coverstory
October 2008What’s it like to be Black in the Valley?
For some the question is preposterous. ‘Oh, not that again.’ One man demurs my invitation to talk, saying, ‘My race doesn’t occur to me on a day-to-day basis and it doesn’t come up in what I do for a living now.’ But for others the question is not so irrelevant.
by Scottie Scott/ssscottie@earthlink.net
I was born on Purviance Street and grew up on Calvert Street in Staunton. For reasons I’ve never understood, at each address, our next-door neighbors were Helen and Stuart Lewis and their daughter Pam. Until recently, I hadn’t seen Mrs. Lewis since high school.
Remarried after Mr. Lewis died, she is now Mrs. Jackson. From as far back as I remember, Helen Lewis Jackson was always just a bit different. It’s a big reason I’ve always liked her. Eighty-four years of unrelenting living have had no deleterious effects on the cut of her jib.
Mrs. Jackson’s family was not rich. It was she and her mother. They lived in Albemarle County, in the big houses of the family her mother worked for. She was still young when they moved to Staunton, where her mother worked for another family.
Self-assured from childhood, she was not predisposed to allowing the smallness of certain minds get in her way. There was nothing extraordinary in her deciding to go to college and to become a teacher.
As we chat in Mrs. Jackson’s “thinking room,” there is a word she is groping for and she calls upstairs. Her granddaughter, Rebecca Brown, enters the room. Rebecca, 21, has plans. While she loves living in Staunton, her calling is in a children’s ministry. She hopes to attend Bible college and perhaps later to go abroad. She thinks she might like to be in a place with more diversity. Rebecca’s heritage is white, black and Mexican. I ask if her varied heritage makes a difference in those she hangs out with.
“If you’re of color, maybe because it’s a smaller town, maybe because it’s the South, you relate more to the black side. Friends? When it comes to school friends, it’s predominantly mixed and black and some whites. Church is about 75 percent white, and if I’m at camp it’s more 50 percent white, 50 percent black.
“It’s still pretty much like segregation in the [school] cafeteria. You have the black table and maybe this token white guy trying to be black and then you have the mixed table, like my group. I call it ‘the whatever group.’ Some whites, some Mexicans some mixed. And you see that everywhere, in the mall or wherever.”
Rebecca continues talking about her days at Robert E. Lee High School, where she graduated magna cum laude. “It was annoying in high school. If you’re smart you’re supposed to be white. If you’re black you’re supposed to be hanging out in the parking lot listening to rap music and not caring what you’re doing. The stereotype is really annoying. If you don’t talk the way black people are supposed to talk they’ll get on you for that. They say you sound so white. I am not speaking white. I’m just speaking proper English.”
Mrs. Jackson perks up: “You see, there’s a little polish that you somehow get over to your child. There’s a way that you do things. You just don’t go out and be a fool for anybody. You don’t be their clown. I am not for any foolishness, and I am not doing this for an empty show. Don’t go out there and commence to be a clown for some white man or woman to have a giggle over. I am not your court jester.”
Again Rebecca: “I went to Stuart Hall. Predominantly white. The kids were all smart, rich, white girls who were not very nice. For some reason, I was just quiet, did my work. I remember this one girl in gym class. She said, ‘You’re so cheesy, Rebecca. You think everybody likes you.’ I left in eighth grade to go to public school and I felt more relaxed with the diversity and being more like everybody else. It was much better.”
Rebecca says that if she were to move away as she hopes to, it would be for new opportunities, not specifically because of any local racial tension. The narrow-mindedness she’s seen is not her problem but someone else’s. Wherever she goes, Rebecca will always feels a sense of security that Staunton is her home.
…
Though affable and attentive as always, the man sitting at Staunton’s Ebenezer Baptist Church gets serious when I broach the topic for our meeting: Is race still an issue in the Shenandoah Valley?
“Yes. Race is still an issue today,” The Rev. Michael Turner says matter-offactly. His personal experience includes a “driving while black” episode with area law enforcement. He does not too long linger on personal war stories, though. He talks in general terms about some cases of racial tension he’s encountered as president of Staunton’s chapter of the NAACP. The cases he hears and the lives he counsels are as close to his heart as family.
