Maggie's American Dream: The Life and Times of a Black Family; No. 1

Welcom to Strikes Twice Productions presentation of Maggie's American Dream, The Life and Times of a Black Family by James P. Comber, M.D.. Read by Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee. Introduction by James P. Comer. We stood in the doorway of the Small Baptist Church in Colma, Alabama, and looked out over the graveyard with several generations of my father's family were buried. A few headstones were toppled, some crumbling, some completely obscured by snarled growth of weeds. My cousin Donald gave the who's who among the dead. Grandpa Morgan is over here. He was the pastor of this church. Grandma Rebecca is over there and so on. My son Brian and daughter Dawn looked on with a kind of academic interest, but I was deeply moved. I thought to myself, here lies the history of my family.

Gone forever. It was the year of the Roots phenomenon, and like many Americans, we were motivated to learn more about our family history. To do so, we're taking a trip to my father's birthplace and childhood home. From the moment we spotted the roadside sign coma on U.S. Highway 82, my emotions began to in the village of Coma is named after former slave masters of the same name. Not my relatives in the museum in Eufala to the southeast, there was a picture of one of my relatives posing with a white officer whom he served during the Civil War. A picture of my great grandma, Rebecca, hung on the wall in the gymnasium of Rebecca KomaI High School in Colma. Named in her honor. She was the former slave of John and later the servant of his son, Braxton Colmar, former governor of Alabama. I was curious about her high cheekbones and light skinned cousin Donald Dowdy.

The blood kin, the coma's word like that. They are decent people. I always heard the same from my father that in mom had mentioned several times that when the white coma's stopped growing cotton, they sold the land to blacks and whites at the same price. While many landowners wouldn't sell to blacks at all or required that blacks pay more. Also, they built a modern and well cared for a high school for blacks before the days of school integration. Recently, I met the former superintendent of schools in Birmingham, Alabama, who told me that when he had attempted to integrate that school system, the only white community leader who openly supported him because that is right and fair was Hugh Colma, the governor's son, my father's childhood friend and one of the country's leading textile producers. Then cousin Donald also showed us the old cotton mill abandoned and decaying. Just off the main street, Weeds had overgrown the railroad tracks that

once took cars carrying cotton to and from the mill. The buildings that once housed the few stores in town were now beyond repair. We were received by relatives as Daniel introduced us as Uncle Hugh's son and family from up north. Donald's home was a handsome ranch house, and he was the principal of the Rebecca Cole, my high school. His wife taught at the racially integrated school in Eufala. We visited the well-kept country homes of several white combers. We chatted briefly with some of my relatives who worked for them as gardeners, housekeepers and the like. Other relatives live in chanties and survive on government subsidies of one kind or another. Croma is in Barbour County, one of the poorest in the nation, a victim of industrialization and post industrialization. It was my second visit, Takoma. I was about six years old the first time. All I can remember from that first visit was the uneasy feeling I experienced

when somebody encouraged me to touch a pig's snout. Cousin Donald, about my age, remembered that my cap had flown out of the window of the truck as we departed 35 years before he had gotten his first city cap from our visit. But even these trifling remembrances were more than I gained from the graveyard. The graveyard was silent. The more people and places we visited, the more I kept thinking these lives past and present. Something complex and important happened here, but it's all gone. This should not be forgotten. I wanted to do something about it, but I didn't know what. I'd heard bits and pieces of my mother's story over the years. But I'd never thought of her life stories noteworthy in any way, enraging, raising all of us once she died, simply doing what you're supposed to do.

But given my feelings in the graveyard in coma, it occurred to me to record her history. My mother wasn't getting any younger 72 at the time. The next time I visited my mother, I took my tape recorder on and off. Over the next three to four years, I taped Mom's story. Mom had had almost no schooling and survived through her wit, guile and caution that she didn't really show all the cards in her hand, even to her son. Most of the immigrants who came in search of the American dream, the ability to provide well for themselves and their families as valued members of a democratic society didn't find it. In one generation, it usually took two or three. My mother, Maggie, believed that education was the way to achieve her American dream. When she was denied the opportunity herself, she declared that all her children

would be educated, mom and dad together gave all five of us the support needed to acquire 13 college degrees. This story, my mother's struggle with my father's help, my own experiences and those of my siblings are a window on her life and the life and times of a black family in America during the first half of the 20th century. I often contrast my own family experience five college educated children of undereducated, low income parents with that of friends from the same background who are just as intelligent but whose lives had less desirable outcomes. This points to the differences that go beyond racial issues. Frequently, black professionals tell me that their family stories are very similar. These are black family stories that are not being told by scholars and the media

obsessed with the victims or worse, those who are not able or not trying and understanding of Maggie's story and the strategies and strengths of the survivors will tell us more about the obstacles and ways around them than an exclusive focus on the victims. In part one of this story, my mother speaks her story, her hopes and her dreams. In part two, I speak for myself and my brothers and sisters who responded to the extraordinary effort by remarkable parents. This extraordinary effort against great obstacles is the reason so many black people speak with pride about the black family and so bitterly resent those who focus on its weaknesses and ignore its achievements. Part one the oral history of Maggie Love, or Coleman, as told to her son, James.

