White Skin-Black Soul: A Family Book

By Sandra Johnson

Saundra Johnson is a white-skinned black woman who was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, in l943 during the harsh period of Jim Crow. However, she and other white-skinned family members identified as black and embraced its rich heritage during a period of thriving black communities and businesses. Although having light/white skin had some privilege

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sandra Johnson
• Release date: Mar 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9780578656571

Sandra Johnson

Saundra was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1943 and graduated from Little Rock Central High School in 1961. She then moved to California and soon started a short career in the entertainment field and airline industry as a flight attendant. During the seventies, Saundra attended the University of California in Los Angeles and received a bachelor's degree. In 1983, she earned a master's degree from Azusa Pacific College. After completing 3000 hours of internship and passing the exams with the California State Board of Behavioral Science, she received her marriage and family therapy license (MFT) in 1987. Saundra also received certificates from The University of Southern California Comprehensive Sickle Cell Center as a Sickle Cell Educator and the California State Department of Health Services Genetic Disease Branch as a Sickle Cell Counselor. After years of working as a therapist and social worker, she spent the last fourteen years working for four different foster care facilities as the foster care director. Before leaving the workforce permanently, Saundra worked as a part-time consultant for three additional years. During her retirement years, she decided to write and publish an autobiography about her life experiences as a teen activist, and as a white-skinned black woman living in America. She currently lives with her husband in Rancho Cucamonga, California, surrounded by her son and other close family members.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

Information on black history has been a forgotten, untold, and undocumented aspect of the lives of black people, which scholars have tried to piece together over the years. Slavery, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X are major historical features that we, as Black Americans, have become the most familiar. Any additional knowledge regarding black history is often shared during one designated month out of the year or taught in colleges as mere electives. The omission of one’s history, language, and culture can lead to the creation of an invisible group of people, with no significance.

Consequently, black family histories and their contributions to society have almost become irrelevant, with a lost past, as well. The purpose of writing my book is to focus on the story of my life, as well as other memorable family stories and their contributions to society. Hopefully, through my writing, my family, especially the younger and future generations, will know the sequential facts of my life. They will understand my philosophies, experience my emotions, and their psychological consequences as well. I am hopeful that telling my life story will inspire other family members, generation after generation, to document and share all of our family histories, no matter how big or small. The family includes children who were adopted and those children who were not legally adopted but lived with our families and raised as our children. Unconditional love and commitment to one another are thicker than blood or water.

After writing and reviewing my book, I wondered, How did I transition from surviving the harsh segregated south to become the bank clerk, entertainer, flight attendant, college graduate, family therapist, mother, and wife? My answer was simply, through the ongoing support of my family and their unconditional love, despite my faults and shortcomings. Although my life has not been perfect, my family provided me with the necessary ingredients to help me prevail through life’s many challenges and triumphs.

Part One

EARLY YEARS LIVING IN THE BLACK SEGREGATED SOUTH

Iwas born in 1943, after the great depression, when legal, but unequal segregation and lynching were still prevalent. My birthplace was Little Rock, Arkansas, when the average yearly wage was $2,000.00; rental of a house was $40.00 a month, and for 5 cents, a person could buy a bottle of Coca-Cola. Even harder to imagine, a new home could be purchased for approximately $3,500.00, and a new car for $900.00, with gas prices as low as 15 cents a gallon. Of course, when you think about the average yearly wage of only $2,000.00, and less for some people, things don’t sound quite as cheap.

Jim Crow was very much a part of the American culture, unleashing race riots in places such as Detroit, Harlem, and Los Angeles, where the famous zoot suit riots took place, due to the belief that the suit was more connected to people of crime as opposed to jazz and fashionable attire. The deputized white community, along with sailors and marines, rioted for one week in Los Angeles, beating and intimidating young Latinos, and other minorities such as the Filipinos and Black Americans. Police officers made no effort to stop the zoot suit riots, and in some cases, were a part of the beatings and the unlawful arrests.

Despite this unsettled and chaotic period, I was born into the arms of a loving mother, Jewel Alicia Montgomery-Johnson, and a devoted father, Warren Alva Johnson. Standing nearby was my paternal grandmother, Zola Warren-Johnson (Gran), who also witnessed a baby of six pounds coming into what seemed like a peaceful world. Doctor Ish, who was married to my cousin, Harriet Johnson, delivered me at 2115 Howard Street, Little Rock, Arkansas, where I resided until I moved permanently to California in 1961.

