Growing Up Black in a White Neighborhood: Resilience and the Power of Family Heritage

Growing up as the only black girl in an all-white neighborhood during the late 1960s was a life-defining experience. 

From facing isolation at school to encountering both subtle and overt racism, my family's journey to simply buy a house was fraught with challenges. Yet, it was my extroverted nature and the unwavering support of my family that helped me navigate these lonely and difficult times. 

This episode of "Quiet, No More" opens a window into my childhood, highlighting how resilience and self-confidence were built through the pride instilled by my family. Celebrating black heritage and sharing our history through education and community engagement were key aspects that empowered me to rise above adversity.

Moreover, I emphasize the crucial role of preserving and sharing personal and family histories. Rediscovering forgotten events and details from my past has shown me that every piece of our history plays a vital role in the larger narrative of our country. 

This episode encourages listeners to look at family artifacts and stories with a fresh perspective, understanding their significance in constructing our collective heritage. By recording and sharing our stories, we ensure that the vital pieces of our shared history remain known and cherished. 

Join me as we take an active role in preserving our legacy and ensure that our histories are "Quiet no More.

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Carmen Wimberley Cauthen is an author, speaker, and lover of history, Black history in particular. As a truth teller, she delights in finding the hidden truths about the lives of people who made a difference - whether they were unknown icons or regular everyday people.

To Learn more of Carmen:
www.carmencauthen.com
www.researchandresource.com

Chapters

• 0:01 Black in White Neighborhood
• 16:30 Preserving Family History and Heritage

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Unseen, unheard. We've lived like that far too long. I'm Carmen Coffin and this is Quiet, no More. At the age of 10, in 1969, we moved to an all-white neighborhood. I felt alone, firstly because I was the only girl in the neighborhood. But the other reason was because I was the only black girl in the neighborhood and walking to school. I was the only black child walking to school. There were four black kids at my elementary school. I was in the fourth grade, maybe fifth grade, and then the other three rode back and forth with the same person every day. I would get called names After the first day when I had been surrounded by four white girls. The second day there were four empty desks around me. I didn't know what had happened, and when you're 10, you don't know what kinds of questions to ask. I did, finally, ask my mom why we moved to that neighborhood, and one of the things that she told me was that they had been looking for a house and they would have had to buy two lots in a black neighborhood in order to build the kind of house that they wanted. And she was one of the first teachers black teachers to desegregate the school system and she saw lots of houses for sale, and they were the kinds of houses that she would like to have. So she and dad spent a good little while looking for houses and being told, once they would show up to view homes, that they were sold. But they weren't, and so finally they moved. They were able to buy a house like they wanted in a neighborhood. We didn't have any threats that I know of.

Speaker 1: 2:08

But it wasn't comfortable. I was alone, and so I had to figure out how to make myself fit in so that I would have friends, because, at the heart of it, I'm an extrovert. I like to talk to people Because, at the heart of it, I'm an extrovert. I like to talk to people, I like having friends, I like having people around me. But it didn't always work out well. Sometimes I would do things like I learned how to play violin, because that's what it seemed like everybody else was going to do, and sometimes it seemed like it didn't matter what I did, I'd make a friend and they'd get moved. Walking to school or walking home, somebody might come, pick someone up one of the kids that I was with and then I'd never see them again. I didn't know it was because I was black and they were white and they didn't want me to be at that school with their children. One of the ways that I learned how to be comfortable with myself was to spend time with family and to learn the family history, because it was important. My family has always been proud of who they were and they instill that in me. Now I know that part of that installation was to make sure that I felt supported. Sometimes we need support that we don't know that we need. Sometimes our kids need support that we don't know that they need. But that was what it was for me and it became an important part of my life. It was important to be supported because I was smart. It was important to be supported because it showed me ways that I could continue to move forward. It kept me from freezing up and not being able to move forward.