I was born in Woodland, Mississippi, to Jim and Maud Nichols. I had two brothers, Leroy and Frank and two sisters, Aretha and Susie. It was all rural area. They had little towns in the rural country like any other place. A couple of stores or so. Nestle Most of the farming was sharecrop. It didn't leave the workers with anything to amount to. So Woodland was very poor country. One year, if they maybe were making a good crop, the boll weevils ate the crop. Then the next year they owed the man. They worked for most of the crop, even though it was a good crop because the boll weevils had ate the crop the year before. My father was sharecropping. He had more education than the white man he worked for. My father did all the weighing of the cotton and taking care of his business because that white man could not read or write.

He was a leader in a sense, on the farm, but the white fella got the money. He did so well and this white man thought so much of him that PA thought, well, our crops were so good this year. Next year I'll start by my own land and see what I can make. When he went to buy his own land and this white fella he was sharecropping with, though the man wouldn't sell it to him because he wanted him to stay on. That was the year before he was struck by lightning. One day my father and step brother was in the field with my mother and stepsister and they saw clouds coming up. So when he saw the clouds coming up, he said to her, You better go home. It's going to rain. And we only have a short corner here to finish. You do him and go on home and look after the children. I don't want you to get wet. So they started home and began roasting sweet potatoes and peanuts in the fire and just having a good time. Then this awful storm came thundering and

lightning. When the storm was about over, they looked out at the gate and saw my stepbrother lying on the gate. They started laughing at him and said, Why did you come on in? He lay there for a while. So they went to the gate to see what was wrong, he said. Paul is dead, and he told how a hard clap of thunder nail them against a sycamore tree. The lightning came across and they both fell. There was a little creek by the side of the tree that my father was on. And when he fell, he fell in this little creek. My brother tried to pull him out of the creek of water, but he realized Paul was dead because he didn't speak. People started running from everywhere. They went down and pulled him up out of the water. The women brought quilts to take him to our house. About five, six men were carrying him on the quilt.

It was in the summertime. Grass was green. There's a long way. And everywhere they stopped and laid him down. The grass burned up the whole picture of his body. The night was still in the barn. I don't know what that means, but I've heard my mother say many times and everywhere they put him down, that grass left the whole shape of the body. Then he was buried. My mother tried to work the land after dad died, it didn't work because my brothers wasn't old enough to plow. She met this fellow that had been raised up there in Woodland. He'd gone away to Memphis as a young man and got married when he and his wife was divorced. He came back home looking like most men are looking today for the woman that had the most. That was my mother. And he married her. He got rid of everything. She had three horses, half dozen cows and many turkeys and hogs.

He took us as far as Holly Springs, Mississippi. He told her that he was going on to prepare a home for us in Memphis. But when he sent the fare back, he sent fare only for her. We were five children in a strange place. I was five or six years old. We we had no food, no clothing, nothing. We just was living off neighbors in Alice Springs, which meant that we were going to just die or something. And then my mother left. She didn't know what to do, so she just took all five of us and got on the train. When the train pulled off, the conductor came around to collect the tickets and she had one ticket for herself, the conductor, all of them was white, then took this one ticket and said, where's the ticket for these children? But I don't have in it. They're not old enough. Oh, yeah, they're old enough. I can tell you the age of every one of these children, we were way out from the station. He said I could pull this train right now, put you in these children off, but I'm not going to do that. Why don't you ever do a trick like this again?

So she went to tell him the story of how poor she was. And instead of pulling the cord and putting us off, he began to bring us fruit. At that time, black people did not eat meals on the train. He felt so sorry for all these little children that he started bringing us fruit. We came on then to Memphis. My stepfather was there waiting to greet her. He had no place for the rest of us, but he had to take us. She had brought us along. He found an old storefront, no beds, just junk. That's where we lived, sleeping on pallets. Vagabonds, the early years in Memphis was very, very hard. My step dad had a wife already in Memphis.