Giving birth at home, whether it was with a doctor or midwife, was a common practice during this period. All of my siblings were born at home, with little problems, it seems, and my grandmother, Zola Warren-Johnson, was always there to assist. According to mom, I was the quickest and easiest birth compared to my siblings. She would then laugh and jokingly say, You came out with one strong push because you were so nosey and anxious to see what was going on in the world.

My sister, Cecile, who had been the baby for four years, wasn’t quite as happy about my arrival as the rest of the family. When I was about nine months old, mom said she heard me scream at the top of my lungs, causing her to run into the room immediately. Once she got there, she saw my sister suspiciously standing close to me while holding my hand. Cecile nervously said, I was kissing her fingers, but she started to cry. However, I later found out that she was actually biting my finger. If I could get past my sister, how hard could life be? Little did I know that my life experiences in Little Rock, Arkansas, would be a combination of southern hospitality in an environment of hostility. This little person would grow up and become a part of an unjust social system, judged by the color of a person’s skin and not by the content of their character. However, in my case, I would not be judged by the color of my white skin until the racists found out that I was black. At that precise time, white supremacists assigned me designated boundaries like any other black person. That was the reality of Jim Crow.

I grew up in an all-black environment, attended black segregated schools, lived in a black neighborhood, and was surrounded by black-owned businesses that included movies, pool halls, funeral homes, black policing, black churches, community centers, attorneys, doctors, and cafes. We were unequally segregated, but regardless, it was inspiring and encouraging to be a part of such a strong black entrepreneurial era. Today, when people question whether or not black businesses can thrive and operate as qualified businesses, I would have to challenge their fears and skepticism. Many black companies were very successful and supported by black customers.

By no means was our era flawless or perfect, but the positive black role models were in our homes, schools, communities, or living in the same neighborhoods. Their powerful messages would always resonate; black students must strive and work harder than white students, even though the conditions are unfair. They must perform to a higher standard and be prepared for that door of equal opportunity whenever it opens. Black teachers and our parents alike pushed education, regardless of society’s unjust limitations, and Negro History was not an elective, but a prerequisite before graduating from the black high school. The teachers were strict and tough on us because they knew that our capabilities and talents were equal to those of any white student, even with the educational disparities. These powerful and encouraging messages were received early in our homes and throughout our school years.

For the sake of comprehending my life story, it is essential to understand the physical makeup and colors of my family members on all sides. My parents were light/white-skinned, but they identified themselves as black. Dad was white-skinned, with brown hair and brown eyes. Both of his parents, as well as other family members, were also light/white-skinned people. That has changed over the years, however, with the blending of diverse skin colors into our family. White-skinned blacks such as myself are descendants from mixed-race unions during slavery, living according to the one-drop rule. This meant that if we had one drop of black blood, we were considered black regardless of our multiracial ancestry. In their uneducated and racists beliefs, it was a permanent solution and a guarantee that the white race would remain pure and superior.

I am also distinguishing the similarities and differences between light-skinned blacks and white-skinned blacks. They are similar regarding privilege, but white-skinned blacks who are mistaken for white may elicit a different response from people of all races, both good and bad. In contrast, dark-skinned blacks and white-skinned blacks have some similarities as well; one is too dark, and one is too white. My mom’s family, also descendants of slavery, had more variety of skin colors ranging from light to dark brown complexions. She was light-skinned, had green eyes, dark brown hair, and resembled her father, who was also a light-skinned black man with light eyes. Regardless, we were all family who sat on the back of the bus together.

During this period, technology, and living conditions were different from what we see today. Some homes, like Big Mama’s, who was my maternal grandmother named Sadie Rice Montgomery-Anderson, did not have inside toilets but had what we called an outhouse. It was an outdoor, detached toilet with no plumbing, and usually located in the backyard, with horrific and sickening odors.

I am the youngest of five daughters, but the first to be born into a house with an inside toilet. Some family members who lived in the country were not as fortunate and had to inconveniently trample through the rain, cold, and snow, leaving their cozy, warm homes to use the toilet.

Our winters were cold, and summer meant unbearable heat and humidity. We didn’t have the comfort of central air conditioning, but only the air from opened windows and fans, nor was there any Off spray or anything comparable to get rid of the worrisome mosquitoes. My father of many talents made an iron fan that blew out this powerful hot air. It was humongous, and according to dad, he made it out of airplane parts that he retrieved from junkyards. Standing in front of this fan was like standing in front of the hot Santa Ana winds.