If for no other reason than Barack Obama’s candidacy, the issue of race cannot be avoided, Turner insists. Not to speak of it would be “negligent.”
Some charge that focusing on race either stirs up unnecessary controversy or beats a dead horse. Others suggest that the NAACP has outlived its usefulness and that among the younger generation there is no longer a racial divide.
“I find it especially interesting to see the young people who think the NAACP is dead until some circumstance brings them to us for help,” he says.
Neither is the NAACP inactive - Turner insists - nor is the once famously outspoken black church now relegated to complacency. Rather he says much of their work is done “behind the scenes.” Moreover sometimes one can achieve more among the greater population without the headlines.
He believes is it important to acknowledge the balance of things. “We’ve come a long way. We live in a beautiful area,” he says, “the queen city of the Valley.” Comparing Staunton today with the ‘30s, Rev. Turner reminds us of how more black businesses proliferated more visibly then. What’s changed? “It’s economics.” It’s tough for everybody. Nevertheless, Staunton remains more affordable than other places.
It is also important, he says, not to lose sight of the fact that we have yet a way to go. While we can be excited about Obama, Rev. Turner fears that the candidate could be assassinated. He does not stand alone in that apprehension.
…
At 52, Doug Mason has worked on the grounds crew at Massanutten Resort for the last three years, the last two years as a crew leader. Nearly from the start there was tension between Mason and a specific co-worker. Last summer, the tensions escalated and on three occasions Mason found a hangman’s noose openly displayed at his workplace.
The first time, he accidentally happened upon another employee fashioning the rope and arranging it for display. Mason was incredulous as, caught in the act, the employee described how he’d found a new way to lower the shop’s garage door. Mason stood speechless as other employees in the room, all white, laughed. “As anyone knows,” he says, “the noose is historically a symbol of a threat of death in the eyes of most people, most particularly African-Americans, and thus I failed to see the humor in this.”
Mason immediately got witnesses unassociated with the incident to view the scene. The noose remained in place for two days before Mason took it down. Some days later the noose was back. Mason alerted his supervisor. Very busy, the supervisor was unable to view the rope before its shape had been altered. Mason and he spoke about the matter one week later, at which time Mason revealed the entire progression of events. The supervisor wanted to pursue the matter with upper management, but concerned about his job’s security, Mason says he didn’t wish to “rock the boat.” Again he opted just to cut down the noose.
That very afternoon a third noose appeared. Mason took pictures of the scene and again called the supervisor, who on this occasion arrived quickly. Visibly upset, the supervisor summoned the instigating crewmember. Upon confrontation, the man confessed it was all just a joke gone too far.
From this point the story takes several twists, wherein other management becomes involved, internal company complaints are filed on both sides of the issue (the hangman’s side proffers charges that Mason is a chronically troublesome employee).
Mason recalls the thinly veiled vocal threat from the original instigator that finally moved him to file a complaint: “Tony has nothing to lose ‘cause he’s seasonal and you’re full-time, but if there’s a fight both people get fired, so he’s seasonal and he’s got nothing to lose. You could be back around the side of the building and nobody could see you and you could be on the tractor, and you could say a branch hit you and knocked you off the tractor.”
Mason says he twice requested a requisite report of the company’s findings in response to his formal complaint. He says what he finally received “was not findings of an investigation or report of any corrective action taken, it was simply minutes of our meeting. … I feel upset that no determination of racial harassment or intimidation was made and no specific action taken on the part of GERM [Great Eastern Resort Management]. No reprimand of any form to the employees involved.”
GERM - which runs Massanutten - sees it differently. Sarah C. Elson, GERM’s business relations director, says the company took remedial action and that “in a meeting with Mr. Mason, he indicated that he was satisfied with what we had done and he did not request any further action.”
At presstime, the case remained under investigation with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Elson says the investigation prevents further specific comment and that Great Eastern “encourages diversity in its workforce and strictly enforces its zero tolerance policies against discrimination and harassment in any form. We strive to create an environment that is friendly to all our employees, and we believe we are doing a good job.”
