Swallowed Tears: A Memoir - Softcover

Rivers, Dr. Freya Anderson

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1477212248 ISBN 13: 9781477212240

Publisher: AuthorHouse, 2012

Synopsis

Swallowed Tears is a story of an African American family's courage and perseverance. This story is about one family but there were thousands of unknown individuals and families who daily put their lives on the line to end segregation. Dr. Dupuy H. Anderson was one of these individuals who persisted in spite of numerous threats to his life to change the city of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He was one of the many in Baton Rouge who fought for change. When the moment began in Baton Rouge, no one knew that the impact of the 1953 bus boycott would create universal hope for the rights of equality, justice and freedom. The leaders did not know that Martin Luther King, Jr. would use their model as a catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement. Yet, challenging oppression in the struggle for truth, justice and righteousness, Dr. Dupuy H. Anderson, one man, made a difference.

About this title

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Swallowed Tears

A MemoirBy Freya Anderson Rivers

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2012 Freya Anderson Rivers
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4772-1224-0

Contents

Prologue........................................1Negro Society...................................3Revolutionary...................................13Trouble Was Her Name............................26The Family......................................36Six Years Old...................................53Seven Years Old.................................58Eight Years Old.................................64Nine Years Old..................................67Ten Years Old...................................76Eleven and Twelve Years Old.....................88Revolutionary II................................97Trouble Again...................................111Ninth Grade.....................................117Tenth Grade.....................................135Junior Year.....................................144The Beginning...................................167Lee High Rebels.................................194HELL and Beyond.................................221LSU.............................................256Epilogue........................................263ME, Now.........................................266

Chapter One

Revolutionary

Malcolm X took the letter "X" as his last name to signify the African name he never knew and to rid himself of the slave master's name. Denouncing his last name was a protest against having to carry the name of the slave masters and their violence against enslaved African American women. Most African American genealogy began with enslavement followed by rape. Yes, RAPE! When someone owns you, there is no consent involved. You do as you are told or you die. That is the significance of the surname and a part of the African American heritage that we would prefer to forget.

Dupuy Henry Anderson, my father, kept the slave master's names but researched genealogical archives his entire life mailing his last computer printed copies to me on August 1998, ten months before his death. He was determined to find the family history to try to find the families of the perpetrators of injustice. He felt that knowing the past is critical to the future because the past is the foundation for the future. His past, or as much as documentation allows, began in 1806 at a "Public sale of 18 slaves imported from Africa" (ship name: Success). Unnamed: black "Brut" female; age 8; sold to Charles Duval in 1806 in Baton Rouge.

I'm still doing the research and so far I've found Duvall and Devall listed on both sides of Daddy's mother's family: Frozine Duval Cobbs (1859-1923), whose mother Creshy Henesboisn was raped by a white Duvall in West Baton Rouge Parish, and Charles Dupuy's grandmother, who was raped by a Devall in West Feliciana Parish. I don't know if they were related but I'm also scared to find out. Frozine and Charles Dupuy gave birth to Lillie Dupuy (Grandmother, January 18, 1896), Daddy's mother.

Daddy's father, Henry Andrew Anderson (Paw Paw) was listed as mulatto in the 1910 census, which means that he was of mixed heritage, born March 8, 1895. His mother Julia Bockel was the daughter of a white Prussian, Conrad Bockel, who raped his black servant, Margaret Bockel (1870 census). Julia married Henry R. Anderson, Paw Paw's father. His parents John Anderson and Sophy Washington listed themselves in the 1880 census as Black farmers in St. Francisville, West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana. Those Black Andersons in St. Francisville were well respected, not only as entrepreneurs but also for operating the power plant. One brother was the only operator of the plant. He would turn the power on and off daily for the entire area. Henry R. Anderson divorced or left Julia Bockel shortly after Paw Paw was two years old and married Emma George. He remained in contact with Paw Paw and left him his house and car when he died. So, my paternal great grandparents were mixed with whites and were considered mulattoes.

