Growing Up Black

BEN CUNNINGHAM: These images fed the white kids in my neighborhood ammunition to terrorize me, even in a game of tag.

ANGIE CHATMAN: I struggled and I strained.

And then I looked for help, but I wasn't gonna cry.

I was not gonna give him the satisfaction.

And my own family, saying how they loved my sons so much that they didn't even notice that they're Black.

WES HAZARD: Tonight's theme is "Growing Up Black."

This evening, we'll hear a series of supremely gifted tellers share stories about growing up Black in America.

As someone who's had that experience, I can tell you that it is as wonderful as it is burdensome, joyous as it is challenging, ordinary as it is exceptional.

Part of it is simply growing up in America, with things like Saturday morning cartoons, and chasing the ice cream truck, and getting excited for Fourth of July fireworks.

The other part, coming into your own as a Black person in this country, means fighting to overcome an endless array of preconceived notions about you and your character and your abilities; receiving "the talk" from a very concerned parent; and realizing that for so very many people, they will only ever see your Blackness and not your American-ness; yet still rising above and succeeding just the same.

CUNNINGHAM: My name's Ben Cunningham.

I live in the Boston area and I work in the Cambridge public school system, and I'm a storyteller that tells stories for all ages.

And tonight's theme is "Growing Up Black," and I was wondering if you could share with us, how does that theme inspire you?

It inspires me because the idea of growing up Black means different things to different people, and it means different things to every Black person on the planet.

I grew up Black in a white neighborhood, predominantly white neighborhood.

My experiences are different than somebody else growing up in a different neighborhood in a different town.

So to, to be able to bring that to the stage and what my experiences are, it's very important to me.

How do you think that you are able to use storytelling in order to challenge people's perspective on a given issue?

CUNNINGHAM: I think, realistically, it's just telling people about who I am within that story, and not trying to tell them what I think they want to hear, and who they think they want to see.

At age six, the only person that I knew that smoked cigarettes was my mother.

I never knew that junior high kids smoked cigarettes, but there are a bunch of them standing in front of my porch, and Mr. O'Leary's son has this funny-looking cigarette, and he's angry, because every time he tries to light it, the wind blows out the flame, and he really, really wants to tell me something.

So I lean my head in closer to get a better look, and he lights it.

(imitates hissing) "Go back to where you came from, you effing monkey!"

(imitates small explosion) The firecracker hit me underneath the eye and exploded just before it landed on the ground.

It's almost the Fourth of July, and there are red, white, and blue flags going up and down the main street.

Stars and stripes everywhere.

Kids lighting fireworks night and day.

I'm the only Black kid living in this neighborhood, and the youth in this town are being very patriotic.

"Go back to Africa!"

They called me the n-word and walked away smiling.

At age six, the n-word is a new word in my vocabulary.

That night, my dad immediately took me to Mr. O'Leary's house, and they had some words.

"Honest Injun, I swear to God, "my kid didn't throw a firecracker at your kid.

I know my kid the way that you know your...

boy."

My dad was silent, holding back tears of rage, because Mr. O'Leary was a public official, so going to the police meant nothing would be accomplished.

In public, Mr. O'Leary was a stand-up kind of guy.

In private, you would discover that Mr. O'Leary's small mind had this huge encyclopedia of racial slurs for anyone that didn't look like him or go to the same church.

But he'd get them confused.

So he classified us as "spear-chuckers."

I think the word "spear-chucker" provided him with a visual aid so he didn't get his racial slurs confused.

A few days later, everyone was playing in the park, the big kids were playing with the little kids, and all was forgotten.

They scooped me up and put me in this shopping cart.

We just laughed like it was an amusement park ride.

Then, bam!

They flipped the shopping cart over, trapped me underneath, and Patrick, the heaviest kid, sat on top.

I cried hysterically with my face pressed against the bars, and Mr. O'Leary's son looked me in the eyes, and it was clear: all was not forgotten.

(imitates laughing): "Who did we catch?

Yeah!

"We caught... Kunta Kinte!"

From Roots.

"A monkey in a cage."

(imitates spitting) He spit in my face, and the others spit at me.

The little kids danced around the shopping cart, laughing, pointing, making monkey sounds, and Patrick sat on top.

Now, many of these kids have family that are in law enforcement.

Most of these kids will grow up dreaming of becoming a police officer, and some will.

It's been over ten minutes now, and I can't breathe.

I'm having an asthma attack.

So they let me go.

Not because they're concerned, but because... (imitates laughing): "It's freaking hilarious!

"Look at him, look at him making that sound!