My mother didn't know about it. So this means he had a wife on both sides of town. He wasn't divorced. He told her he was, but he wasn't. It was very hard. In them days, men couldn't make a living for one family. So you know how hard it was trying to make a living for two. He was a rustic furniture maker. He could have made good, but he was a poor manager. He left my mother several times, left us on neighbors. We grew up there in Memphis. We all lived together, nine children, one house. The boys all slept in one bed and the girls all slept in one bed. We slept at one another, head and feet like sardines. We had old beds. I mean, the boys bed was wire. They were quilts him. We put straw from the fields and put in the mattresses and that would get flat and we'd put some more in. My step dad would go away and stay away months at a time, six

months a year to die. My mother was such a friendly person. She was just move in a neighborhood and make herself acquainted. Good evening, Miss Jones. How are you doing? She'd make a conversation with people. We was friendly and we made friends everywhere. My mother would say, go over there and tell Mrs. So-and-so. I said, send me a quarter. And she turned it down. Smith as they did send me a few potatoes, she would let the boys go downtown with a quarter in them days that wasn't refrigerated like there is now. You had ice boxes and over the weekend you couldn't keep meat or chicken or what have you. So she'd have the boys tell the storekeeper to send whatever they could send us for a quarter. Soon the merchants, all white men would catch on and would say, well, hey, wait until I close the door and all the things we can't keep over till Monday, we'll give it to you. And sometimes they would give us enough food to last.

All week long. We moved from here to there and here they're all more or less in the same area. We lived in many, many houses. Most of the first houses we lived in was like barns. If they had any windows, they were open. In the daytime, one didn't have any windows. You open the doors, no screens. I can't remember any. They didn't have floors that you couldn't jump across from one place to the other. There were holes in the floors of some my it that used to sit in one house and count all the chickens under it. What happened back then was if you seen an empty house, it was dilapidated. You just moved in. We must have lived in twelve or thirteen houses all together. There were no lights, just lamps with coal, oil and wicks them. We were so poor we didn't own but one lamp by night. You had to have all you were going to do done because night you had to go from one

room to the other. With this lamp we cooked on a coal, a wood stove, mostly wood. You just pick up a board, a plank, what have you around and cook your meals. I think God in heaven usually cooked the meals because I wonder now where we got enough wood to cook at some of the places where we lived, there was simply no wood. And as you put a board of the house to make a fire, one of the houses that we lived in belonged to the man, but used to be the mayor of a city. And Mr. Liddy, the mayor of the city, an M.D., was somebody there were quite a few acres around this house house. Must have had four or five rooms, and that was big. So when the former mayor found out that somebody was living in the house, really his mother and father's house, he came out to see, he was so happy to find out that there was a family that had lots of children and wanted this

place cleaned up. This was something he cherished because it was where he grew up. We were there about a year. As soon as my stepfather started making good, he wanted to leave. He could have made good. The telephone wasn't out in these rural places yet. So he and his brother Johnny and Bev put up poles and strung up a telephone line from the city limits all the way out to Bunker Hill, where this little place was about a mile. He had built this little shack of a shop across the road from the house, and this phone was in a booth attached to the shop. All the folks in the area came and used the telephone when they needed it. There was two white roses there in the area who use it almost every day to order their supplies. One was better off and he gave 10 cents every time he used it the other. But goods, mostly canned goods like salmon and peas, the neighborhood folks usually paid a nickel when they use it.

This was the one new thing, the telephone. But my stepdad threw away the money that he made from the things like that. And we never got ahead. We moved again, leaving the shop, the telephone poles and everything. That's when we went on this houseboat down the Mississippi. You've been listening to the true life story of Maggie Colmer in Maggie's American Dream, The Life and Times of a Black Family by her son, James P. Comber, M.D.. As we've heard, the odds were great against Maggie, born

poor and black in Mississippi in 1954, after the death of her father, she's subject to the reckless, disorganized ways of a cruel and violent stepfather who is the embodiment of the violent, victimized and victimizing black male of the time period. But as we will hear in upcoming episodes, Maggie fights hard to get herself up and out after a childhood of hunger and abuse. Maggie makes her escape and begins an odyssey north where she learns that with patience, a little guile and a lot of hard work, she can make her dream a reality. Maggie's American dream. The life and times of a black family evokes powerful memories in both black and white Americans. This is a story which helps explain our successes and our outlook on life. It is a story of promise as opposed to the otherwise despairing outlook found in much of the black community. Today, Maggie's American Dream shows that the home, the church and the school can and must be the institutions which

are the instruments for success. Please join with us as our story. Maggie's American Dream. The life and times of a Black Family continues. We will hear how Maggie and her family are dragged by their stepfather, Levi, on a trip down the Mississippi River picking cotton. Listen. As the family encounters trouble at every turn, facing hostile police and starvation, all the while traveling on an overcrowded, leaky boat, his brothers had built a little houseboat. He bought the engine, so it made all three of them owners of the boat. And we all three families went down the Mississippi to Arkansas on that houseboat. They'd stop off when the food gave out in a little town, little country place anywhere. They could stop the boat. They go and see the fella that own the land. The owners always wanted somebody to pick cotton. My step dad and his brother in law picked cotton until they got enough money to buy a little food and we'd move on.

