Reflections on My Four Years in the Deep South

Most importantly, I realized that we don’t mix enough with people of different backgrounds. We talk a good talk, yet go back to our comfortable homes. If people were required to work alongside communities with few resources, we might all be doing better as a society today.

Adapted from “As I Remember It: A Memoir of Persistence, Tenacity and Humor”

I liked the South. The people, like the subtropical climate, were warm. The temperature all summer long was 90 degrees with 90 percent humidity. The community center operated under the auspices of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, as a part of its Social Apostolate program. Its purpose was to provide education for preschoolers, and to refer other observed problems to the parish Social Service department. The staff included the principal of the Montessori Day Care, the cook, a social worker, and me.

The principal, a certified Montessori instructor, had trained ten local African American women to become qualified Montessori instructors, who earned certificates from England. This generated pride among the women and the community.

My primary functions were to serve as Homestart Coordinator (not to be confused with Headstart, the government agency). I received referrals from the overflow of applicants to the Day Care as well as from the social services department. In a car without air conditioning, I visited as many as five homes a day to teach classes to 50 children a week. The idea was to prepare them for first grade, given that there were no public school kindergartens available for African-American children (as unbelievable as it may seem, Black children were excluded until the mid-1970s).

As Home Visitor, I observed there was no place for adults to store important papers, such as birth certificates, except between the mattress and bed springs. Some of the children had trouble getting into first grade because they could not produce the certificate. If they were born in the ambulance on its way to Charity Hospital in New Orleans, the attendants sometimes forgot to register the birth. I visited the homes of Native Americans, African-Americans, and Caucasians.

The secondary objective of Homestart was to learn the needs of families and to coordinate efforts with other agencies to try to improve their living situations. We confronted City Hall about the lack of hot water in homes only to learn that some of the largest contributors to our community center were on the City Council. They threatened to cut off their contributions.

Sometimes three families lived in two rooms to consolidate resources. The homes did not smell good and were infested with cockroaches and sometimes rats. By the time I got back to my car, my feet jumped with fleas. When I sat down to teach in a home, I usually headed for vinyl-covered furniture, which was less likely to harbor roaches or fleas. Once when I plopped myself down on a vinyl-covered couch, I found myself in a puddle of urine from a child who had slept there the previous night.

Our 69-year-old cook was raped early one morning as she walked to church for 5am mass. When I came down for breakfast, she was sitting alone in the dining room. She had hailed a passing police car immediately after the incident, but they left her where she was.  I was furious at the police for abandoning her. After taking her to the doctor, I gave them a piece of my mind.

After two years at the Community Center, a free public school kindergarten finally opened to include African-American children. I obtained the position of Supervisor of the Emergency Care Receiving Unit at MacDonell’s Children’s Services, operated by a Methodist religious group. This was a place for abused and neglected children, aged two months to 16 years, who had been removed from their homes. During the interview, the director asked what I would do if a child climbed onto the roof and threatened to jump off. At the time, I thought it was a trick question.

Not long after I started, a 16-year-old child joined our unit. He seemed to do well until one day he climbed onto the roof. Here was the truth of what I had thought was a trick question asked during the interview.

On duty for four 24-hour days at a time, I dealt with tapeworms, ear infections, heat rash, and emotional outbursts of staff and children. Before dropping into bed, I dutifully dictated case notes on each child. I recognized some from the homes I visited previously at the community center.

They were malnourished, noticeably tortured, and predictably angry. It is one thing to read about abused children and quite another to hold one in your arms, covered with scars.

• A one-year-old arrived who would not allow us to touch him but remained in a fetal position, sucking his thumb. It was nearly impossible to feed him, bathe him, and change his diaper. After a few months, he was running around laughing and teasing the other children.
• I held in my arms two-year-old Anthony, who had cigarette burns everywhere on his body but the soles of his feet. His first words were “F— you.”
• A girl of two had a foreign object removed from her vagina when she came to us from the hospital.
• Three-year-old Regina had scars on her cheek from table fork punctures. Her pelvis was broken at six months when she had been thrown against the wall. When she was removed from the home, the mother threatened to have another child so she would “have someone to love her.” Often, the mothers themselves were children.
• Two-year-old Stacy had an infected area two inches in diameter on the back of her head when she arrived. It was filled with pus, and the hair had fallen out.
• The police brought us a 14-year-old from the bayous who was a victim of incest by her father and from whom she had contracted a venereal disease. To escape him, she had herself confined to jail. That night the father deliberately but carefully shot himself in the foot, blaming her for “making him do that to himself.”

Once there was a fire in our unit at 2am. The aide had not shown up for her night shift. I took four toddlers and a five-year-old downstairs, two at a time, one under each arm.

Near the end of those two years, I had steeled myself against feelings for these children and began to bathe and feed them systematically, forgetting to hug them, talk to them, and stroke their heads. I knew then that it was time to leave.

To this day, I wonder what became of these children. They would be in their 40s and 50s by now. It is easy to be understanding and compassionate toward children, but once they become adults, we expect them magically to become responsible citizens.

After I returned to my home in Minnesota, it seemed strange to see children laughing and playing with carefree spirit. In church, people argued about which hymns should be sung at the liturgy. Didn’t they know children were starving and being beaten in this country?