With the Might of Angels (22 page)

Mr. Lloyd’s megaphone could be heard from here to Norfolk. Boy, was it loud. Mr. Lloyd called Gertie forward in front of everybody. “Now, Miss Feldman, you may christen the Prettyman Bell.”

Well, it didn’t take a dictionary to know what
christen
means. I’ve been to enough church services to know that when somebody is christened they’re introduced as new and special in the eyes of God. And if the eyes of God were watching at that moment, they could see that
me, me, me
was not the one christening the Prettyman Bell.

But soon
me, me, me
saw the real and true Gertie Feldman.

As soon as Gertie curled her fingers around that bell’s weighty handle, she slid her eyes toward
me, me, me.
The whole school was waiting to hear the christening of the bell. But Gertie would not oblige them. She pulled down on the bell’s handle. The handle didn’t budge. Then she went up on
tiptoe to get her hands and the weight of her body above the handle. She tried with a will to plunge down on the handle, but it still didn’t move. Not even a little bit.

Gertie gave a grunt. She bit on her bottom lip, and tried to pull the handle toward her. Still no christening. That’s when I knew Gertie was faking. Someone who’s so good at somersaults and talking to grown-ups could most likely ring a bell, even a big one.

Finally Gertie said, “This bell’s too heavy for me. I need help.”

Mr. Lloyd came forward to get the bell started, but Gertie stopped him! Before
he, he, he
could christen the bell, Gertie grabbed on to
me, me, me
!

She positioned my fingers around the bell’s handle, then wrapped her hands on top of mine. The bell and its handle
were
heavy, but not heavy enough to keep Gertie from ringing it by herself.

Together we hunkered down on that handle and christened the Prettyman Bell. We sent its song right to God’s ear.

But after the first strike of sound, Gertie stepped away so I could ring all by myself. And did I ever ring. The bell’s handle got lighter with each yank. And as the bell started to swing on its iron
hinges, its sound grew louder and louder, taking on a steady rhythm and a
claaannggg
that stirred me from the inside out.

I’m sure Mr. Lloyd didn’t expect that I’d pull on that bell’s handle twenty times over. But I was there to introduce that bell. Mr. Lloyd could not stop
me, me, me.

I
claaaaannnggged
that bell for Mama and Daddy.

I
claaaaannnggged
for Jackie Robinson and Mr. Dunphey.

I
claaaaannnggged
for Mr. Williams, Miss Cora, and Miss Billie.

I pulled on that bell’s handle doubly hard for Gertie and Goober, who both see things in ways others don’t, and for Yolanda, who can always make me giggle.

Most of all, I christened that pretty Prettyman Bell for myself.

Dawnie Rae Johnson.

When I was done, Gertie asked Mr. Lloyd for his megaphone. He was so startled by the whole thing that he gave it to her without thinking twice.

Gertie really didn’t need a megaphone. Her voice is loud enough.

She said, “I give my Bell Ringer job to Dawnie.”

Not one person protested. How could they? Mr. Williams and the lunchroom ladies were clapping too loudly.

With the school year almost over, I have a bad case of spring fever. The last day of school is this Friday.

Today Mrs. Taylor posted the roster of school jobs for next year. They were listed alphabetically, and for once my name was in the right place.

There were three names and jobs on that list that caught my eye:

Morning Salutation
: Gertie Feldman

Blackboard/Erasers
: Bobby Hatch

Bell Ringer:
Dawnie Rae Johnson

Happy birthday to me! I haven’t written in a while, for the simple reason that this book’s pages have run low because of Goober’s scribbling, and I wanted to save some space for writing on my birthday.

As it turns out, I now have enough pages to
write for at least another year. I’m in bed as I fill up on writing. My red pencil is short now, but its point is still as sharp as ever.

This morning the in-between had nothing on me. I was awake while the moon started to wave good-bye. The sky was peeling open to let in the sun.

Something hard-edged poked through my pillow’s softness. I knew right off what it was, and reached around to pull it out from its hiding place.

It’s a new Diary Book! For my thirteenth birthday! From Goober!

I will never use the bad
H
word about my brother again. He has given me a new
H
word to describe how I feel about him. I am
humbled
by how good a soul that boy is.

My new diary has a green fabric cover and a pocket in the back. I can tell by the lavender smell coming off the book’s front and by the stiff-stiff way it’s been sewn together that Mama’s had a hand in making it. The book has been pressed with an iron, I just know it.

The pages are the same as this diary’s pages, rough at the edges from the way Goober’s cut them to fit between the new book’s covers. Goober’s written a note on the book’s inside front.
I recognize his handwriting. It says:

To Dawnie. My sister. You can fly.

Now I have reached this book’s last page. It’s just as well. I need to stop writing. Goober’s calling me.

“Dawnie, come out and play!”

Dawnie returned to Prettyman Coburn School in the fall of 1955. In October of that year, the Brooklyn Dodgers won the World Series, beating the New York Yankees. It was a victory for Dodgers fans, and especially for Jackie Robinson, as this was his only championship. The World Series was a personal triumph for Dawnie, who listened to the final game of the series on the radio with her family.

The morning of October 4, 1955, marked the final World Series game. On that day, Dawnie rang the Prettyman Bell louder than ever.