Speaker 1: 4:06

And as a Southern woman, a Southern black woman, there are so many ways that you don't have the opportunity to open your mouth and speak. It's not that you can't, but what happens when you do? Is it welcome? It's not always welcome. Sometimes you open your mouth and speak, you lose your job. Sometimes you open your mouth and speak, the men around you tell you to be quiet, or they ignore what you say, or they take your idea and they run with it and say it was their idea. It hurts, it makes you feel alone. And being black, just being black, not even worrying about being a black woman you sometimes are second-guessed, oftentimes are second-guessed. It's not always a comfortable place. It's not always a comfortable skin to be in, unless you've got some support.

Speaker 1: 5:14

I love being a black woman. I love looking around and seeing people who look like me, but don't, they don't all look the same. They don't all have the same coloration. Their hair is not all the same. I love to celebrate that, and that's something that my family taught me to do to celebrate who I am and to celebrate who other people are around me. That led me to places that I would not normally have gone or been able to go being able to travel, being able to learn new languages, spending time hearing about the things that my family and my ancestors did that were important, and eventually coming to the realization that the history of America doesn't tell everybody's history. It certainly didn't tell mine, and so I had to be responsible for learning my own history. It wasn't that I didn't want to learn other people's history, but mine was just as important, and so my family made sure that we my brother and I learned not only family history but black history, and we were inspired to share it with other people. And so that's what I do today.

Speaker 1: 6:41

I love to share black history with other people. I love to dig and find it, but that's what made me whole when I was a young girl growing up. The important part of that was as I got older and I realized that that wasn't the history that was being shared and told. I was able to share it and tell it myself. So I would do book reports or class reports or read and share information about black history.

Speaker 1: 7:16

You know, family is important because that's where we learn our basic history, family history, who you are, who your parents were or are, who your grandparents were, who your great-grandparents were, as far back as you can go. That's important, and I don't mean from a genealogical place, I mean from the memories you've got. I have some amazing memories of Easter egg hunts and family gatherings for my grandmother's birthday, which was always it was January 1st. So every New Year's Day we always gathered at somebody's house and had dinner for her, and it was just an exciting time of the elders coming around and sharing their stories, their life. But even when you're a child, you don't know all of the important parts and you really don't care, because you just want to play with your cousins, because you're your first friends. I love doing that, and so I have enjoyed learning my history and learning it from memories, and carrying memories and seeing memories everywhere I go, and in that I've been able to recreate the history of places that haven't been written down or haven't been told.

Speaker 1: 8:46

When I was growing up, not only did I walk to this white school all white school but I was one of the first students that in the desegregation of our school system, and so going to junior high, I still didn't feel like I fit it in. Even though there were black students being bused into the school that I went to, it was because I didn't fit in with them either. So here I was, a black young lady in class with other black children, but I didn't know them, we didn't have any history, we didn't have any relationship, and my father was a pharmacist and his drugstore was close to where the other students live that were being bused in. So they would talk about me. They did not want to befriend me and I guess I was a little strange because I took dance lessons, which a lot of the black students didn't do, which a lot of the black students didn't do. I was also strange kind of to the white kids, not just because I was black, but because I danced. So at lunch my friends and I would dance, we would do ballet, practice our dance routines. I played the violin. A lot of kids didn't do that. You might be in band but there weren't that many of us in orchestra and so it was just.

Speaker 1: 10:26

I felt alone in a lot of ways. By the time I got to high school I'd kind of found my footing. But I realized that it's hard to be friends with people when you don't have any control over what you're doing, when you don't have any control over what you're doing, when you don't have any control over how you're going to get to their house to visit, because you're a child and you don't drive. So for a long time I just thought I was different, and I am, and it's okay. You might have felt the same way unique, except when we're kids we don't think about it as being unique. We think about we're different from everybody else and we don't recognize how many things that we have that are just alike. I didn't realize until I was an adult how many times I didn't get invited to parties in the neighborhood where I grew up. I would hear about them and sometimes I wouldn't hear about them. Some I've only recently begun to hear about parties that I didn't get invited to, probably because I was a little black girl. But you know, it has made me stronger and able to stand on my own and be able to do things for myself that I would not necessarily have tried before.

