine a little girl approaching a water fountain during the Great Depression. Or a bathroom. Or a swimming pool, restaurant, church, or school. Signs and the route they directed taught her how the world was ordered.
White women to the right. Colored Women to the left. White only. Colored in the rear only.
Signs that performed the hierarchy they signified. A profane sacrament enacted every hour of every day from the time you were born until the time your fifth son was born.
The hierarchy of human value was a given, ever-present in the landscape, something noticed only in the breach.
The water fountain’s sorting was binary. Either you were White or Colored. But that was just the first sort. The list of those who counted as White was in flux.
Anglo-Protestants were always in. So, too, were Northern European immigrant families like my Dad’s. Counting them as White was easy. They looked the same and tended to be Protestant.
In Louisiana, Italians were Colored at first. Still, by the time Mom was born, they occupied a middle space between White and Colored, along with Jews. Sorted with the Whites but ranked below Anglo-Protestants in the power hierarchy, they were equal under the law but culturally subordinate.
That water fountain liturgy indelibly shaped the lens with which Mom - and many of her generation - understood the world.
Mom was kind, gentle, brilliant, and loving. She cherished deep, mutually loving friendships with Blacks and non-Anglo Protestants that endured many decades.
But those friendships grew within muscadine-covered walls that secured each person’s place in the power hierarchy. All men are created equal, but those who counted as White were first among equals to whom deference was due. In any such friendship, she was the leader.
Marie grew up in a different town, but the water fountain liturgy was the same. That profane sacrament, enacted every hour of every day, shaped her identity, too. All men are created equal, but those who counted as White rule. The best way to thrive is to keep quiet, serve well, and cooperate with White power.
Mom and Marie were pregnant at the same time. Marie came to work for Mom when I was a toddler.
Under duress, Jim Crow took down the water fountain signs before Gary and I learned to read. Signs were no longer necessary. The walls they constructed were hidden in plain sight, like landscape features covered by fig leaves that did not impede their function.
Phil Moser had a concrete driveway with the only basketball goal in the neighborhood. Mrs. Moser didn’t mind if I practiced there when Phil wasn’t around.
Marie would often bring Gary to work during summer vacation. Can’t recall what else we did, but sweet memories remain of Gary and I shooting hoops at the Moser’s. We’d play H-O-R-S-E and 21 and one-on-one. Games were long because our best shots could barely reach the ten-foot goal. It was fun. Like we were friends.
But friendship evaded us. At that age, we were evenly matched, But we were not equals.
Gary was neither shy nor timid. He could do or say whatever he wanted with me, but he wasn’t free. Water fountain lessons ruled him. He was incapable of looking me in the eye without deference.
I didn’t recognize it, but water fountain lessons ruled me, too.
Water fountain walls were visible only in the breach. When breaches occurred, communal discipline reinforced the walls.
As a Boy Scout, I never missed an opportunity to usher at LSU football games. At one game, I escorted a young mixed-race couple to their seats. As the game progressed, so did the drunken anger of those seated behind them. They began with verbal abuse. Who did the couple think they were? They had no right to be in public together where children could see them. Slurs. Threats. A cup of beer thrown at the male. Eventually, off-duty police officers stepped in to restore peace. They ordered the couple to leave immediately.
Water fountain walls ruled years after the signs came down.
We were high school juniors representing our states at the week-long Presidential Classroom for Young Americans in Washington, D.C. Sort of like Boys or Girls State except with a federal government focus. It was an intense immersion experience. Friendships germinated and blossomed rapidly.
Her father was an Atlanta preacher. We’d become good friends. The dance celebrated our completion of the program. Of course, I wanted to enjoy it with her.
Later, I told myself I hesitated because I was unaccustomed to girls asking boys to dance. That wasn’t how I was brought up. But that wasn’t true.
Her outstretched hands invited me to breach water fountain walls. I didn’t recognize their power over me. Hundreds of miles from home, they ruled. I wasn’t free.
But she was. She looked me in the eye without fear or deference. Just friendship.
Wanted to be free. Like her.
We danced.