Let me offer a glimpse of history from a different perspective. Growing up in Washington, D.C. during the 50s and 60s, I saw prejudice from both sides of the fence, and I want to say at the outset that stereotypes that govern our fears are wrong and have been and continue to be wrongly exploited to keep us separate.
In 1954, the Supreme Court, in Brown versus the Board of Education, ruled that separate, but equal schools were not equal, and therefore unconstitutional. Over the summer, I was transferred from Eastern Elementary School to Kingman Elementary. It was the first time I had any extended contact with another race, and I can tell you it was as uncomfortable for my new classmates as it was for me. People who grew up in other parts of the country where schools were traditionally integrated cannot understand how difficult it was to make that transition.
Immediately following Brown versus the Board of Education, white families fled Washington to the suburbs. Mr. Mosser was the first on our block to sell to a negro family. (Please don’t be offended by the words I use in this piece. This was the language of the day.) Mr. & Mrs. Hines, with their daughters Judy and Risa, were wonderful neighbors, as were other negro families that moved in, but that didn’t matter. Within six months, D Street Northeast had only a handful of white families.
My life was not significantly impacted by integration. There were a few small incidents at school — nothing beyond what you might find at other schools. I played with the kids in the neighborhood, swam in the Rosedale pool, and pretty much got along with everyone.
My interest in school started to wane in the fifth grade. In the sixth grade, Portia Ware, a wonderful colored teacher (another term we used) rekindled my interest in learning. I joined the staff of the school newspaper and was given the job of selling ad space. One potential advertiser, a black man who owned a shop on H Street, pulled a knife on me and told me to get the hell out of his shop. By contrast, there was the Jewish owner of Sam’s Car Wash who not only bought an ad, he also gave me a job passing out fliers.
During the summer between sixth and seventh grades, a couple of incidents changed everything for me. My white friend Howard Riley and I were playing tennis on the court behind Eliot Junior High. It had turned dark, and we were about to head home when I felt something hit me in my side. As I turned to see what happened, a sharp jab to my nose knocked me to the ground. I looked up and saw two black kids — probably high school age — laughing at me. They ran away as Howie came running toward me with his tennis racket ready for battle.
A few weeks after my attack, my brother Tommy and his friend Terry Posey were sitting on a fence when they were sucker-punched by a group of colored men. I became afraid and spent more nights than I like to remember crying myself to sleep. When I returned to school in the fall, several of my classmates learned about my attack and started to taunt me. “The LeDroit Park gang is coming to school,” they whispered, “and they are looking for you.”
One day I was looking out the 3rd floor window of my classroom and saw a car pull up. A high-school age kid got out and started toward the school. I don’t remember the boy’s name, let’s call him Ronald. My classmates had told me he was the one who was after me, and I knew he would be waiting for me when school ended.
After about five minutes, I noticed that the boy was peering through the window into our classroom. I don’t know where the teacher had gone; she was not in the room As he walked through the door, I stood up, raised my hand, and gave him the come here signal with my index finger. He came toward me and I directed him into the coatroom.
With a quivering voice, I asked, “Why do you want to hurt me?”
“Hurt you? Who the hell are you?”
I told him my name and he shrugged. “I’m here to see my little brother. I don’t have any issue with you.”
I had spent countless sleepless hours worrying about the day Ronald would come. How sad. Fear has been called “false expectations appearing real.”
Seventh grade found me at Eliot Junior High. I remember playing touch football in gym class. No matter how open I got, the ball never seemed to come my way. Then, in a particularly tight game, the quarterback, racing to avoid being tagged, threw the ball in my direction. I can still see the ball coming toward me. I stretched out my hands and the hard rubber football landed securely in my palms. I ran across the goal line with the winning touchdown. From then on, the other team always had to cover me, even though the ball seldom came my way.
One afternoon I was killing time alone in one of the far corners of the playground. A kid who had a reputation for being a bully approached me. “You’re pretty smart, aren’t you?” he said.
“I do OK,” I responded, knowing that being smart was enough of a reason for him to kick my butt.
“I’m having trouble in math class. Could you explain this equation to me?”
I helped him. A few years later he repaid my kindness.
In April or May, I made the mistake of ticking off a kid named Richard S. The challenge was issued, and Richard said he would see me after school. At the end of the school day, each homeroom would form a line, march down the stairs, and exit the front of the school. There was no escape! There was no escape unless you were at the back of the line and knew you could slip out a window in one of the ground-level classrooms and exit from the rear of the school. Which I did.
That worked for about a week. Then one of the kids told our homeroom teacher what I had been doing, and she instructed me to exit the school with the other kids. I made it as far as C Street before Richard and his friends caught up with me. They had started to push me around when my friend Riley came along in his cadet uniform. He wore his ceremonial sword, so everyone paid attention when he told them to leave me alone. Richard gave me a quick kick in the butt, then everyone headed home. Howie and I stayed friends until he stole my girlfriend from me just before my high school senior prom.
The 8th and 9th grades were for the most part uneventful. I became president of the Bible Club, and Norman Tennebaum, a Jewish kid, became vice president. (Yes, there used to be Bible clubs in public schools.) Most kids at Eliot liked Norman and me, and much to my surprise, we were contenders for the coveted American Legion Award. The day before the award ceremony, I was going up the stairs when Pokey, a short, pesky kid tripped me. As I fell, I spun around and kicked him in the chest which sent him tumbling back down the steps. He wasn’t hurt, nevertheless, the inevitable challenge was offered. Pokey was smaller than me, so I knew a pushing match was the most I had to fear.
