First in a Series on Race Relations as I have Experienced Them


My mother was raised in a small town in Michigan. One room schoolhouse and only one black family. Actually, it must have been an extended family. The kids were part of the school and treated like anyone else. Apparently one of the older members was referred to as N word John. My grandmother heard my mother and siblings refer to his as such and promptly marched them to him to apologize. He told her that he knew what it meant  but  everyone in town called him that to differentiate him from other people He said they didn’t understand the connotation and not to punish her children. She said she didn’t care what other people called him they were not going to.

After her father died, the family had to move to Detroit. My mother was a junior in high school. She said during gym, the black girls would pull the privacy curtains open to “see what white girls looked like.” Detroit has a long history of tense race relations and well as the separation of various ethnic groups. She returned to the small town because the graduation requirements were different and she couldn’t graduate on time staying in Detroit.

After high school and the death of her mother, the siblings shared an apartment. The young man they knew from school came to visit them and used the front door. The neighbors were upset. He had to use the back door, and it they were going to entertain him as an equal, they needed to pull the blinds.
Later the girls rented a house with other young ladies and hired maid/cooks. The maids were black, mostly from the south. She said one was a college graduate but couldn’t get a job due to her race.

My father was from Latimer, a German settlement. Close by was Coulter, a Danish town, Both in Iowa.  Neither has had a population over 1000. The railroad ran between them. New immigrants from Europe tended to stay together and the schools taught in the European language until WWI, when the government made them all teach in English. Teaching in German was the catalyst for that.

My mother said while they were dating, she was at the house my father and his friends rented. One of the other man’s dates was nasty to the black maid. My mother apologized to the maid.

Fast forward to marriage and living in a house on Scot Lake Michigan. The neighbors had a black maid named Odessa. I was a small child, we moved when I was 5, so younger than that. We were riding a bus when a black gentleman got on. I said, “Look, mom, there’s an Odessa.” My mother was horrified, but the nice man just smiled. He apparently understood I hadn’t seen any black people except someone named Odessa.

My mother and the neighbor were going to go to Pontiac, the nearest city, to shop.  Odessa warned them not to go as if was Negro push day. The black people pushed all white people into the street. They chose another day.

Due to my allergies (only in school 24 days out of a semester), we moved to Detroit. By then we were just ending WWII and feelings against the enemy countries still ran high. I had a German last name, so the kids involved must have known who I was. I would have been 2nd semester kindergarten or 1st grade. A group of big kids, probably 7-8 grade surrounded me as I walked home screaming at me and calling me a Nazi and pointing. I don’t remember how that was broken up, just the terror. Interestingly enough, the only other little girl they tormented was Helen, the little Jewish girl that lived upstairs. We lived in what was called an upper and lower income. Essentially this is a stacked duplex.

Next installment from my life will be California. However, to keep race relations in chronological order I am going to cover my second husband’s family history. His grandfather was a slave, but also an accomplished carpenter. His owner let him work for other people and keep the money he earned. One of those folks refused to pay him and he decked him. Not a good idea, he took the underground railroad north.

My husband’s father had been a pharmacist but was institutionalized. Not sure why. His mother was also a pharmacist and owned her own bank. She died when he was three, that would have been 1926ish. He was considered black but also had American Indian and German blood that he knew of. He was raised first by one grandmother then the other and finally by an aunt. His aunt was a librarian and her husband had been a professional baseball player in the Negro leagues.

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