During the cold months, we had a couple of open face heaters and floor furnaces that my dad had installed. Although inconvenient compared to today’s modern technology, we just adapted to this level of discomfort. It was the norm and didn’t seem so bad at the time, but when I look back, it’s hard to imagine living without central air and central heat or even living in an apartment/house with fewer than two bathrooms.

Humans learn to adapt to their environments, even if harsh, especially when they feel that they have no other options. As a young child, I was trained to abide by and understand the color boundaries. I automatically went to the back of the bus, used the colored restrooms, drank from colored water fountains, and entered restaurants through the back door. We then gave the white people money for this second-class service. These racial boundaries for black folks were not up for compromise or negotiation; it was survival.

Today, the kids in my family are amenable to understanding the different and past lifestyles that their ancestors endured. That is up to the part where they would have to live without their cell phones. We, however, had nothing comparable to today’s telephones; in fact, some folks didn’t own a phone of any sort. Others, like our family, had party-line telephones, which meant that we shared the line with multiple subscribers. However, they weren’t always peacefully shared. Arguments would take place whenever people felt as though the other person was occupying the telephone too long, or they became suspicious that someone was listening in on their private conversations. My mom and sisters were often guilty of those no-win, confrontational telephone disputes.

Still, having a telephone, even if it was a party-line, was making progress. But when dad bought our first television, there was no doubt that we had moved up in the world. When I was around nine-years-old, I remember vividly jumping up and down and screaming with excitement when dad walked through the front door carrying a little black and white television. It wasn’t long before I learned how to operate it. Whenever the reception was bad, I would move the rabbit ears around until I got the picture that I desired, but if that didn’t work, I just hit it, and that would usually take care of the problem. When we first got our television, our family would watch it together, non-stop, but mainly on the weekends. Of course, when we heard the National Anthem, we knew that TV was signing off for the entire night, and that was our cue to go to bed.

Our family had an inside toilet, a party-line telephone, a black and white television, but our progress didn’t stop there. The Johnson’s moved up a step higher and got a colored TV. We just put one of those thin, colored, plastic covers on our television screen, and there you are. It was affordable and served a purpose. We didn’t care that everything and everyone at the top of the screen was blue, the middle of the screen was red, and the bottom portion of the screen was green. We had color!

It was a different time, even to how we acquired our groceries. Milk, for instance, was delivered in glass bottles and left on our porch. It seems as if that was the best-tasting milk with such a unique flavor. In addition to the delivery of milk, mom and dad would purchase a block of ice from this white man who drove through the neighborhood in his truck, slowly yelling, I C E. My parents also bought us extra treats of ice cream and popsicles from another white man, who also rode through our neighborhood on his bicycle with a white box attached to the back of it, where he kept his merchandise to sell.

Many neighbors, including my mom, raised chickens and grew a lot of their vegetables, but at times, they would buy their produce from people who cruised through the neighborhood. Regardless, the taste was always fresh and flavorful.

During the late 40s and 50s, we played outside most of the time, even when it snowed. Dad had made us a large snow sled that we loved. My siblings and I, along with some of the neighborhood kids, would take it to the top of Park Hill, located around the corner from our home, and take turns riding it swiftly to the bottom. I loved the snow as a child, especially the snowball fights and making snow ice cream that consisted of milk, sugar, and vanilla. We would always gather the snow as soon as it fell to the ground so it would be clean and edible.

When it wasn’t snowing, and we had decent weather, all of the neighborhood kids would get together and ride bikes, skate, play dodgeball, hopscotch, softball, and we even played on our homemade see-saw and tire swing that dad had made. As young children, we love to play games called, hide and seek, and honey, honeybee bar. Playtime, when I was growing up, involved more face-to-face interactions and socializing with our family and neighborhood friends. Even though we didn’t have reality shows to watch on TV, videos, or computers, we did have the radio as another form of entertainment. Some of the inside games consisted of playing cards, paper dolls, a few inside toys, jacks, and for me, singing and dancing.

I told my grandchildren that we had to talk to each other and visit our loved ones in person, where we would actually hug them; not like today’s form of communication by way of texting, sending happy faces, or a mention on Facebook, where people can hide behind their cynical comments and poor communication skills. While progress is essential, and a given, it should never replace spending quality time with loved ones.