Henry Andrew Anderson (Paw Paw) and Lillie Dupuy (Grandmother) were married April 28, 1917 and had five children: Dupuy Henry Anderson (4/30/1918), my father, was the oldest of Lilburne (Lulu), Uncle Bobby, Uncle Cliff and Aunt Phrozine. Grandmother and Paw Paw lived with her father, Charlie Dupuy, until Lulu was born. After becoming a postman, which was considered a very good job for Blacks at that time because it was a federal job with a pension and benefits, Paw Paw moved his family to North Street in a white neighborhood close to downtown Baton Rouge.

Mixed neighborhoods were strange to other southern cities because most of the south had defined separate housing areas for whites and Blacks, but many of the Baton Rouge neighborhoods were mixed. The Anderson-Dupuy families desegregated North Street. There was Paw Paw and Grandmother's house facing North Street and behind them was Charlie Dupuy, Jr. (Grandmother's brother), who we called "Son." Behind him were NinNee (Grandmother's sister), her husband, Charles Washington and their family, and around the corner lived Aunt Francis Duval Gardette. She was grandmother and NinNee's aunt who lived with her husband, Willie Gardette. We called him Uncle Doo Doo. I don't know how he got that name, but he was one of the best stonemasons in the city who was often drunk because of the humiliation he had to endure. Recognition for his work and salary often went to his white supervisor as did any accomplishments of Negroes at that time. Black men rarely received credit for their work, which caused them to drink or seek other refuge to escape reality. That was the explanation given to us, the children, to explain his drinking.

NinNee's children were George, Sis, Margaret, Eunice, Corrine and Tutti who, living directly behind Grandmother, made up the Anderson-Dupuy-Washington extended family. Daddy played with his siblings and cousins. From eight to ten years of age Daddy and his cousin George also played with some of the white kids in the neighborhood who grew up to become influential political leaders. Daddy was the self-appointed head of the children in the family, and they all attest to the fact that he came into the world as a leader and dictator, albeit a benevolent one, with strong ethics and beliefs wanting everyone to be the best that they could in every situation to make the world a better place. He never let any of them settle for less than their maximum potential.

His siblings described him as headstrong, bull-headed and outright bossy. He knew what he wanted and set out early in life to try to right the wrongs. As a child Daddy wanted to join the Boy Scouts but there were no troops for Blacks. In his junior year of high school he was finally able to join Black Troop 547 organized and chartered by Mount Zion First Baptist Church. J. L. Kraft, football coach for McKinley, Baton Rouge's Black high school, was Troop 547's first Scout Master, but the Black troop could not buy uniforms or go to camp or any of the general gatherings. Daddy always talked about how disappointed he was in the Scouts for their discrimination and how denigrated he felt because of color.

Later, as a young adult working with other local leaders, he organized a fundraiser at the Temple Roof. The Temple was a Black theater downstairs and a social hall upstairs. The money was to purchase uniforms for all the boys in the troop, but even after the money was raised, they were still denied the privilege of purchasing the uniforms. At the time Daddy was working in the stock room at the downtown store, Welsh and Levy, where the uniforms were sold, but that made no difference. The store refused to sell uniforms to Black children. Despite the obstacles, the young men persevered. Daddy said their troop trained from the Boy Scout Handbook, went hiking and camping on their own and "Nigger-Rigged" (the term used when Blacks were inventive enough to find solutions to problems presented by segregation) the supplies they needed to accomplish their medals. He remained a Boy Scout until his 18th birthday and then served as an assistant Scout Master, Scout Master, and eventually, Commissioner. Daddy didn't let anything stop him from achieving his dreams. Every time whites thought they had won, Blacks found the barriers as just one more hurdle to cross. The Boy Scouts became one of Daddy's lifetime revolutionary fights.