Father, there were twenty one of us on a boat that was supposed to have three people and there were three lifejackets and 21 people. Most were children. And whenever the police, they had police on the water, just like on the land came near, they'd say, so where are you [Unrecognized] going. And papa say Oh are you going up the river a bit Cotton. Why won't you go in and the kids on there? No. So we don't have any kids. They had us hide and we don't dare look out. You got any life jackets? Yes. Or white folks. And they'd hold up two or three. There was my stepdad, his two brothers, my mom and two brothers wives and eight or nine of us children and the brother's children. Anyhow, they were twenty one people on this little houseboat. We will hear how, even as a young girl, Maggie witnessed the disparity between white and black, rich and poor. Yet she believed that she, too, could live a better life.

She believed that education and hard work would help her reach her goal. She was a poor young widow, a woman with a lot of children. I didn't know what to do. My stepfather was the first thing she met, and that's the way she felt life was and had to be. And she went on with it. Whatever he did and whatever he said, she accepted. She tried to send us to school when we first arrived in Memphis, but she couldn't we go a day or two and then he'd take us out. School didn't mean anything to him, he said. We learned devilment in school and he didn't want us to go. We all wanted to go to school. Somebody would say, Papa, can we go to school today? Everybody got a weapon and cursing and kick for that. I've seen him knock my mother cold some time for asking to let us go to school. One time he was so ugly that we were going to kill him. Maggie had to work hard to overcome her stepfather and others who thought that African-Americans were destined to a lonely existence.

That dream otherwise was dangerous and stupid. Mr. and Mrs. Cordy's was a wealthy white family nearby. They were German people. Mrs. Cordy's had this big garden and we kids used to help with it. I remember the corn and beans and peanuts. I remember this water coming out of the mouth of the statue of a woman. She took us in this fine house of hers and I knew I wanted something like that for me. There was an alley between the city limits and the suburb. The white people was on the city limits side and we were on the suburbs side, only a wire fence. Separated us, the whites had much, much land around them. We lived upstairs and there was a little porch. I come out every morning and I would look over on this side, the colored homes, little toilet sitting outside, wire fences broken down, pretty house in there.

And then I'd look on the other side, the whites, especially Mr Cordy's. He owned a fine house, acres of land around it. Some were lawyers and some were schoolteachers and so forth. And I'd always look over there and say what was on my mind because I couldn't say anything out loud. Why can't we live like that? Poppa makes enough money and we do all we can. We're smart. Why can't we have something like that? If you said anything like, look at that girl. She got a new car. My stepdad said, oh, hell, that ain't for [Unrecognized]. That's for white folks. But that didn't dampen my spirit at all. When he would say things that that he didn't know, I just be swearing under my breath to myself. I'd say you to him so. So you could have just try. I felt like those things were for everybody. I felt like if they could make it, I could make.

All this and more when we rejoin our storytellers, Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis for Maggie's American Dream, The Life and times of a Black Family. The program you've been listening to is Maggie's American Dream, Her Life and Times of a Black Fairy by James P. Comar and our storytellers for this presentation, our Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee. This radio series has been brought to you by the Rockefeller Foundation with additional funding from Kraft General Foods and additional assistance has been provided by thrifty car rental. Maggie's American Dream has been produced by strikes twice productions in cooperation with KQED from San Francisco. Uh.

Welcome to Strikes Twice Productions presentation of Maggie's American Dream, The Life and Times of a Black Family by James P. Comar, M.D.. This inspiring success story centers on an exceptional woman, Maggie Comber, whose American dream brought her from abject poverty in the rural South to become the mother of four outstanding achievers. Maggie's American Dream is the unforgettable chronicle of courage and resourcefulness, pride and achievement of daring to dream. Despite the odds, we see how Maggie's dream went beyond the desire for material or social gains to a dream that America would provide opportunity and freedom through education for all people born without privilege.

