Life in Shades of Blue

By Irwin Brunson

Irwin Brunson was born the same year the Brown vs. Board of Education decision became law of land. That court decision set in motion the reality of the times as he, his brother Billy, sister Debbie, and their neighbors' two children, Michael and Gary Robison, became the first Afro-Americans to enroll in a public white school in the nation's oldest city, St. Augustine, Florida, on August 28, 1963, the same day Dr. Martin L. King's made his "I have a Dream" speech.

This book is the story of his early experiences with racism, and ironically, the understanding that racism is a combination of hate, fear, and ignorance personified, limiting human growth, which in turn creates many shades in life.

Through art, knowledge, and expression, he creates value that racism can never take away or destroy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9798887636191

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

PREFACE

Chapter 1: Baby Blue

Chapter 2: Light Blue

Chapter 3: Deep Blue

Chapter 4: Sapphire Blue

cover.jpg

Life in Shades of Blue

Irwin Brunson

Copyright © 2023 Irwin Brunson

All rights reserved

First Edition

NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING

320 Broad Street

Red Bank, NJ 07701

First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2023

ISBN 979-8-88763-618-4 (Paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88763-619-1 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

I dedicate this book to Vera Lee Jackson, the greatest woman I have ever known.

PREFACE

Cast that burned upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee: he shall never suffer the righteous to be moved.

—Psalms 55:22.

Chapter 1

Baby Blue

Ibelieve everyone remembers some period of their infancy. Our early childhood is perhaps the beginning of our existence as we attain knowledge of ourselves and the understanding of our surroundings to ascertain facets of life. In my infancy, I ascertained most of my understanding from watching television. On television there were different places, different people; little people, old people, people who spoke different languages, cowboys and Indians, and a dog who could let his master know little Timmy was in trouble.

The world was a big stage for television and I was fascinated hook, line, and sinker by it. As a child reality had very little substance of mind until everything around you begins to change. On August 28, 1963, was the day I remember my youthful reality changed. Life as I knew it would never be the same.

I was born in 1954, the same year the Supreme Court decision for Brown v. the Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas, became law of the land. The decision opened the door to integration of public schools in America. It would also eliminate segregated schools in America, which I attended since first grade. Somehow that decision would follow me like a shadow.

Throughout life the question of racial equality had had me spellbound due to the effects of the Supreme Court's decision. It was similar to a curse for me. The idea that I believed as a child that I was a human being who happened to be black turned into being cursed as a black child attending a white school all during racial strife. My induction to racism began preparing me for this sad truth: race matters in perception, and unfortunately makes a difference in areas of treatment, socially, economically, politically, and at one time in our nation's history, morally.

This induction caused my fascination with television to fade for the need to understand these changing attitudes and times took top priority.

As a child growing up in St. Augustine, Florida, there were many tourist attractions throughout the city: the Old Jail, Fountain of Youth, alligator farm, the Old Mission, the Old Fort. Ripley's Believe-it-or-Not Museum attracted thousands of tourists during the summer months. We lived at 169th Gault Street located between two of those attractions, the Old Jail and Fountain of Youth.

Many summer days we would sit on our front porch to watch the many tourists dressed in colorful summer attire with cameras roaming the streets or riding in the tourist trolley as the informative voice of the trolley guide echoed throughout the neighborhood. My brother Billy and I would count the out-of-state license plates from all over the country.

The atmosphere in the city was exciting, fun, and amusing as an eight-year-old's life was simple. The city was historic in nature, which in many ways represents a different atmosphere than other cities in America primarily for its Spanish heritage, history, and attractions. It was as if the city came from out of the past with the historic houses, buildings, attractions, and institutions of worship specifically for our wonder. Living in St. Augustine truly captivated my imagination as a child.

In July and August of 1963 I began to see a different city as more cars with Confederate license plates invaded the city. We witnessed fewer tourists from out of state. This was the beginning of the end of my admiration for those favorite attractions. The shadows of racism began to cast a cloud on all which was exciting, fun, and amusing in the nation's oldest city.

It would begin another chapter of St. Augustine's history, reflecting a struggle toward black equality. The struggle's theme thereafter would be one of civil rights, and would divide its citizens with violent conflicts, bombings, and confrontations. In the process, it made me an innocent pawn in a game of chess between black and white, conformist and nonconformist, and to the many shades of emotions that life presents to us. Before it is complete, this pawn will have understood the angle of a bishop's when dealing with people, blacks and whites.

