White Girl: A Story of School Desegregation

Liberal Teacher, Southern Lady

Liberal Teacher, Southern Lady At her job at the Grace House community center, my mother was “Miz Ann,” the teacher for black kids, white kids, and a Vietnamese brother and sister whose parents were refugees from the war. Most came from low-income families, though the NAACP lawyer who eventually became the mayor of Richmond and a state senator sent his children there for a session or two. A college dropout with shoulder-length brown hair drove the bus that brought the kids to and from school each day. There were also long-haired VISTA volunteers , who had signed up to work in a program like Grace House so they wouldn’t have to fight in Vietnam. They wore peace signs around their necks and T-shirts that said, “Bread, Not Bombs.” The summer I was eight years old, I went every day with my mother to the preschool, where I pounded Play-Doh and worked puzzles with the children. Together, we watched the pet gerbils race around their cage on a table in the corner of the classroom. At outdoor play time, I set the kids up on Big Wheels and tricycles in the pea-gravel-lined backyard. When it didn’t rain, I helped serve sandwiches and pour milk at wooden picnic tables. My mother seemed comfortable as the kids clamored around her. She paced the classroom in her below-the-knee skirts and tan Hush Puppies, setting up blocks, leading “This Old Man” and other songs in her alto voice, and serving lunch. As a preschool teacher, my mother followed in Hanni’s footsteps. My grandmother started her career as a pianist and music teacher in the 1930s because the family needed extra money. She eventually became the owner and director of the Tuckahoe Nursery School, known informally as “Miz Wallerstein’s School.” Richmond’s FFVs and other elite families had somehow chosen my grandmother’s humble school, a converted white clapboard house in suburban Henrico County where children baked cupcakes and pushed scooters up and down a hill in the backyard, as a worthy place to begin their children’s education. People used to joke that 48 49 the school was “St. Wallerstein’s” because so many of the children ended up going on to one of Richmond’s private Episcopal high schools, St. Catherine’s or St. Christopher’s. My mother had the chance to take over Grandma Hanni’s school, a successful business that had the potential to give her an income for dozens of years. Her choice of Grace House shows both the depth of her social commitment and her desire to rebel. She had left Richmond at age seventeen, an academically ambitious and socially acceptable graduate of the city’s segregated schools. She came back a young widow with a social conscience that she was willing to act on—though only up to a point. In a way, my mother lived a double life. Her job was one compartment of her life; her connection to the habits and customs of her Richmond upbringing another. Some days, she read a book by the swimming pool at the Lakeside Country Club, where Jews could be members but blacks were excluded. On other days, she and my grandmother entertained, handing out bourbon on the rocks from a bar set up at a card table. They graciously thanked everyone for coming, while the maid picked up the dirty napkins and washed the glasses. My mother was as comfortable in this world as she was at the head of an integrated classroom. My mother may have been able to handle her dual roles, but I sometimes fell into the confusing gap between the two. The summer I helped Mom at her job, I played pool in the room behind the front offices as she went to meetings or cleaned up the classroom. A few older kids hung out there, waiting for the community center’s afternoon program for teens to begin. I joked a lot with Doug, an eleven-year-old black boy who always dressed tidily in a polo shirt and chinos, even on the hottest summer days. He patiently taught me how to bank my balls off the sides of the pool table. When I once jabbed the ball so hard it flew off the table, he laughed and said, “Dang! You’re going to hit a home run that way!” My face reddened, but I laughed, too. One day, Doug and I both accompanied...