And now we are proud to present Maggie's American dream, the life and times of a black family read by our storytellers Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis, most of the immigrants who came in search of the American dream, the ability to provide well for themselves and their families as valued members of a democratic society didn't find it. In one generation, it usually took two or three. My mother, Maggie, believed that education was the way to achieve her American dream. When she was denied the opportunity herself, she declared that all her children would be educated. Mom and dad together gave all five of us the support needed to acquire 13 college degrees. In part one of this story, my mother speaks her story, her hopes and her dreams. In part two, I speak for myself and my brothers and sisters who responded to the extraordinary effort by remarkable parents. This extraordinary effort against great obstacles is the reason

so many black people speak with pride about the black family and so bitterly resent those who focus on its weaknesses and ignore its achievements. The oral history of Maggie Leukocoria Coma as told to her son James when we last left our story, Maggie Luxor and Nichols, as a five year old girl in Woodleigh, Mississippi, had lost her father, who was struck and killed by lightning while working in the fields. A man named Levi moves in on the family. He charms Maggie's mother, Maude, and convinces her that he can provide her with a better life than sharecropping. On the farm, he sells all of her possessions and takes the family to live in a series of ramshackle rundown shacks. One day, he decides to put the family on a houseboat to travel up and down the Mississippi River picking cotton. And now let's rejoin our storytellers Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis down the Mississippi.

My step dad was a drifter. His brothers had built a little houseboat. He bought the engine. So it made all three of them owners of the boat. And we all three families went down the Mississippi to Arkansas on that houseboat. They'd stop off when the food gave out in a little town, little country place anywhere. They could stop the boat. They go and see the fella that own the land. The owners always wanted somebody to pick cotton. My step dad and his brother in law picked cotton until they got enough money to buy a little food and we'd move on. Father, there were twenty one of us on a boat that was supposed to have three people and there were three lifejackets and 21 people. Most were children. And whenever the police, they had police on the water, just like on the land came near, they'd say, so where are you [Unrecognized] going. And papa say Oh are you going up the river. A big cotton white vote, you're gone.

And the kid on there? No, we don't have any kids. They had us hide and we don't dare look out. You got any life jackets? Yes. Or white folks. And they'd hold up two or three. There was my step dad, his two brothers, my mom and two brothers wives and eight or nine of us children and the brother's children. Anyhow, they were twenty one people on this little houseboat. We were six weeks going from Memphis to Hickman, Ben, Arkansas. This one night we didn't have any food and they kept on going. We finally got to a place where cotton was falling off, but the water was rising rapidly. They could only put the anchor down. It was no place to tie the boat up. The men jumped off the boat and climbed up the hill some way, going to look for work and food. My mother was sitting on the boat and finally she said, you know, I like this boat is sinking, seems to go round and round or something.

And then my acid mark, something is wrong. They lifted the plank in the hull of the boat and the hull was. Full of water, all the children grab buckets, good, Sara. She started the hope, but first we had to get all this water and put it back in the river. We took rags and towels and dried up to her and then she could put Tessera on. In the meantime, a big boat trying to help us almost drowned us. They saw the light on top of the boat rocking from side to side, and they thought somebody was waving to come because they were in trouble. And so this big boat started toward us. It went, you know, those big waves. It was about to sink us. And my brother ran up on top of the boat and signaled them away. They went away and we didn't drown. But, oh, that was one of those times I didn't go off to pick cotton much. I was very little. And also I was the cook. I had to cook for all 21 people.

I would want to work in the fields because I was left at the boat picking greens, taking care of the fire, ordered to cook this for that one and that for another one. In those days, you could get away with telling children to do anything. If the parents didn't care and those at wouldn't cook, they tell me to cook. We were dirt poor, but people was nice to us. They really was. Mr and Mrs Cordy's was the wealthy white family nearby. They was German people. Mrs Cordy's had this big garden and we kids used to help with it. I remember the corn and beans and peanuts. I remember this water coming out of the mouth of the statue of a woman. She took us in this fine house of hers and I knew I wanted something like that for me. We knew some of the better off black people, too. There was a Mr and Mrs Kloster in my mum. I met through Mrs Hargrove.

He could pass for White. My mama used to visit with her and take some of us children. They had this fine place about a mile down the road from us. She and my mama used to sit and talk in this big yard that they had. There was an alley between the city limits and the suburb. The white people was on the city limits side and we were on the suburbs side, only a wire fence separating us. The whites had much, much land around them. We lived upstairs and there was a little porch. I come out every morning. I would look over on this side, the colored homes, little toilet sitting outside, wire fences broken down, pretty house in there. And then I'd look on the other side, the whites, especially Mr Cordy's, he owned a fine house, acres of land around it. Some were lawyers and some were schoolteachers and so forth. And I'd always look over there and say what was on my mind because I couldn't say

anything out loud. Why can't we live like that? Papa makes enough money and we do all we can. We're smart. Why can't we have something like that? If you said anything like, look at that girl, she got a new car, my stepdad is eight or hell that for [Unrecognized]. That's for white folks. But that didn't dampen my spirit at all. When he would say things like that, he didn't know. I just be swearing under my breath to myself. I'd say you to him. So so you could have had just just up like those things were for everybody. I felt like if they could make it, I could make. A trifling kind of fellow, he was just a fool, acted like a child with the white folks, that's the sort of fellow he was.