This pawn will have learned how to outmaneuver knights by becoming invisible from attacks while standing beside the rooks as protection and admiring queens knowing a king I will never become.

My life's experience of the last fifty years through spiritual resolution, knowledge, and having everything come full circle has placed myself as a pawn on the seventh rank.

The wisdom, understanding, and discipline which I have attained throughout the years blessed me to write this book to tell my story, for I became one of the many early seeds sprouted from the Brown vs. the Board of Education decision.

Similar to most plants, it takes the right amount of sun and water, a conducive environment, plus the right nutrients to strive, to flourish, and to sprout a seed that would start to grow. The sit-in at the Woolworth's lunch counter in 1960 led by Henry Thomas along with young black activists began germinating and laying down seeds of change in St. Augustine, Florida.

In 1962 a lawsuit against segregated public schools was filed. The lawsuit tilted the garden as many white residents and businesses did not desire to accept those seeds of integration, so the violence in the city became too hot to grow anything of immediate value. The nutrients for understanding civil rights also wilted on the deaf ears of many white businesses.

The foot soldiers began to help tilt the groundwork. The foot soldiers were black activists, laymen, marchers, along with students from Florida Memorial College and Murray High school. All began assisting in the planting of a movement that I did not quite understand as a child, but at the same time, I was longing for answers as to why St. Augustine had gone from good to bad as quickly as it did.

It oftentimes confounded me that we could not get along as black and white brothers and sisters living in peace. However, as a child there was never an avenue for this reasoning, just a highway of questions that led to confusion.

Organizations such as the Southern Christian Leadership Council, the NAACP, SNCC soon became pillars of support as black residents nourished a garden pivotal in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

As a child, watching the civil rights movement unfold in St. Augustine was like watching water begin to boil. Unaware that later I would be scarred by the memories of violence, emotions, and at times realize that my past would be rooted in my future. Similar to having a blood brother with the same burn scars, St. Augustine and I were bonded by the times coming full circle fifty years later.

During the summer, our family would go to Butler Beach. The beach was segregated at the time but we never paid it any attention. We called it the black beach. There was a black bar, shower house, and other facilities at the beach. We never really thought of why there was a black beach or a white beach, or why the whites stayed on one side of the beach while blacks stayed on the other side. We were there to enjoy the water, sun, and have some family time. As I said, life is simple when you are eight years old.

I was very naive of segregation, Jim Crow, and even more so of the civil rights movement.

One afternoon Arthur Funderburk and black students led a group of blacks toward the white side of the beach. Blacks and whites fought, which made national news. The confrontation at the time should have alerted me that a change was coming, and it was coming too fast for me to comprehend. The city had black barbershops and white barbershops, black stores, white stores, white schools and black schools, and so on.

The question of color never really crossed my mind.

I felt this is how God made me, a human being like everyone else, only to later realize the color of one's skin will be a game-changer. I did attend a black grammar school called Excelsior. It was located in an area of the city called Lincolnville where many blacks lived, as well as being the west side of the city. Lincolnville was of one the few places in the South where the Emancipation Proclamation was actually read to residents and freed slaves. We lived on the northern part of the city. My father would drive us to school many mornings in his black 1948 Dodge DeSoto. It was the only one in St. Augustine. I believe everyone knew that car as Father drove us throughout the city.

My father was a proud chef at the Florida School for the Deaf & Blind. He always wore his white uniform with the white chef's hat. Many mornings a group of elderly men along with Solomon Calhoun, the principal, would gather under an old oak tree.

My father would drop us off at the school to join the men under that oak tree. I would curiously observe my father, wondering just how the men understood what he was communicating in sign language to them. My mother and father were deaf, yet to observe him and other men communicating brought me joy.

His deafness was never a handicap until months later when all our lives would change and the questions I would need answers to concerning race went unanswered.

I did enjoy attending Excelsior and admired my teachers—Mr. and Mrs. Mason, Mrs. Lockwood, and Mrs. Simpo. Each fall we provided them with pecans that we picked from a giant pecan tree. They were the largest they had ever seen. I felt they were special pecans for special teachers. Mrs. Simpo taught music to us and on unruly days she would go the piano to start playing a song. She had a wonderful voice. It