Testimony of Healing October 7, 2002 Issue

Beyond racism

Earline Shoemake

I was born and raised in Louisiana during the time of segregation in the American South, before the Civil Rights Act of 1964. There was not a lot of day-to-day communication between the races. Black children and white children did not attend the same schools. But to me as a child, it was just normal life.

When I was about ten years old, my mom was working as a domestic. The white woman she worked for had a daughter my age, Ann. We liked each other, and she asked if I could come play with her and her cousin. The three of us had so much fun playing together.

When it was time for lunch, Ann's mom called us, and we ran together to the kitchen door. But I was stopped from coming into the house. The woman had made a little makeshift table out on the porch for me. Ann was just devastated that I was being shut out—and I heard her asking her mom why I couldn't come in. But I didn't hear the answer—and I didn't want to. I couldn't even eat. I just wanted to go home. Now I hated white people, and I vowed I would never be around them again.

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