Look at him go..." (imitates wheezing) (imitates laughing) "Go back to where you came from."

So I spent a lot of time at home, watching TV, seeing images of where I came from and who I was supposed to be.

Outdated images that glorified a racist past.

Brought to you by Walt Disney, Bugs Bunny, Tom and Jerry, and the Three Stooges.

White people in blackface, Black people turning sheet-white when they thought they "sees a ghost."

Little African boy, black as coal, trying to make rabbit stew.

Darkest Africa with Al Jolson-like creatures dancing across the screen with jazz hands, saying, "Mammy!"

And I will never forget The Jungle Book, with an ape singing that song: "I Want to Be Just Like You."

These images fed the white kids in my neighborhood ammunition to terrorize me, even in a game of tag.

"Eenie meenie miney mo."

It's just us little kids on my porch.

(imitates laughing): "Catch a bleep by the toe!

"Hey, Blackie, we know how to find you in the dark.

"All you gotta do is smile.

Just like in the cartoons."

I've been on this planet for six years, and that joke wasn't funny the first time, and it's not funny now.

Suddenly, the game stops, because the big kids are coming down the street, and everyone is scared, because this time, the big kids are Black, walking down the street in an all-white neighborhood.

They're not walking, they are strutting.

They have these huge Afros, silk shirts with collars going out to here, and bell-bottom pants.

One of them has his boom box up on his shoulder, sunglasses, and he's smoking this cigarette.

He shuts off the radio and he looks at me.

"Say, my man, these white kids messing with you?

"Black man, I am talking to you.

I said, 'Are these white boys messing with you?'"

I don't know what to say.

"White boy, come here.

Fat boy.

Yeah, you, come here."

Eddie has never said or done anything racist.

"Are you messing with my man?

I said, 'Are you messing with my man?'"

All Eddie can say is, (stammering): "No, sir."

(stammering): "No, sir."

"You better not be messing with my man.

You dig?"

He flicked his cigarette at his chest and Eddie looked like he was going to wet his pants and cry at the same time.

"If any you whiteys mess with my man, we will be back.

"You dig?

"Little man.

Black power."

I just held up my tiny fist.

They turned that radio back on and they just strutted down the street without a care in the world.

They didn't care that there was a police officer who lived across the street.

They went right past the parents' houses that called me the n-word and down the hill past that nasty schoolteacher.

And they just disappeared.

The only thing that you could hear was the music playing, and I never saw them again.

And we went back to... the game.

But this time, things were different.

"Eenie... meenie... Miney...

mo."

(stammering): "Catch a... "Catch a tiger by the toe.

"If he hollers, let him go.

Out goes Y-O-U."

CHATMAN: My name is Angie Chatman.

I'm a writer, and I'm originally from the South Side of Chicago, but I currently live with my family in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston.

I'm wondering, for you, though, coming from writing, was it difficult for you to switch gears into live or virtual storytelling?

Yes, as a matter of fact, it's pretty challenging.

I mean, um, as a writer, you have as many pages as you want.

As a storyteller, you're kind of limited with the time frame, and it's kind of hard to shrink a story into five or six minutes.

It's good, though.

It's really good to learn how to distill a story into its basic parts, and still hit those emotional highs that the audience responds to.

Your story tonight, what do you hope that the audience takes away from it?

CHATHAM: Little things can change the world, right?

It may appear like it's not a big deal, but those little slights hurt, and the scars last forever.

Second grade was so boring.

The nuns wore these drab habits, and their favorite word was, "Shh."

We had to wear uniforms, too.

The girls had navy and gray plaid skirts, white blouses, a navy cardigan for when it was cold, navy or white knee-high socks, and then I wore my brown school shoes.

Everything about second grade was boring, except for visitor day.

We had once a marine biologist from the Shedd Aquarium.

Another time, an archaeologist from the Field Museum of Natural History came to talk about what she did for a living.

But the best part about visitor days, we got to wear our own clothes, no uniforms.

And on this particular visitor day, I'm wearing my favorite light brown knit dress, and it has pink stripes across the chest.

And then I wore white stockings and my special-occasion black patent leather shoes with buckle.

And in the afternoon, when our visitor was scheduled to arrive, a policeman shows up at our classroom door, and Mrs. Scott, our teacher, invites him in and introduces him as Officer Stanislavski, our visitor for the day.

We were to call him Officer Friendly.

Officer Friendly began his talk by explaining that his job with the Chicago Police Department was to protect and serve all Americans.

And Lyle in the third row snorted.

