Many Blessings. Sonnee Weedn, PhD

      Introduction

      I am the great, great granddaughter of a man who fought for the North in the Civil War. “He was with the Wisconsin Regiment,” Grandmother Delight would tell me with great pride. She added a little more to the story by saying that he and his compatriots were without food for many days. They stopped at a farmhouse and asked to be fed. The farmer not only fed them, but also said that they could sleep in the barn, where his wife brought them a provision of grain to take with them. She had packed the grain in several of her long, black woolen stockings; the only containers she was willing to part with.

      As a child, growing up in a white, middle-class family, I had only a few encounters with African Americans. As Minnesotans, we were the white subjects of de facto segregation, though my parents wouldn’t have understood this or thought about it at all. Blacks, or “colored people,” as they were called then, were simply unknown to us. In 1950, when I was four, my father was called up for the Korean War. He was a fighter pilot, and we were sent to the Marine Corps base at Cherry Point, North Carolina, our first experience with the segregated South.

      My mother was told by the neighbors that she should hire a “colored girl” to help keep house. And so entered a sweet, silent woman, named Willie Whitehead. I was only four, but I can see her face today: shiny dark skin, and a halo of fluffy hair. She was young, I think. My mother, who was only twenty-six, was told that she must keep a separate set of dishes and silverware for Willie. She didn’t really understand the reasoning, but did as she was told, marking each plate and utensil that Willie would use with red fingernail polish on the bottom.

      Within weeks my mother decided that the whole idea of these separate dishes was ridiculous. “Willie Whitehead is cleaner than we are,” she said. And that was the end of that.

      We only stayed in North Carolina for nine months before heading to California, as my father was sent to Korea. But, the red marks on the dishes served as a reminder of Willie Whitehead for all the decades of their use.

      In 1956, my family transferred to Cape Canaveral, Florida, where my father was a test pilot. Once again, we were experiencing the segregated South. My parents abhorred it.

      Our housekeeper was Doris Rivers, and she was married to James Rivers. Doris was a registered nurse. Her family had sent her north to school somewhere. But, there were no jobs for “colored” nurses in our small town. Nevertheless, various members of her family took turns heading north to school, despite the lack of real opportunity.

      Doris would sometimes babysit us children when my parents went out in the evening. My mother would insist that her husband join her at our home for dinner because she didn’t think a married man should have to eat his dinner alone. The next-door neighbors called the police and the police came to remind Mr. Rivers that “colored” men were not allowed in our neighborhood after 5 p.m. My parents arrived home soon

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