But when I exited the school, I saw Pokey and Norman Tennebaum going at it in the middle of a circle of kids. I thought for a moment about getting involved but headed home instead. At the awards ceremony the next day, I received the American Legion Award for good citizenship. I have always been chagrined that my name was inscribed over the poorly erased name of Norman Tennenbaum. There is an interesting back-story in our book.
Over the summer, my dad took Mom and me to Florida to care for his aging aunt. Aunt Etta had a lovely little home in Palm Beach. I enrolled in the High School that was across the bridge in West Palm Beach. At school, I discovered discrimination is not always a race thing. Wanting to help me “fit in,” my dad bought me several Hawaiian shirts. Not only did the kids at the high school not wear Hawaiian shirts; They also didn’t wear anything that had colors that would run when you got caught in the afternoon thunderstorms. The fact that I dressed funny and was incorrectly identified as one of the ‘rich kids’ from across the bridge made me persona non grata. It’s no surprise; I do not remember the names of any of those students or the teachers at that school.
I returned to Washington in January and prepared to enroll in Eastern High School. On the first day of school, I was walking up the steps when I encountered the principal “Are you Donnie Sennott?” he asked.
“Yes sir.”
Do you have a brother Tommy and sisters, Pat and Shirley?
Again, I answered, “Yes sir.”
I couldn’t believe his next words. “You are expelled. I will let the principal at Anacostia know you will be attending there.”
Anacostia was a high school that had about a 50-50 mix, as opposed to Eastern which was, I believe at the time, all black. My high school years probably would have been significantly more difficult had the change not happened.
The Supreme Court decision in Brown versus the Board of Education was validated when I started classes at Anacostia. I had attended Palm Beach High School for only a semester, but it took the rest of the school year for me to encounter anything in my classes at Anacostia that hadn’t already been covered in my classes in Florida. If you will allow a personal opinion: forcing children to attend substandard schools is one of the cruelest forms of racism.
Race relations were excellent at Anacostia. I started dating a wonderful Christian girl who was as “color blind” as anyone I have ever known. Our ‘click’ included whites, blacks, Christians, and Jews. During my years at Anacostia, I only felt uncomfortable following a football game against Spingarn High School. I, with my girlfriend Mary and our friends Steve G. and Deana P., was walking home from the game when we spotted a group of ten to twelve Spingarn students walking toward us.
Looking toward the girls I said, “This doesn’t look good. You two should run toward that house if they start running toward us. Steve and I will try to delay them until you reach safety.”
I was scared. The group stopped across the street from us and seemed to be deciding which way to go. The apparent leader looked familiar. He stared at me, smiled, then pointed at another Anacostia student, Richard, and led the gang as they ran past Richard H., punching at him as they ran by. The gang leader was the bully from Eliot Junior High that I had helped with the math problem.
My father served with the Metropolitan Police Department. When I was nine or ten, he’d take me to Harvey’s Garage in Southwest D.C., where a group of policemen would gather with other cops to discuss the week’s events. Was there prejudice? Of course, there was. My dad worked in the predominantly black 14th precinct, and he had to deal with the criminal element. Did he use language that today is recognized as unacceptable? Yes. Was he a racist? That’s debatable.
Ed Sennott was loved by family and friends. At his funeral, many stood to praise him. Nearing the end of the service, the minister asked if anyone else would like to speak. From the back of the church, we heard a woman with a soft voice ask if she could speak. My brother and I turned to see a neatly dressed black woman coming forward. “This isn’t going to be pretty,” Tommy whispered.
“Thank you for letting me speak,” the woman said. You don’t know me, but Mr. Sennott was very special to me.” She paused as she tried to control her emotions. “You see, when Mr. Sennott took over the statistics department at the Metropolitan Police Department, he had the opportunity to hire someone to assist him. He hired me. I was the first black woman hired for a significant administrative position within the MPDC.”
You are so intimately aware of me, Lord. You read my heart like an open book and you know all the words I’m about to speak before I even start a sentence!
Psalm 139:3 (TPT)
In the book YOUR HEART IS AN OPEN BOOK: Fill It With God’s Love, Bonnie and I included a story titled “Seeds of Prejudice,” in which I shared how the seeds of prejudice were sown in my heart following the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. Standing on Ridge Road in Arlington, Virginia, watching the glow of fires in the distance as rioting spread across Washington, I felt an anger that could have consumed me. It took years for that anger to be healed.
“In your anger do not sin”[a]: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold. Ephesians 4:26-27 (NIV)
There is a wave of anger spreading across our nation that threatens to consume us. The loudest voices aren’t always the wisest, but they are the ones the press tends to highlight. Calls for reconciliation are being drowned out by demands for retaliation and retribution. Too many are becoming what they claim to hate.
Is America a racist nation? No. America is a nation that has people of all races, religions, genders, and political persuasions who allow prejudices to influence how they treat others. It’s time we took the following words from Colossians to heart
Be merciful as you endeavor to understand others, and be compassionate, showing kindness toward all. Be gentle and humble, unoffendable in your patience with others. Tolerate the weaknesses of those in the family of faith, forgiving one another in the same way you have been graciously forgiven by Jesus Christ. If you find fault with someone, release this same gift of forgiveness to them. For love is supreme and must flow through each of these virtues. Love becomes the markof true maturity.
Colossians 3:12b-14 (TLB)
Blessings,
Don
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