We were a very close family. I went off to school when I was twelve,
because we were at Penn School at the time, and it was against the law
for me to go to school on the island at my front door (the Penn School
was). So I had to go twenty miles into Bueford by bus one way, and
twenty miles back in the afternoon by bus with white school children. It
was very very painful and very difficult. I did that from the third
grade through the sixth grade, and then through a series of
happenstances I ended up going to a progressive school in Summerville,
South Carolina for two years. That was an interesting experience, but
that got me away from a junior high that was supposed to be playing just
dirty sports and not have much else going for it at that end of town.
And into a situation where I was much more accepted into the student
body and so forth. I was not terribly not accepted certainly on the
Island. But until then I was with them constantly, as I say I was out of
school a lot going with them on various trips. One of my earliest
memories of that jaunt when I was three or four. And
I think three or four organizations were sponsoring and I was reading
some material and I thought it was still the Union, but I think it had
to do with either the Committee on Economic and Racial Justice or
several others that were sponsoring, maybe the early committee three
hundred churchmen. But I can remember going down route 66, I think it
was riding through the deep south. And the tennants were out striking
against the landlords, tennant farmers. And we had an old car of some
sorts and there were some other people in this caravan. And the cars
were stacked up with all kinds of supplies for the people who were
living in barns, and anything else because they had been thrown off the
land, and out of their homes. And I can remember being all bunched up by
myself in the backseat with cartons of Vicks Vapor-Rubs because that was
good for so many things. We had all of these little cartons and my feet
were all up. We ahd rode for hours and hours and I would want to get out
and play with the children. My mother wouldn't let me becuase they had
terrible colds, and running sores. And I would cry because I wanted to
play with the children and I was lonesome. And I remember that very
vividly at the young age, that experience. But I learned a lot about
poverty. About what it looked like and what it felt like, and what my
parents were doing and we were as a family were doing. I felt a part of
that. That is just one example.