He worked when he felt like he could have made good, but he did not. He was a triumphant kind of fellow. He was one that didn't want nothing. And you couldn't make him. My brother did help my step dad make flower baskets, benches and so forth when he was there. And they learn how they started making them once when he went away and stayed so long and there was no food and nothing in the house. So they said, Ma, just make some benches and go out and see if we can sell them. Finally, she agreed and almost before they stepped outside the house, they came running back with the money. And after that they did that every time he would go away, make enough money for us to survive. But then my stepdad would go himself after he came back and people said, no, we don't want yours. Some little boys came by and we bought from them. This made him awfully angry because it was his business. He'd beat the boys after that at the boys work, they got into trouble. They didn't work. We starved.

One mean man, he was so mean to my mother. Oh, did he beat her for anything? Someone else made him angry and he'd come and beat her. She was a poor young with a woman with a lot of children and didn't know what to do. My stepfather was the first thing she met and that's the way she felt like it was and had to be. And she went on with it. Whatever he did and whatever he said, she accepted. She tried to send us to school when we first arrived in Memphis, but she couldn't we go a day or two and then he'd take us out. School didn't mean anything to him. He said we learn devilment in school and he didn't want us to go. We all wanted to go to school. Somebody would say, Papa, can we go to school today? Everybody got a weapon and cursing and kick for that.

I've seen him knock my mother cold some time for asking to let us go to school. One time he was so ugly that we were going to kill him. He had whipped my mother. So for nothing, it just got to us. She was the only somebody we had to go to for anything. Whenever he whipper, he'd always leave the house. He'd beat her up something terrible that day and left the house. Fred said, Let kill him when he comes back, OK? You take the hammer, you take the hatchet and you take this. You take that. There was an, oh, big door, about twice as big as us. And we all hid behind the door. We decided that when he came in, somebody was going to knock him in the head with the hatchet and all of us were going to jump on him with whatever we had. My mother was laying out on the bed. The house got so quiet she started calling children

children. Nobody answered. And after a while she got up to come to look for us. We were all standing behind the door with these tools we were going to use to kill him with. She said, Oh, put those things up. I'm going to kill you. Oh, not if we get him first, I said. However, she made us put them down. And I've known some mean mean men and mean women, but I don't know of anybody ever being as mean as my stepdad. He just went out of his way to mistreat us. He was just a mean, violent man. He didn't drink and he didn't smoke, but he was one main man. There wasn't much ugly that he didn't do. Friends before family, his family would be hungry at home,

but he would give things other people to make friends and people would say, Mr. So-and-so is a nice man. He gave me this. See, after a while, he stopped making furniture at all. Now the boys made the furniture and gave the money to him. He was not home before he got there. He gives this to so-and-so a dozen eggs. He gives it to so-and-so a chicken, and then he get home and we'd ask him, Papa, how many chickens can we cook? He goes, where you eat up everything. Oh, he grinned and carried on with the neighbors all the time. He thought he was making friends. But years after we were grown and would come home, the same people would mention how bad he treated us and how little they thought of him. There were two of them that visited a great big old man. I forgot another man when they came. My step dad would tell me, cook a chicken.

And he said to his friends, Come on, have some dinner. And they say, No, I'm going home. My old lady will have some dinner. No, it don't taste like mine. Come on. Oh, he was so insistent. Finally they would accept. I have seen them sit down and eat and drink and when they got up from the table, there'd be nothing left. But Bones would wait and wait for them to leave. They ate all the food and didn't even look around or ask if there was enough for the children. There was so many times there wasn't any food. It was so many times it wasn't anything but salt on the table. Back then I did the cooking. The first meal I cooked, I was seven years old. I made biscuits. My mother was sick at the time. She couldn't walk and he was gone. But there was some flour there. She told my brother how to put me on a box to a cabinet. I could see her from her bed and she told me how many cups of flour and so forth.

