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166 28 “What are You Doing Here?” an autobiographical Fragment Louis Michael Seidman I was born in 1947 in Washington, D.C. My parents were strong racial liberals. They refused to attend the National Theater because of its segregated seating policy and would not permit us to go to Glen Echo Amusement Park because it did not admit blacks. I do not remember my parents actually having African American friends, however. The only black I had regular contact with as a child was our maid, Jesse, who came once per week to clean our house. She was a large, strong woman of indeterminate age—strikingly muscular, yet extremely gentle. She was cheerful and friendly but also reserved, proud, and, on some level, deeply mysterious. In winter 1954–1955, my family moved to New Rochelle, New york, a suburb of New york City. Jesse decided to come with us and ended up as our “live-in help” for much of my childhood. My parents were quite formal people. When my father came home from work (my mother stayed home during my childhood), Jesse would serve them dinner in the dining room. My brother and I ate separately with Jesse at the kitchen table. At the time of our move, I attended Takoma Park Elementary School, which was segregated by law, although, as a child of seven, I had no awareness of this fact. Only a few months before we moved, the Supreme Court decided Bolling v. Sharpe, the companion case to Brown, which held that segregation in the District of Columbia school system was unconstitutional. Unlike their counterparts in the Deep South, District officials decided to comply voluntarily with the decision. As part of a public relations effort, school officials arranged for black and white D.C. students to visit a northern, successfully integrated school system. By coincidence, they choose New Rochelle. Hence, there was an odd parallel between my personal move and the symbolic movement of the District of Columbia to the new reality represented by New Rochelle. When I arrived in New Rochelle, I attended Roosevelt Elementary School. It was integrated in name, but to the best of my recollection the only African Americans actually in attendance were the children of an African ambassador to the United Nations. A different school—Mayflower Elementary School— Louis Michael Seidman 167 was closer to my house and had a substantial number of African American students , but district lines were drawn in such a way as to place my house within the Roosevelt district. In 1957, three years after Brown (and, of course, three years after our move), the first successful Northern desegregation suit was brought against the New Rochelle school system. The district court found that years ago, school lines had been gerrymandered so as to segregate African American children. As a result of the court decree, some school district lines were redrawn, but I continued to attend Roosevelt Elementary. Sometime in the early 1960s, I remember my parents strongly urging Jesse to register to vote. She returned to our house too humiliated at first to recount what had happened: She had not been permitted to register because she had failed the literacy test. At about the same time, my parents decided that they should stop paying Jesse under the table and insisted on registering her for Social Security, although they offered to pay both halves of the tax. Perhaps for this reason (although I do not know for certain), Jesse suddenly disappeared. I never saw her again. New Rochelle had only one high school, so it was integrated—after a fashion . The school was divided into three parts: the college preparatory track, which was predominantly Jewish; the vocational track, which was predominantly Italian; and the non-Regents track, which was predominantly African American. The “integrated” portion of the curriculum consisted of homeroom, gym, and lunch, where these groups confronted each other in uneasy silence. I do not remember having a single African American friend. In the summer of 1963, my brother and I wanted to attend the March on Washington. My parents were uneasy about our going alone but ended up being strongly supportive. They arranged for us to stay in a hotel in New york City near where the bus departed and to be awakened at 3:00 am to begin the trip. We were at the Lincoln Memorial when Martin Luther King gave his famous speech. My recollection of the event is quite different from the version one commonly...

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