Remembering Ronnie on Juneteenth

-


 

Ronnie Biggers played an iconic role in my life. He was the first black child I knew in school. It was the fall of 1965, and we were entering the fourth grade, the first year Central Elementary in Gastonia, NC integrated. I wrote a poem recently about the opportunity to know Ronnie, who was, as I recall, the only black child in our class. My memory is fuzzy, but I clearly remember the day he and I put our arms side by side and reflected on the superficial identifiers “black” and “white.”

 

Yesterday I attended a lunch at The Free Clinics in Hendersonville celebrating Juneteenth. The Free Clinics is an organization that marshals the services of paid and volunteer health care providers to serve uninsured residents with physical and mental health care. I’ve been elected to their board, and I was there at lunch with my family and other board members and paid staff.

 

The director started off with a history of Juneteenth and the continuing racial injustice that plagues our communities. She then opened the floor for conversation, encouraging the black participants to candidly share their experiences of racial discrimination. It was moving and eye-opening. The lone black man there, coincidentally named Ronnie, briefly mentioned his memory of school integration. Unfortunately, he was interrupted and didn’t finish the story.

 

Remembering my poem about Ronnie in the fourth grade, I was motivated by my lunch experience to Google his name on the off chance I would find what became of him. I was saddened to find an obituary that I’m sure is for the Ronnie Biggers I knew in fourth grade and never saw again after that year. He was born the same year I was and died in 2021. A photograph accompanies the column, and, while it is an adult face, I imagine that I recognize his eyes. They are kind eyes. And his smile is a knowing smile, a smile that says, “Yeah, I’ve seen some shit, but here I am.” RIP Ronnie. I hope I was a positive presence in your life in 1965.

 

First Day of School, 1965

“Integration’s an outrage!” Or so I was told.

Victimized white folks decried the injustice

of little white children exposed to the insult

of having to sit next to unruly negroes

 

that first day of school, 1965.

 

My head filled with slander I took my seat

and found to my shock I was next to a boy

with short curly hair, thick lips, and broad nose

who wasn’t dirty or smelly at all.

 

He looked at me and said, “Hi, I’m Ronnie,

I’ll bet that I can run faster than you.

I’ve got new Keds, I can jump higher, too.”

Astonished, I had no words to reply.

 

At recess we jumped and raced to a draw.

I had to admit I’d met my match.

I even forgot to ignore him at lunch,

but swapped my apple for his cheese crackers.

 

Later that day we laid arms side by side.

“You’re brown not black,” was my assessment.

He solemnly nodded, “You’re more tan than white.”

We paused, digesting the ramifications.

 

I wish we had stood and declaimed to the class,

“Our fellow students, today we’ve discovered

that race is none but a false social construct

devised to divide us for no good reason.”

 

What’s more, we find we now realize

that somehow we’ve got to do better than this.

We’re only nine but already we know

the big lie of race is our seed of destruction

 

this first day of school, 1965.”

 

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chile Heaven

-
Image
 This is my love letter to New Mexico. The chile harvest in Hatch, NM was always a statewide celebration as chiles were distributed through the state and roasted in large rotating metal baskets over gas flames in gas station parking lots and other sites throughout town. The fragrance of roasting chiles has recently been approved as the state aroma of NM.  Chlle Heaven was published in Rural Fiction Magazine. https://RuralFictionMagazine.com It was the farthest north she had ever been, but it was nowhere near as far north as Clementina wanted to go. She had learned from maps that north was up. She had learned from lying on her back looking at clouds that the sky was up. She had learned in science class that the moon was in the sky up beyond the Earth’s atmosphere. She had learned in church that heaven was up somewhere beyond the moon—even beyond the stars. Clementina wanted to go north to heaven and see her abuela; stand beside her again at the cracked Formica-...
Read more

Just Drive

-
Image
                  “I’m tired,” Lester said as he pulled his old heap to the grassy verge of the flat, two-lane country road. “You drive.” He slipped the manual gearshift on the steering column into neutral, left the car running, opened his door, and slowly unfolded to stand outside the car. He walked around to the passenger side, jerked open my door, and stood there as I looked up at him like a ‘possum caught in the headlights. I was 12 and had never driven anything but my Dad’s old tractor and a homemade go-cart. You’d think I’d be thrilled that my grandfather had just offered me the holy grail of adolescence. I was terrified.   Granddaddy was my mother’s father. He’d been in the battle of Meuse-Argonne in World War I, the largest and deadliest military offensive in U.S. history lasting from mid-September to Armistice Day on November 11, 1918. By the time I was 12, however, Granddaddy lived about seven ...
Read more

Be Prepared

-
Image
  Be prepared. Boy Scout motto or not, I don’t think anything could have prepared me to pick up a sandwich from the stack on the camp picnic table, take a big bite, and find it featured peanut butter and American cheese between two slices of white bread. I looked at a kid named Brad, who had drawn lunch duty that day. I said, “Are you sure this was on the menu?” He waved the mimeographed lunch directions that accompanied our daily food allotment and pointed to the itemized list. Sure enough, it read, “Saturday Lunch: Apples, Peanut Butter and Cheese Sandwiches.” For want of an Oxford comma, things had turned ugly.   We were at a special training event for Boy Scout Senior Patrol Leaders from troops all over the Piedmont Council. I was only 14 and the appointed leader of a motley band that included boys as old as 16 and 17. I was tall for my age, so my crew didn’t know my secret.   I was supposed to help the boys learn to be effective in their posts...
Read more