(In a case unrelated to Mason’s, the EEOC filed a lawsuit in September against the L.A. Pipeline Construction Co. Inc, alleging that beginning in July 2007 - one month before Mason’s troubles started - the company allowed nooses to be openly displayed at an Elkton worksite and thus subjected black employees to a “racially hostile environment.”)
In February of 2008, Mason’s case came to the attention of the Harrisonburg- Rockingham County Commonwealth’s Attorney’s office, which considered an assault charge but later offered a stalking charge. Commonwealth’s Attorney Marsha Garst and Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorneys Louis Nagy and Anthony Bailey handled the case. During plea negotiations, the perpetrator admitted to making the noose and pled guilty to assault. He was convicted and sentenced to 12 months in prison. At Mason’s behest, the state recommended the sentence be suspended. The defendant is on probation until April 2009.
Why would Mason let the perpetrator off the hook? “I told Mr. Nagy I don’t want him to go to jail. He’s got kids. Maybe he’s sick in the head to try to justify this behavior, but I don’t want to put him in jail.”
The criminal case was not simple because prosecutors were not sure what to charge the defendant with. “In Virginia, there is no specific hate-crime statute,” says Nagy. “The closest thing in Virginia that there is to a direct hate-crime statute is the cross- burning statute, but that focuses on very specific behavior, against specifically the cross burning itself.” The cross burning is a criminal offense, he explains, only when it can be proved that burning was performed with the intent to intimidate or terrorize a specific person.
Nagy says Garst and her office are working to encourage the state legislature to enact a new code provision or “to amend the cross-burning statute to include language that would make it illegal to do the type of conduct specifically that we saw in [Mason’s] case.” Without such a provision, had the noose hanging occurred only once, the case may not have been indictable.
That the criminal case was brought has offered Mason some validation, but the part the single defendant played is, to Mason, neither the entire problem nor the most important source of his frustration. He continues to feel more betrayed by both the legal system that doesn’t include straightforward statutes and the corporation for whom he thought he was a trusted employee. Meanwhile, he still works at Massanutten and is considering his options.
…
My frustration living here in the Valley is with the African American population,” says Nelson Graves of Grottoes. “They don’t speak up. They don’t speak out….”
“Of all of the comments that you see in the newspapers about Barack Obama, how many of them are written by a black person?”
A columnist at the Waynesboro News Virginian, Graves previously wrote “Back in the Day,” a column for Staunton’s Daily News Leader. He is a regional director of the Virginia Minority Supplier Development Council (VMSDC), an organization that serves as a conduit between minority business enterprises and potential clients, such as Fortune 500 companies, government agencies and universities. VMSDC is one of 39 similar regional councils nationwide.
Through his affiliation with VMSDC, Graves made a startling discovery. “There were more black businesses than I had ever realized. We have caterers and construction people. Most of them are in janitorial. There are some tailors and some lawn care.”
Many people leave the valley, never to return. This was never in Nelson Graves’ big picture.
“I’m one of the few people in my high school class who did not want to leave the area. They said, ‘what are you going to do when you go away?’ I said, ‘come back home.’ I knew then that that’s what I wanted to do. Why? I did it because of Mrs. Ware [a teacher at the former Booker T. Washington High School]. She taught me history and I loved history.”
…
Chuck Williams has no grievances with anyone. While he’s not the type to make excuses (even for himself) he’s equally ready to see both sides of the story. He should. At 38, he’s lived it.
Now a hopeful entrepreneur, Williams has seen hard times. He grew up on the streets. His father left when he was 4. At 14 Williams was smoking pot. Around age 18, he was traveling between Staunton and San Antonio, Texas, selling. He played and he paid. Two years behind bars. That’s now ancient history and he’s not bashful about your knowing his story.
So how does Staunton compare to the big city?
“The time period I was in Texas was the best time of my life, or so I thought then. I was old enough to drink. The nightclubs and the nudity bars for somebody 18 or 20 years old from Staunton? It was everything.” And the kids he sees now?