On the other hand, I wish that our generation would have had advanced technology as they do today so we could have recorded and shared videos with the younger generations. They could have learned about those historical moments of great people and experience visually what it was like living during different eras. I know I would have loved to observe the lifestyle of the generations before me. That would have been live history and a worthwhile reality show.

It would have been especially captivating to see and revisit the holidays when our family would meet at mom’s house and huddle around her long dining room table. We ate fresh food that was not fast food or catered, but food that mom gathered, picked from her garden and cooked. She would also bake fruitcakes for the holidays and soak them in liquor about a month before Christmas.

I always looked forward to the holidays, even though we didn’t have a lot of money. Mom didn’t work outside of the home, and dad couldn’t work whenever the weather was too bad, and plus, there was usually one sibling attending one of the black colleges. Living on such a strict budget, meant that we were only allowed three gifts each. Every Christmas, as a young kid, my parents would buy, as one of my three gifts, a little white rubber, bald-head doll. I played with her on Christmas Day, and afterward, I sat her in a corner and never played with the doll again. I was that little girl who never liked dolls or dollhouses. Even so, black children didn’t have the choice of buying a doll that looked like them. Though, in my case, I guess one could argue that this particular doll did look like me. At any rate, the holidays were still a lot of fun, despite the lack of gifts. It was about great food and family interacting together, but exchanging gifts with extended family members, simply meant spending quality time together, laughing, eating, and sharing affectionate hugs.

I played a lot as a child, but at the same time, I had a lot of responsibilities and chores as well. During the week, my sisters and I had fewer tasks so that we could focus on completing our homework assignments. Weekends, on the other hand, involved more playtime, and Sundays meant church, but only sometimes, because mom and dad weren’t staunch churchgoers or participants in the church. I do remember, however, that daddy was a deacon at the A.M.E. (African Methodist Episcopal) church for a short period. Cecile and I were baptized in the A.M.E. church, and my three oldest sisters were baptized in the Episcopal Church. I never knew how that happened. Other than church, the only organization that I recall my father joining and participating in was the Masons. Dad was a proud 32nd degree Mason and was an active lifetime member. I recall our family attending and enjoying their social events.

Our neighborhood was neat and went on for blocks, made up of the middle class, the working class, as well as some professional blacks. Two of my teachers lived in our neighborhood, one of whom was my first-grade teacher, Mrs. Wells. Our house was a modest two-bedroom, unpainted wood frame home, with no grass or driveway, but it had a clean and homey atmosphere inside. The backyard had a fenced-in area for mom’s vegetable garden and a separate closed off area for her chickens, rabbits, and guineas. We also had a rowdy rooster that controlled the backyard, making high pitched sounds, strutting slowly around the yard as though saying, That’s right, I’m the head rooster in charge. That was so true because I was scared to death of him. Mom and her sister, Aunt Hazel, were the few people who could get inside of the gate with the rooster, but even they had to throw harmless things at him, forcing him to back up.

Even though times were different back then, compared to today, my skin color and race would be a never-ending story that I would experience during my lifetime. Whether intentional, unintentional, due to ignorance or due to a lack of cultural awareness, it would play a part at some level in most areas of my life. Even applying for my driver’s license soon became an issue with a white DMV (Department of Motor Vehicle) employee. During this period, you documented your race on your driver’s license. When the DMV worker noticed that I had indicated on my paperwork that I was colored and had described myself as having grey eyes and medium brown hair, she became offended and angrily asked, You colored?

Yes, I am, I said.

Then put brown eyes and black hair if you are colored, she sternly demanded.

No, because that is not my real description.

Colored people don’t have grey eyes and medium brown hair, she replied, even more annoyed. It didn’t seem to matter that I was a colored female standing right in front of her with white, pale skin, grey eyes, and medium brown hair. Nevertheless, I stood my ground and refused to change my description. After she realized that I was going to maintain my position and not be intimidated, she reluctantly completed the transaction with the information that I had given her.

White-skinned blacks are viewed at times from one extreme to another extreme. Some white people think that the lighter your skin, the less you identified with the black race, and so, they begin talking freely around you. They may even forget that you are black, while others become uncomfortable because you do not fit into the category of how they perceive black people to typically look. The DMV woman was uncomfortable with the latter as well as my assertiveness. Some blacks can also be guilty of making this same assumption; that having light-colored skin means having little or no black identity.