At the same time as his fight with the Boy Scouts, Daddy became aware of the inequities in the school system. He was one in a group of boys selected to pick up textbooks at a white school for the Black McKinley High School. What they picked up were raggedy, old, outdated books that the white school was discarding. Without backs, pages torn, names written in all the lines, writing on pages, lines blacked out, these books became the texts for Black students after the white students had thrown them away and were receiving new ones. He also noticed the differences in the whites' buildings as compared to those of the Black schools. The white schools were painted and well-kept with no broken windows or torn screens or peeling paint. The white schools offered more courses, were well supplied and had a longer school year. Blacks had a shorter year since many children worked on farms to help their families harvest sugar cane and cotton or other work in the fields. Supplies in Black schools were non-existent. Black teachers paid for supplies out of their one- third-less-than-white-teachers' salary. Anger, with hatred for a system of inequality, began brewing in my father who refused to accept second-class citizenship. Educational equality became another revolutionary fight for the rest of his life.

When not fighting for equality, he tried to be an ordinary teen, but then maybe not so ordinary because he occasionally had problems trying to "fit in." One day he and his cousin George, who was called "Brother," had Paw Paw's car on blocks working on it. Daddy told George, "You get under and check it because I don't know anything about cars. All I know is how to turn the key and put in gas." George agreed, "Ok, see if it will turn over." George was under the car when Daddy started the car, with his foot on the gas! The car jerked forward rolling off the blocks and rolling over George. Daddy was scared and immediately got out of the car. He started shaking George and yelling, "Bro, are you dead? Bro, are you dead? Speak to me Bro!" Fortunately, George was all right but the cacophony of screams and hollering of all the children at the house brought everyone running and eventually laughing after they found out that Brother was not harmed. The family still laughs about it at every gathering.

Another Daddy teen moment was the night Grandmother heard someone at the back door and saw the handle shaking. With Grandmother and the other children standing at the door, Daddy got Grandmother's brother Uncle Jim's gun and shot through the door barely missing Grandmother and the person trying to get in the house, but whoever it was ran for his life. Aunt Phrozine said the man tripped over the clothesline, and then fell over the fence before he finally escaped. Daddy was a take-charge kind of person. Act now and think about consequences later as a bullet might whiz by your ear.

Another of those times of not thinking about consequences was when a white police officer came up to a car that Daddy was sitting in and told him to get out. He told the policeman, "No!" The policeman replied, "Nigger, you know I'll shoot you," but Daddy said that he looked that white man straight in the eye and told him, "You're not going to shoot me." To be that bold during the Jim Crow era, Daddy could definitely be called a crazy man, but he never thought of himself as unequal to anyone and he refused to be mistreated.

He was quite smart and did well in school, graduating from McKinley High School in 1935, but he knew he wanted and needed a higher degree to succeed. At 18 he registered to vote by correctly reciting the Preamble and answering questions relating to the Constitution and state government to pass the required registration examination. He told the registrars that he wanted to be registered as a Democrat but they stamped his card as Republican, which meant that he could only vote in the general election for governor every four years and not any of the primary elections because Louisiana was a one party state, Democrat. This just added fuel to the fire in him to go to college and become the first person in his family to have a college degree. He felt a degree would demand respect. With the little money that Paw Paw had saved for him and Lulu, Daddy began studying at Southern University. He worked part time and summers to get him through. Paw Paw's white mentor, a Mr. Kaufmann, the Postmaster, advised him on financial issues that enabled Paw Paw to eventually accumulate a savings account that paid for most of the tuition needed for Daddy and Lulu to attend college. After graduation from Southern University in 1940, Daddy still wanted more education, a higher degree. He wanted to become a dentist.