Dawnie remained the only black student at Prettyman Coburn. The school was slow to integrate. Dawnie graduated from Prettyman Coburn in 1960. She was ranked third in her senior high-school class, and was the first black student to graduate from Prettyman in the school’s fifty-year history. In 1963, Prettyman enrolled three more black students, but progress took time.

Dawnie won a scholarship and attended
Boston University, one of the nation’s few predominantly white colleges to enroll black students at that time. She went on to receive a scholarship to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where she earned her medical degree in pediatric medicine. Through her education, Dawnie learned the true nature of her brother’s “special way of seeing things.” Goober had what is known today as autism, a neurobiological disorder.

Dr. Dawnie Rae Johnson never married. She devoted her life’s work to the advancement in understanding of neurological disorders in children. She became an active member of the NAACP.

Yolanda graduated from Bethune, also ranking high in her class. She stayed in Hadley, married a local man, and became the choir director at Shepherd’s Way Baptist Church.

Dawnie’s parents moved to Richmond, Virginia, the state capital. They successfully opened and operated a chain of dry-cleaning stores, called, simply, “Loretta’s.”

People from all over brought their clothing for laundering, tailoring, and pressing. When they picked up their items, they returned home with the cleanest, sharpest dresses and slacks in the state of Virginia.

Loretta’s employed people of all races. Those who worked for Loretta’s took the establishment’s promise of excellence seriously. The company’s most committed employee was Goober.

Gertie and Dawnie remained friends. Like Dawnie, Gertie also broke new ground at Prettyman. She was the first Jewish student to graduate.

Gertie became a labor attorney who worked on behalf of underserved Americans seeking fair employment opportunities. Soon after Gertie married in 1975, she had one child, a daughter, whom she named Dawn, after her best friend.

Women and men, who, like Dawnie, integrated their schools in the 1950s and 1960s, are still alive today, sharing their stories of triumph.

Life in America
in 1954

At one time in America, the laws in many states kept black and white citizens separate in public places, including restaurants, movie theaters, buses, hotels, and pools. And, children of different races could not go to school together.

The laws, known as Jim Crow laws, gave school districts the legal right to keep schools racially segregated, as long as they provided an equal education to black and white students. Jim Crow laws upheld the belief that if schools were “separate but equal,” it was acceptable to keep black and white students apart.

But these separate schools weren’t the same. Black students were forced to work with inferior materials — shabby books, broken pencils, and facilities that needed fixing. In white public schools, students usually enjoyed new books, sports equipment, hot lunches, and extracurricular activities. Black teachers were underpaid and under-represented among state school officials, and they
struggled to get proper learning tools for their students.

The unfairness of these circumstances made black children and their parents angry. To strike out against these unjust laws, a group of African American parents from Delaware, Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., worked with the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). They sued school boards that discriminated against black children. Their case was named after Oliver Brown, one of the parents who lived in Kansas. Oliver’s daughter, Linda, was prevented from attending her local all-white elementary school because she was African American.

On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of school integration in a case known as
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.
As part of the court’s decision, it was determined that separate school facilities were not equal, and that the best way to ensure equality in education was to allow black children to enroll in any public school they wished to attend. This was not an easy fight. It took the hard work of many determined people to make school integration possible.

The
Brown v. Board of Education
ruling brought hope to students and teachers. At the same time, though, there were individuals who were strongly against school integration. Most schools did not integrate right away. Progress was slow. Many residents in Southern states resisted integration. In Southern towns, school officials upheld segregation practices, despite the law.

In September 1954, months after the
Brown v. Board of Education
decision, schools on military bases in Fort Myer and Fort Belvoir in Virginia, and Craig Air Force Base in Alabama integrated. Military base schools were required to comply immediately under federal law. Schools in Washington, D.C., also integrated.

In the state of Virginia, U.S. senator Harry F. Byrd, Sr., a segregationist, promoted a movement known as the “Southern Manifesto,” which opposed integrating schools. This program was supported by more than one hundred Southern government officials. On February 25, 1956, Senator Byrd launched an initiative called the “Massive Resistance” movement that led to legislation passed in 1958 intending to prevent school integration. Massive Resistance enacted a law that cut off state funds and closed public schools that
agreed to integrate. During this time, Virginia closed nine schools in four counties rather than integrate them. Virginia state courts and federal courts ruled against the Massive Resistance tactics, citing them as illegal. Schools were forced to uphold the laws set forth under the
Brown v. Board of Education
ruling.

Still, less than 2 percent of Southern schools were integrated by 1957. That year, nine African American students, known as the “Little Rock Nine,” enrolled in Central High School, an all-white school in Little Rock, Arkansas. Their bravery captured the attention of Americans throughout the nation, as the violent events surrounding their attempts to enter Central High School were covered by national news media.

The same was true in 1960 when six-year-old Ruby Bridges was the first black child to attend William Frantz Elementary School, a white school in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Although these integration stories are the most well-known, many brave black children enrolled in all-white schools after integration laws were passed. Despite the taunts and abuses of segregationists, these children proceeded with strength and dignity.

School integration enraged and frightened many people, and stirred racial tensions. As a result, African American children and adults were often tormented by those who believed in segregation.

At the same time, other people stood up for what was right. They banded together and worked hard to make integration a reality.