Part Two

FAMILY DESCRIPTIONS AND RELATIONSHIPS

BETTY

Ialways thought that each of my sisters had her unique beauty, but I felt as though my oldest sister, Betty, 12 years older than I, was the prettiest. She was light-skinned with dark brown hair, large brown eyes, and she accentuated her beauty with only a small amount of lipstick. In addition to her attractiveness, she was very shapely and had taken first place in two black beauty contests: one at fifteen years old and the other one when she was twenty-one years old. It was at this time that she competed in the popular Spirit of Cotton beauty contest that took place in 1952.

Even though her beauty was admired by many, she was very intellectual and equally as smart. Betty had attended Howard University, as well as other universities, and over time, she had accumulated enough credits to receive a doctorate. But, Betty had a mind of her own and took only the courses that she liked, which meant she never received a formal degree of any sort. Despite not earning a college degree, she became masterful in law, reading legal books for entertainment, and challenging people in court. Her storytelling skills and her ability to convince people to believe what she wanted them to, served as qualities that could have led to a career as a lawyer, a politician, or in sales. Instead, she chose entrepreneurship and eventually owned and operated a successful limousine business in Los Angeles until she became very ill. At one period, she was making approximately $30,000.00 a month, but after years of suffering and battling diabetes, heart disease, and blindness, she passed away at 78 years of age.

EUNICE

My second oldest sister, ten years older than I, was also pretty and shapely. Out of the five of us, Eunice was the most passive, and the only one who didn’t graduate from high school. Instead, she married at a young age, but her marriage eventually ended in a divorce. Despite her failed relationship, she was always jolly, often appreciating the little things in life that we so often take for granted. Eunice was very talented in the creative arts; she loved to sew and play the piano. She and Betty also played drums for Dunbar High School in their all-black marching band. It was all good until Eunice tried to sing, but she didn’t care and enjoyed entertaining herself or anyone else who would painfully listen. I would teasingly ask her, Why don’t you just play the piano and hum? We would both laugh affectionately.

Unlike the rest of my siblings, who looked more Latina than black, Eunice and I looked more alike and could easily be mistaken for white women. She had white-colored skin, light brown hair, and blue eyes. After giving birth to one of her babies, a white nurse came to examine her for the first time but became infuriated when she saw what she thought was a white woman in a ward with black women. Why is this white woman in this maternity ward with these colored women? she angrily asked. My sister let her know immediately that she was a colored woman and was where she was supposed to be.

Sadly, Eunice had ongoing health problems throughout the years, and later in life, she developed a chronic lung condition, probably due to excessive smoking. She concurrently developed Paget disease of the nipple, which is a rare cancer that doctors have at times misdiagnosed as a benign skin condition. Her nipple had flattened which was an obvious sign of something more serious than a skin problem. After Eunice learned about her diagnosis of Paget cancer, she agreed to surgery but later refused to follow up with any cancer treatment. In her particular case, our doctor informed us that she would probably die from her lung problem before the Paget nipple cancer, with or without treatment, and she did. Eunice passed away at the age of 76. She and Betty died in nursing homes after years of suffering from poor health.

HILMA

Hilma, my third sister, and eight years older than I, was everyone’s favorite. She was light-skinned with green eyes and auburn colored curly hair, had a larger nose than the rest of us, and was often mistaken as Puerto Rican. Hilma was pleasingly plump with an average figure but she had large breasts that compensated for her ordinary shape. Even with her average build, she won third place in a beauty pageant at a young age. Hilma attended the popular black Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Arkansas, and was a very talented artist; designing clothes, drawing cartoon characters, and making little figurines. She was physically very strong, passive, and extremely scary, that is until she felt threatened, for herself or her family.

My father didn’t laugh a lot, but he found my sister, Hilma, extremely amusing. One of his favorite stories that he loved to hear over and over, was the time when one of her boyfriends tried to hit her, and while trying to defend herself, she reached into the kitchen drawer to grab a knife but grabbed a spoon instead. Tough guy, surprised by her aggressive reaction, and thinking that she had a knife, became so frightened that he locked himself in the bathroom for hours. She was naturally comical without putting any effort into it. Family members would attest to the fact that she could have been a comedian without any set lines. Her body language and expressions were funnier than what she said. All the producers and directors would have to do was stage a scene, and she would do the rest. I think everyone has met this type of person in their lifetime. Stories, even after 33 years, are told at family gatherings where we continue to laugh and keep her memory alive. Of course, my nephew, Rodney (Ricky), who is as