Dad was very young, and it wasn't a very significant experience to him. It was just one very old man. It wasn't until he and his father were on their way home that my Dad found out who this old man was: a descendant of the family that had owned our family as slaves.
When I first heard about this meeting, it was Mom who told me, not Dad. Mom and I were somewhat removed from the slavery experience. Mom's ancestors were native West Indians and never enslaved, and I knew slavery only as a horrible story glossed over in the history books. Dad was much closer to slavery than we were. His father's sister, in fact, was the result of a master's affair with a slave. But although Dad is only a second-generation free man, he doesn't know much about "the slavery kind of thing."
Silas Parrish was born on January 9th,1935, the seventh of eight children. He lived in Tallevast, Florida, a small village between two commercial citrus groves. After a brief move to Pennsylvania, the family moved back to Florida, this time to a small farm in Jasper, where my father spent the rest of his childhood.
The farm in Jasper was small and family owned. His family's primary source of income was tobacco, with corn and other grains, like peanuts and goobers, grown to feed the animals. "Goobers," Dad explains, "are like garbonza beans, only they grow underground." Another source of income was the sale of turpentine, which came from the tar of pine trees. The family could sell this to Glidden Co. (Glidden Paints today), in Valdosta, GA.
Aside from this, the family had no other income. Though they had only a few necessary possessions, Dad remembers life on the farm very vividly, and with much fondness:
On the farm, we had a few cattle who roamed loose, a few hogs kept penned that were the primary source of meat, and chickens. From time to time there were ducks and guinea fowl. There was no electricity in the farmhouse, and no running water. We had an outdoor privy. Baths were taken in a tin washtub, with water heated in a pot on the stove. At night, since the privy was outdoors, we had a bucket with some water in it that we would use for restroom activity. There was a cover on it. We got water from a pump approximately twenty-five feet from the house. We kept water in a bucket with a dipper for cooking and drinking.
A wood stove was used for cooking, and there was a fireplace in one room which heated the house. Later, we got a kerosene stove, but we always kept the wood one. We had no telephone, because we had no electricity, so for entertainment, we could read, and we had a radio with batteries. Our nearest neighbors were at least a quarter of a mile away, so there was not much contact. To shop, we had to go to town, which was seven or eight miles away.
Dad's mother died when he was nearing the end of his thirteenth year, and her funeral was held on his fourteenth birthday. His youngest sister, Bessie, came and stayed with them for about a year, but after she left, there was only Dad, his father, and his uncle living on the farm. Dad became the family cook, and found that cooking wasn't as easy as it had looked:
During the time before they left, I had decided to make some biscuits. I did not like the kind my mother had made because they were soft and fluffy in the center. I did not like that soft, fluffy center, even though those kind of biscuit were best for picking up syrup. You would eat them with your hands, and use the soft, fluffy center to sop up the syrup. That kind of center would obviously absorb more syrup. Most people liked that, but I didn't like that soft, fluffy center. It was too much bread. So when I decided to make my biscuits, I wanted to make sure they were not soft and fluffy in the center, but more crisp, and richer. So- and I was making them from scratch- so, I would make some, rolling the dough into a ball, and put them in the pan, and then as I would work to roll more, the ones I had put there would start to rise. And as they became larger they would become fluffy looking, like the ones I didn't like. So I would pick them up and squeeze them in half and make two balls, squeeze those and put them back on the pan. As they continued to rise, I continued to do that. Eventually, they didn't rise anymore, and I stuck them in the oven about the size of walnuts. After they were baked, they came out about the size of walnuts.
My nephew- he was about four years younger than me and very mischievous- he could always get my goat because he was playful and outgoing and I was shy and withdrawn. He started laughing and teasing me about my biscuits, which nobody could eat. He started using them like rocks. He had good aim. He saw one of the chickens walking in the yard, and threw one at the chicken. It struck the chicken on the head and knocked it unconscious. The chicken lay comatose in the yard for a few seconds, after which it jumped up cackling and ran off, frightened. I've never tried to make biscuits since.