“It’s like me growing up. Either their mom or their dad wasn’t there. They were poor. Moms at work just trying to make ends meet, sometimes two jobs. So the streets are always calling you. So it’s easy for them to run out. It’s almost like how could you not?”
Even his family wonders why Williams came back to Staunton and why he stays. “I was raised here and I chose to stay here for one reason, the speed of it. San Antonio.There are gangs and people getting shot on sight on Halloween. It’s kind of laid-back here. I felt safer here and I wanted my kids to be safe.”
For three of the past four years, Williams has been doing chicken and ribs, both catered and right outside the Staunton Junction convenience store downtown. He recently opened Willie’s Pit Barbeque and Catering on South Coalter Street.
Williams says he would never ignore the people he used to run with, but all the same they respect that he is doing it differently now and he won’t let anyone take him off his course.
…
I cannot end without including a remark I heard from Dr. Cheryl Talley, associate professor of psychology at James Madison University (JMU). I suspect it may be a favorite of hers. It threatens to become one of mine.
“Every system is exquisitely designed to produce the results that it’s getting.”
Talley attributes the remark to diversity researcher Francis Kendall. She appeals to our sense of community, which would be precisely at the heart of the question “What’s life like in the Valley?” She suggests that individuals don’t live in vacuums. We live in systems. In Harrisonburg, where Talley lives, an entire neighborhood of black homes and businesses was destroyed in the late 1950s to make room in the name of “urban renewal.”
Such “improvements” to community still happen throughout the country (consider Harlem), and I would posit that its farreaching detriments go beyond the residents who are displaced.
Systems. Community. Chuck Williams says it well. “Sometimes if you take a personal interest to do things on your own and you still can’t make it, you need somebody else. … You need to know somebody, somewhere, … If you don’t, you’re not going to get anywhere. And once that one person opens that one door for you, who takes a personal liking to you, just because of who they are, it’ll pull you in a different direction.”
“Just because of who they are,” he says. Williams got a leg up with family support. But there is more implicit in his phrase. When I grew up in the Valley, there were a handful of black doctors and many black teachers, besides the greater visibility of black business that Rev. Turner mentioned. Today there remain the black church, family, personal mentors and other civic organizations. Still, I pine for the old days when there were blacks in every vocation.
While Nelson Graves’ high school inspiration could have come from a white teacher, I would insist there is a debilitating effect on a population of people when few, if any, such role models look like them.
Moreover the “who they are” Williams talks about are people with clout. This does not mean that if you’re African American and your lawyer is white he’ll give you secondrate service. Doug Mason is very appreciative of the attentions of the Commonwealth’s Attorney. But think of it this way. Walk down the street. Approach 10 white citizens. Ask each how they’d like to live in a place where the preponderance of economic wealth, political clout and visible artistic culture was dominated by say, Cubans.
Talley asks her students how many of them ever got a summer job because they knew somebody or how many of them live in houses that their parents inherited. “Look back at how the first GI bill catapulted a whole generation of people into the middle class, so when black peole were being redlined at that time and being denied those very same benefits, does no one see a correlation between what happened then and what’s happening now?” she says.
As for me, being black in the Valley isn’t extravagantly different from being black anywhere. My experience anywhere in the U.S. promises that I’ll be in a friendly conversation with very nice people and eventually someone will tell a story that identifies the “black” guy. It’s not even irritating, but it’s something that you can’t ignore. Well, anyway, I can’t.
I would prefer more diversity here, but then I can only imagine some white people would, too. Of course most places will have their compensations. Inarguably the Valley is pretty easy on your nerves. While I cannot say that my hometown is more diverse than when I moved away in 1974, there have been marked changes, many well planned, a few of which I like: the revitalized Visulite Cinema, Blackfriars Playhouse, interesting new restaurants, a downtown community rife with artistic expression from a young generation that’s dug in its heels.
By the way Talley has lived and worked in the Valley for 20 years and reports that you can get a job here, you can buy an affordable house here and it’s a great place to raise your kids.
Exquisite, isn’t it?
Staunton resident Scottie Scott is a carpenter and a free-lance writer.