And believe it or not, I got those biscuits all done. It was like salmon croquettes or something like that to me. I was so proud. By the time I got this meal done, he walked in. We hadn't seen him in over six months. I bet he walked in and ate up most of that meal now and my mom and stepdad ate. We never could eat with them. He never allowed the children to come to the table with adults. We had to wait. And if there was anything left, we got it. He'd need a fan. In the summertime, we had to stand and fan and while he ate and in one house we were in, he made a fan on a pulley string. He had his you know, he had built a pasteboard fan and he put a pulley string on it. We had to stand behind him out of sight and pull the string. This would coolen as well as keep the flies away.

It's no wonder that the first time my brother Levoy came home after he ran away, as soon as he said had everybody, he said to my mom, I want to go buy some food. And of course, by then my step dad had a little pickup truck. Leroy must have had about fifty dollars in those days. Fifty dollars could fill a truck. He brought back a barrel of flour, barrel of sugar and meat and all kinds of stuff. Later, whenever anybody went back home, the first thing we would do was to buy some groceries. This would help the younger children. It was quite a life. Goodbye, Tennessee, Leroy ran away. First, we had all been planning to run away for a year.

Each one of us had been saving a nickel or a dime from our errands. We would drop it in an old tin can that we hit. The plan was that Leroy would run away and save money and help us all leave. So finally, after my stepdad had hit Leroy and Leroy didn't come back, my step dad kept asking, Where's Leroy? We all just looked at each other, grinning when he was looking fine. Late that evening, we heard the whistle of the boat, the Charles organ. At six o'clock we knew Leroy was gone, but he was going to kill my stepdad. He hid under the bed waiting for him with a gun, but we got him out of there because there might be trouble. Leroy got Buddy the money to go up north. After Buddy left, I wrote Leroy that I was really ready to leave there. He wrote back and told me that my half sister Carrie was coming down that summer

and that he'd send my fear by her. I was 16 on August 1st and I left August 1st. If you ran away before you were 16, they could force you back home. So I waited until I was sixteen. When the train pulled out of the station, I said, Good bye, Tennessee. Is Chicago in August 1920. I came into Chicago on a train. I got off the train in Chicago and took the streetcar into East Chicago, which was about 30 miles away. I didn't stop to think too much about Chicago or East Chicago. All I wanted was freedom. I thought I can make it anywhere. East Chicago is just a few houses and most of it was steel mill and smoke. There wasn't any refinery or anything of the kind, but that wasn't what I was looking for. I was looking for a better life for myself.

Do you hear people talk about Chicago? As I had heard my sister talk when I was still in Memphis, you think that money was dropping off of trees? They would say that you just didn't have to. Was there anything you could have, whatever you want while still down south? I thought to myself, I'll wait and see what it's like. And sure enough, East Chicago wasn't what I had been told. It was quite a letdown in Chicago was quite different from Memphis. When I first came to East Chicago, most of the people were two races, Polish and black there, a few Spanish, if any. And there wasn't that many black folks in Memphis there. Well, all people was on one side of the track and the poor were on the other. And in Chicago, you didn't have that gap. We were most on the same level. Everybody worked at the steel mill practically, although there was a vast difference in size. Is Chicago being a town and Memphis a huge city. When I first came into East Chicago, there wasn't much segregation.

As I said, there were only two nationalities of people, Polish and blacks. We didn't speak their language and they didn't speak ours. But you could live on any street in East Chicago, even Grand Boulevard. My best friend lived on Grand Boulevard. Fifteen years later, it had become one of the finest streets in town and white only. This carries I live with my half sister, Carrie, and her husband, Charlie Watkins, my two brothers were also living with her at that time. My brothers and I had planned for me to go to school because my stepfather would not let us go to school in Memphis. They wanted somebody in the family to get an education. We had learned some in Memphis. We hid some books around that different people would give us at night when my stepdad was away. We study those books, but we had to run and hide them when we heard him coming

out of all the days put together. I hadn't had six months of school in Memphis. I would be two or three days in school when I started in September. Then we wouldn't go any more until a few days just before Christmas and a few more just before school was out in the summer. So I wanted to go to school in East Chicago, but I was a little bit too old at the time. At 16, I had to be put in the class with eight year old children. The teacher in the tune was nice to me. They got interested in me when they see I was a great big girl and I didn't know how to read and write. So I was able to read and write my name and count to 100 and so forth. However, I had to do too much work at home. I would have to rush home and cook for the whole family in a couple of rumors. Then I had to wash clothes until 12 or one o'clock at night. I ptosis carry that. I could not do all that and go to school,

says carried, but like it didn't make sense for Graybill go girl like me to be in beginning school. Living at Sears Karez is quite a step up for me. Brother Charlie made good money at the time. They had their own home, six room house in a nice neighborhood. They were church people and we hadn't been allowed to go to church. Back in Tennessee, they had plenty of food, which we did not have. Back in Memphis, I did get to where some of my hand-me-down, which was quite a privilege at the time. But still I had in mind that this wasn't it yet. I was very independent and I wanted to be on my own. My brothers suggested that I go live with a cousin and go to school. When it didn't work out was scary. When I knocked on the door of their cousin's house, somebody said, Come on in. When I walked in, there were a bunch of men playing cards and drinking. My brother introduced me to them and it started, Oh, is that your sister?