When he was not cooking, Dad was going to school. He finished middle school in Spring Branch, in a little country school. Grades one through six met in one room, inside a Black church, with one teacher. For seventh grade the next year, he was bussed into town in a pickup truck with benches in the back and a canvas cover. The school itself was a ramshackle frame building in a Black neighborhood. The White children, in contrast, had a regular yellow school bus which took them to a big brick building in the main part of town. The Black children got the old reject books from the White school. Dad vividly remembers all of the effects of the Jim Crow laws that separated the Blacks from the Whites:
The education system at that time was 'separate but equal.' Everything was separate, even public facilities. In the theatre, the main auditorium was for Whites. Blacks had to use a separate entrance and go up a lot of steps to the balcony. In drugstores, Blacks had to stand at a certain part of the counter to order, and could not sit and eat. Bus and train stations had separate, smaller, waiting rooms for Blacks. On the busses, Blacks had to sit in the back, and if it filled up, they had to stand. In trains, they probably had particular cars for Blacks. At service stations, there were separate toilets, and the ones for Blacks were not kept as clean.
Blacks and Whites interacted in a friendly manner, but there could be no romantic involvement. One of my classmates was known to be Black, but she and her family could pass for White. She and I used to go downtown together during the school lunch break. Because she could pass for White, apparently word got back to my father that it was dangerous for me to be going downtown with her. And he casually instructed me to stop going downtown with her. He didn't have to explain why.
Dad was well aware of a lot of small nuances dealing with race, that were perhaps not as obvious as the Jim Crow laws. Whites referred to Black people by first names. If they were over middle aged, they might be called uncle or auntie, but anyone younger could expect to be called by their first name. Blacks, however, referred to Whites aged twenty and up as Sir, Ma'am, Mr, Mrs, or Miss. "That always bothered me," Dad says. "My uncle told me one day I would get in trouble because I never did."
Dad finished high school in 1952. His class of ten was the biggest graduating class up to that time, because kids were always leaving school to go to work on their farms. Dad proudly points out that he, however, never missed a day of school.
Blacks were allowed to compete for state scholarships for the first time in 1952, so Dad went ahead and did it. He won one of those scholarships and used it to go to Florida A&M (Agricultural and Mechanic) University to get his degree. He still calls it FAM U, just like they did when he was there. After graduation, he moved to New York, where he began to get an idea of what "the real world" was like:
The first and only time I was called 'nigger' to my face was in New York on the subway. I was living there at the time. I was riding on a full subway one night going home from downtown Manhattan. There were two White women sitting on the seat next to where I was standing. The train made a sudden movement, and everyone who was standing briefly lost their balance. I fell toward the women but did not touch them. The one closest to me looked up with a scowl on her face and said, 'dirty nigger.' The woman riding next to her became extremely mortified, and turned very red, embarrassed. I simply looked down at her and smiled. I paid no further attention to them.
Despite the segregation and racial injustice going on at the time in which he lived, Dad seems almost nonchalant. He speaks very matter-of-factly about his situation, and about his experiences growing up Black in the south. "In spite of all this," he says, "I never had a serious unpleasant experience with a White person." He even says that some things about the world were better in his youth:
People cared more about each other, and were more family oriented. There was more recognition and acceptance of people's roles. Women knew their roles and were respected for that, men too. Today there's much crossover which can be confusing. This is not to be limiting; people should always reach their potential. But if people could stop being so individualistic and nationalistic, love their neighbors as themselves, and learn to live together, that would be fantastic.
So perhaps there is something we may learn from the people in the 1940's segregated South. Yes, there were Jim Crow laws, and yes, there was social injustice. But Silas Parrish's world was not all about Jim Crow and Rosa Parks. It was about chickens, biscuits, goobers, and FAM U. It was family, friendships, and sharing. It was LIFE, and not all of it was bad. Even in the midst of government mandated cruelty, there was love and kindness. If my Dad can grow up in the segregated South and still have good memories of his childhood, perhaps there is still hope for the human race.
Dad was very young, and it wasn't a very significant experience to him. I think that's a good thing.