Accepted at Meharry Medical College, a Black medical college in Nashville, Tennessee, Daddy left Baton Rouge. Without all the money he needed to attend, he begged for any job on campus to help him pay for books, housing, food and other necessities. When he inquired at the library about the possibility of a job, he was asked if he had any training in the Dewey Decimal System; he responded that he did. Daddy told the story to us grinning because he said, "I didn't know anything about Dewey Decimal. I had been to libraries and knew how to check out books but I didn't know how they were filed. So, I lied to get the job. I spent the next few days in the library finding out all that I could and I got the job." That job helped him remain at Meharry. In his many speeches that he gave me as a child, he often told me that he never went out to parties or peer activities on weekends because he was always in the library working. He was determined to get his dental degree. I later found out that Daddy could also be the life of a party. He didn't spend every weekend in the library. He just did not let anything deter him from the degree because his Aunt Dell instilled in him that education was paramount to attaining your dreams. The family believed in education and Daddy's generation became the first to achieve higher degrees. Armed with determination, Daddy continued to work odd jobs during the summers to pay for college.

Digging ditches at Ryan Airport in Baton Rouge was one of those jobs and the only job he could find as a Black, even with a college degree. He took the job even though he had never done manual labor before. He talked of his hands and back being in constant pain, but he always said, "Be the best at whatever you do even if it's a ditch digger." Daddy never failed to practice his beliefs and he was a great ditch digger, which gave him an opportunity to talk to the supervisor who, after hearing Daddy's qualifications (including being the teacher assistant in an engineering course at Fisk with Jimmy Lawson who later became President of Fisk), promoted Daddy to supervisor of the ditch diggers.

Not wanting to be a ditch digger for the rest of his life, Daddy pressed on in his studies and community involvement while at Meharry. A community involvement incident at Meharry landed him in jail. His instructor who taught dental jurist prudence ran for an elected office in Nashville, Tennessee. Someone paid the poll tax for students at Meharry who had been in the state for more than six months to permit them to register. The students did register. The professor won the election. The city threw the election out and put the students in jail when they tried to vote again in the second election. Daddy went to jail. They didn't remain jail, but it was supposed to be a lesson on staying in one's place. In spite of politics Dupuy H. Anderson completed his Doctor of Dental Surgery from Meharry in 1944 and received his Commission as First Lieutenant Dental Corps, Army of the United States. He served in the Medical Administrative Corps.

While studying for the board exam in Baton Rouge, Daddy went to the library for resource materials. The librarian informed him that he could not stay there and read but that there was a room for "coloreds." He told the librarian that the room was too small and dark and he could not read in that room. The compassionate librarian showed him a secluded, large, bright room that no one else used and hid Daddy in the room so that he could study. Eventually, he led the fight to break down the barriers in the public library. The city agreed to let Blacks in the library but only certain people. However, the night that the council agreed, Daddy called every principal in the city to let them know that the library was open.

On February 21, 1945 the Louisiana State Board of Dentistry sent congratulations on the successful completion of the State Board Examinations for Dentistry just days after Daddy had been issued his Army ID on February 9th. He was now a licensed dentist but could not set up office until his tour of duty was over. During the time he was in medical school, Lulu (Lilburne) went to college, graduated in Home Economics, began working and sent money to Daddy to help him with finances in college. Phrozine was in nursing school. His brothers Bobby and Cliff joined the service during World War II and never completed their college degrees. Bobby followed in Paw Paw's footsteps by working with the postal service and Cliff became a master carpenter.

September 5, 1946, First Lieutenant Dupuy H. Anderson was promoted to Captain in the Air Force at Ft. Sam Houston, Texas and his military life became a living hell. The hatred of another institutionalized system of racism, the Army and its people, carried the burden of inhumanity without any means of rebuttal, revenge, retribution, or reward for Black people. Daddy gave an extensive interview with Maxine Crump for LSU's Oral History Project in 1994 where he described his experiences in the Army.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Swallowed Tearsby Freya Anderson Rivers Copyright © 2012 by Freya Anderson Rivers. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Edition details

• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1477212248
• ISBN 13: 9781477212240
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 290