Speaker 1: 11:47

It's also important for me, as a black Southern woman, to recognize that there were places where my voice wasn't welcome, to recognize that there were places where my voice wasn't welcome. It wasn't always welcome in discussions about politics, which was something and still is something that I love. It wasn't always welcome from other women. There was always some competition. Sometimes it was because I was smart, but I questioned that too. I didn't realize that I was smart, I was just me.

Speaker 1: 12:26

It's important to love being yourself and we have to watch being ourselves sometimes, because that often means that we're people that make other people uncomfortable because they're not comfortable being themselves, and so sometimes they try to hold your voice down. They try to keep you from speaking who you are or or sharing the beliefs that you have. Sometimes that happens at work. I was generally the only black person in my office, and so sometimes that was difficult. Sometimes you overhear things. You overhear conversations when you're a child or when you're an adult that weren't necessarily meant for you, but they might be about you, and then they make you question who you are and what you've done. I think it's important, though, to have something to stand on, and, like I said earlier, that was family history for me.

Speaker 1: 13:32

Recently, I have realized that history in America was written or created by people who could read and write, and people who did that reading and writing to take care of their economic situations. That means it was white men. They were taking care of writing down what was important for their financial stability, and that means that nobody else's history was really written down. It didn't matter if you were black, male, female, indigenous, it didn't matter. Occasionally that was written down, but not often. So it's important that we begin to write our own history down, that we begin to tell our own stories, and so that's what I'm doing is telling my story, telling our stories, and I'm making sure that the history of my people doesn't get lost in the process. Today, I hear too often that black people didn't do anything. Black people never did anything. Black people should be happy with what they learned from slavery, what trades they learned from slavery. People who were enslaved already had knowledge before they came here, and so white people maybe should be thankful for what black people came and taught them.

Speaker 1: 15:10

I just think that the history is important and you've got a piece of it and you've got to start writing your piece of it down. You've got to start writing the piece about yourself. You've got to start recording the piece about your family, your parents. It doesn't matter if they were important to you. They were important. It doesn't matter if they were elected officials, it doesn't matter if they were people who worked as plumbers. It doesn't matter if they were people who cleaned houses. They had a story. They had a part of building the history of this country and it's important that every piece gets told. So you need to start doing that. You need to write down your memories. Write down what the houses looked like or the apartments that you stayed in. Write down who was there. Write down the things that you did when you were playing when you were a kid. Write down the recipes or the foods that you like to eat and who made them and what made it important, because all of it's important, every piece of it is important. Because all of it's important, every piece of it is important.

Speaker 1: 16:30

I am so amazed when I go back and I read oral histories or read books that talk about things that I don't remember. And at 60, almost 65, there's a lot that I do remember, but there are little bits and pieces from what happened on this street and what happened on that street that I didn remember. But there are little bits and pieces from what happened on this street and what happened on that street that I didn't know about, and they're important. You might not think that what your family did was important, but just think if it hadn't happened. That's a little piece that's lost from the history and the foundation of our country. Every piece is a brick that builds on top of the next brick. If you've got stuff at home that you think is not important, look at it again. Look at it with adult eyes.

Speaker 1: 17:20

I know for me I have found so much information that tells about how houses were built that my family lived in, or what land was taken from my family to build a town, how they were sued to get land, how their life was, what they were able to accomplish, how they had to grow their own food. Those are things that we don't necessarily think about and we kind of ignore, but they're all part of the great history of our country and if we don't tell our piece, that piece goes lacking. That piece goes lacking, and we don't want it to go lacking because it's all part of our history. My history is our history and your history is our history, and so be sure that you record your part, because you've got cousins, you've got nieces and nephews, you've got children that need to know the truth before it's all wiped out. Join me on the journey. We're quiet no more. You've been listening to Quiet no More where I share my journey. So you can be quiet no more. Let's connect at wwwcarmencoffincom.