Oh, man. I never did care for a lot of foolishness playing cards, sitting around, loafing, as I would call it. That kind of sitting around up to nothing bothered me then. And it still bothers me today. I thought even back then that black folks had lost enough time because of slavery. They should be thinking of things of interest to them or things. It was going to help them get ahead, you know, instead of just Wolfen. So I knew from the start that I wasn't going to stay with my cousin. Both brothers had tried hard to make it possible for me to go to school, but I wouldn't go through all that. This was when I really gave up on the idea of going to school. You have been listening to the true life story of Maggie Colmer in Maggie's American Dream The Life and Times of a Black Family by Maggie Son James P. Comber, M.D.. As this episode of our story concludes, Maggie has given up on the idea of going to school, but not on her dream of a better life.

But life in Chicago, Indiana is not always what Maggie expects it to be. As Maggie settles into her new life, she finds work the church and even love. Most of the work in the two years before I was married was catch as catch can. At first I held jobs for two or three weeks at a time. People were poor back in them times. They weren't wealthy enough to hire people for more than a day, a week or a couple of weeks. Most of the people did their own work. Being a girl from the South, my attitude was different to the kids in East Chicago. They wouldn't go out looking for work like that. My attitude was how I got my first real job in a candy store. The work was awfully hard. She put as much work on me as you ought to put on three people, but I was happy to have it at that. I did housekeeping and washing as a 16 year old girl. I was washing for a family of five.

You ironed all day one day and watched all day the next day. I also helped her make sandwiches to sell at school and I did all the scrubbing down on my hands and knees, but not cooking because she was Jewish and I wasn't able to cook that way. I didn't have time anyway, if there was ever any minute left after I finished washing and ironing before the day was gone, I had to work in the store. She paid ten dollars a week, which was surprising at that time because that was more than some of the women were making. But I worked from seven to seven, sometimes more and seven days a week. I got off at noon on Sunday. When I came to town in 1920, Zion Church was a storefront on Elm Street. Life was mostly church. You went to church on Sunday mornings until 11:00 Sunday night. You go for dinner and back to church tonight service. And then during the week you had about three nights that you went to choir rehearsal and

prayer service. Your recreation was really church and church socials. That's how I met your dad at church with his group of girls. He was looking for the nice kind of girl that was in this preacher's daughters group. He was such an outstanding young man. I didn't think I was equal to such a person. All the people around in the church felt he was a nice guy. He went to church and he worked. He wasn't a playboy or into messing around foolishness, as I would call it. He was very serious. He was stern about the things that he believed in, religion and education and just plain being somebody that was his all around person. He believed you could live the better way of life. He always felt that black people who get the better way of life just like everybody else, though it didn't seem so in this Alabama preacher's son, Hugh, Maggie finds the man who will become her husband

that next Sunday he came on down to our house after church. We lived just a block away. Somebody would always come with my brother in law every Sunday evening. Just sit around the next service as it have a seat, my brother, and I'll be out in a few minutes. I didn't come to see him. I came to see you, and that's how it started. So please listen. When our storytellers Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis bring you more of Maggie's American Dream, the life and times of a black family. This concludes our presentation of Maggie's American dream, the life and times of a black family. Thank you for joining us. The story was read by Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee based on the book Maggie's American Dream by James P. Colmer, M.D. with text adaptation by Dawn Comer. The executive producers are Dawn Comer and Brian J. Comer. The producers are Michelle Tatum and Carol Pierson.

The associate producer is Carol Mateland. This program was recorded at KQED-FM in San Francisco with post production by Ed Herman at Garuda Records in San Francisco. The musical score was composed by Richard Leider Words and Music, Los Angeles. This program was made possible through a grant from the Rockefeller, with additional funding from Kraft General Foods Inc., ground transportation is provided by Thrifty Car Rental, Maggie's American Dream is a Strikes Twice production produced in cooperation with KQED FM San Francisco. Although there had been no.

They had never been any question, they had never been any question that the next step, although they had all but. They had never been any question that the next step, although that had been almost no direct discussion about it, was college. There had never been any question that the next step, although they had been almost no direct discussion about it, was college.