Category Archives: Tales from the School Yard

Some extra-curricula lessons I’ve learned as a student and a teacher.

Harry T. Moore Still Matters

18 Monday Nov 2013

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My God called to me in morning dew; the Power Of The Universe knows my name. He gave me a song to sing and sent me on my way; now, I raise my voice for justice and I believe.*

Harry_Tyson_MooreOn this day in 1905 teacher, Harry T. Moore, was born.  He went on to put his considerable talents to use with the NAACP, establishing 50 branches in the state of Florida.  His Florida Progressive Voters League would register over 100,000 black voters, more than in all the other southern states combined.  He was, as Bernice Johnson Reagon said, “so successful they had to kill him.”

He and his wife, Harriett, died on Christmas Day in 1951 when a bomb, planted beneath their bedroom floor, exploded.  The Moores’ assassination predates what the Southern Poverty Law Center considers the Civil Rights Era. So, he wasn’t included in their Memphis memorial and still lingers deep in the shadows of iconic figures like 14 year-old Emmett Till, Medgar Evers, and, of course, Martin Luther King Jr.

Harry T. Moore didn’t single handedly start the struggle for voting rights, but he was putting up one hell of a fight, long before politicians or the press seemed to care, while the KKK’s own Warren Fuller served as Governor of Florida.  Moore was a rare figure in history who walked onto the battlefield not knowing if a single soul would follow him.

They did follow and over the next 17 years shots rang out across Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Florida and Texas.  Incidents seared into our national psyche, would eventually command attention of the highest levels of government, but not before 39 names were added the list of Civil Right Martyrs.

Most of them, like Moore, walked straight into the fire. None could have doubted the credibility of the constant threats. Recalling the event years later, Myrlie Evers hadn’t thought a car backfired, or children were playing with fire crackers or that there was anything remotely unequivocal about the sound she’d heard in front of her Mississippi home in 1963.  When asked what she thought at the first loud bang,  she answered flatly,  “I knew they killed my husband.”

I’ve poured over photos from that era and, lately, am more drawn to the personal ones.  There’s that famous shot of a beaming Martin Luther King on the courthouse steps while Coretta plants one on his cheek and Medgar Evers, looking like any other groom cutting the cake while Myrlie leans into him. There’s Moore resting on his lawn while Harriett nuzzles against his neck.  Like men dream of becoming heroes, I wonder of these heroes ever dreamt of just being men.

There’s one photo of Harry T. Moore that compels me the most, though. Leaning on the hood of a car, wearing a bright white shirt and tie flying in the breeze, his eyes seem focused on something distant, but clear. His eyes seem to answer all the questions I’ve ever had about him and the others.  It’s a look that makes it almost possible to understad how they did it, how they pushed passed the instinct for self-preservation, how they didn’t recoil from the heat, how they resisted telling their children it would stop and they’d live quiet subservient lives, how they already owned a victory they’d never see.

His eyes pierce right though the clutter and the excuses, the convoluted babble and inconvenience. They focus, laser-like, on one indisputable fact: The right to equality is inherent.  It needs no defense, no explanation, no postponement and God knows, it needs no compromise. For anyone. Ever.

* “I Remember, I Believe” Bernice Johnson Reagon

Best Boys

21 Monday Oct 2013

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Once, when I was in first, maybe second, grade this boy was going to beat me up.   He ran at me in the school yard and to everyone’s surprise—especially my own—I swung first, landing a pretty solid right to the jaw.  It was the only time I ever had any pushback for someone who hadn’t hit me first–at least once.  Anyway, I really didn’t have a choice, there was nowhere for me to run and, as it turned out, I didn’t have to.  He grabbed his jaw with both hands, looked horrified and ran inside the school.  I don’t know if it actually bled, but he certainly acted like it did.

Later, I remember Mrs. O’Hare talking with Mrs. Callahan (Cockeyed Callahan), wringing her hands and shaking her head while lamenting what a burden I put on them, “daydreamer, obstinate, uncooperative, unproductive and immature.” Then, as they both stood looking down at me, shaking their heads so vigorously that their turkey necks swung violently from side to side, she said “and today he hit one of my best boys.”

The Best Boys.  With their scrubbed faces, fresh haircuts and new sneakers, smacked baseballs with firm and even swings, never missed class, could dutifully recite their timetables and, on  Sundays, the Apostles Creed.  The Best Boys were only cruel when no one was looking and, if you really were a Best Boy, no one ever was.  It was as if they had some sort of arrangement with those in authority: a childhood version of don’t ask don’t tell.

I had no arrangement with anyone in authority.  That was the problem or, at least, one of them. Mrs. O’Hare, Mrs. Callahan, Mrs. Jeffries, Miss DeVoe and all the other ladies in flowered dresses liked classifications and arrangements and such.  They appreciated a simple order of things and who could blame them.  Life with more answers and less questions is so much easier to manage:  I would have done it the same way if I’d only known how.

They did what made most sense.  They simply took stock of their charges and invested where the return looked most promising. Separating the wheat from chaff you might say, they designated best boys, good boys and hopeless boys.

Best boys, good boys, hopeless boys…how any of us got that way is still a question for ages.  That was the stuff of long forgotten thesis papers and scholarly journals left unread and yellowing in a teacher’s lounge.  It is truly without sarcasm that I suggest that those questions were probably too much to ask of people who signed up to teach reading, writing and arithmetic. They had homes to get to, dinners to cook and little time for anything out of order.

I didn’t expect them to do more than they were asked or to look for what they didn’t really want to see.  I don’t hold teachers responsible for clearing the paths or healing the wounds of children randomly thrust into their care.   But, I did expect them not to be among those who inflict the damage.  I expected, still expect, them to have the wherewithal—let’s call it the intellectual courage–to know when they’re the problem and when they’re the solution.

I expect that now more than I ever did and I still don’t think it’s too much to ask.