And we would have done the same, because we had seen, two years ago, when Dr. Martin Luther King came and marched in Marquette Park, on the Southwest Side of the city, the policemen did not protect him.

They protected the white people, and in fact, those white people stoned Dr. King.

One actually hit his mark on his forehead and he bled and fell in the street.

The pictures were in the newspaper, The Chicago Defender and the Chicago Tribune.

So, for him to say that he protected all Americans was a fib.

But we were well-behaved students, and we continued to listen as Officer Friendly passed around his tools-- his shiny star, his baton, that was really quite heavy.

And then he asked for a volunteer from the class, and my hand shot up.

After all, I looked great and I was a teacher's pet.

I did notice that no one else raised their hand.

I got to the front of the classroom, and I turned around and I faced my classmates, and Officer Friendly took out his handcuffs.

And he told me to raise my arms in front of my face, and he put them on, and they were huge.

In fact, after he told me to put my hands down, the handcuffs fell on the floor with a big clink, and everybody laughed-- nervously.

Officer Friendly continued by saying that for people with really small wrists, he had a different set of handcuffs, and he told me to put my arms behind my back.

And even though I was nervous, I complied.

He was an adult, a policeman.

I did what I was told.

And Officer Friendly put those handcuffs on my wrists.

I heard the click as he locked them, and the metal was cold against my skin.

And I tensed up and tried to get out of the handcuffs.

I struggled and I strained.

And then I looked for help, and Officer Friendly noticed, and he said, "You know, if you ask me nicely, I'll let you go."

And I looked at my classmates, and Kevin, who had never talked to me on the playground and definitely didn't play with me, he shook his head no.

And that was like confirmation of what I knew inside.

Officer Friendly was a bully, and he wasn't going to let me out until I cried uncle.

But I wasn't gonna cry.

I was not going to give him the satisfaction.

Unfortunately, my body didn't comply, and I felt the warm urine out of my underwear and down my legs and into my beautiful black patent leather shoes.

And it was at that moment that Mrs. Scott appeared, and she stood up and she told Officer Friendly, "Let her go."

Officer Friendly hesitated, and I thought he was gonna say no.

But Mrs. Scott said, "Right now, release her."

And he took the keys and he let me go.

And I rubbed my wrists, because they were sore from where I was struggling.

And I grabbed the paper bag that Mrs. Scott offered me, knowing that inside was a clean pair of underwear and some socks.

And I went into the bathroom, changed my clothes, and cried.

When I got back to the classroom, Officer Friendly had gone, but he had left me a blue whistle as a token of appreciation for helping him show off his supplies.

On the walk home, I took that whistle and I threw it in the trash in the alley, and when I got home, I tried to scrub the urine out of my shoes.

My mother came home and she saw what I had done, and she asked what had happened.

And I told her, and she said, "Oh, Angie, I'm so sorry that happened to you."

And while I appreciated the sentiment, I was disappointed.

You see, my mother had told me she was Wonder Woman without the bracelets, and I believed her.

So I thought when this bully did this to me, she would go and do something, and she said she couldn't.

He was a policeman, and I felt like I did when I found out that there was no Santa Claus.

My mother continued to explain that as time would go by, change would come.

Things would be different when I got older.

You see, I'm of the generation of Emmett Till, and those four little girls in Sunday school, and Huey Newton and Rodney King.

And my mother was right, she didn't lie to me.

Change has come.

But then I think about Ahmaud Arbery, and Sandra Bland, and George Floyd, and the problem is not that change hasn't come.

The problem is that not enough change has come.

Not nearly enough change.

SUSANNE SCHMIDT: I'm Susanne Schmidt and I grew up in New York, but I currently live in Burlington, Vermont, and when I am not telling stories, I work as a mental health professional.

And what stories do you tell most, and why is that?

I consider myself a comedic storyteller for the most part, but I always feel like storytelling is, there's such an opportunity to deliver some hope and some sort of message that can sort of move listeners forward.

I'm just wondering, you know, how has your role as a storyteller evolved for you since you started?

My transitioning from being a storyteller to doing storytelling teaching and coaching and producing, it's just been wonderful to know that you can sort of walk into a room of people that are struggling with something and be able to help them to find their own voice.

That feels more incredible to me than getting up on stage myself and telling a great story.

That's the real deal for me.

When I was nine, my best friend and I almost set our house on fire.

Not intentionally, and it really was kind of my father's fault.

My dad had found this toaster at the dump, which, according to him, worked perfectly.

According to my mother, at some point, this thing was going to set the house on fire.

Making toast in our house had six steps: first you had to pull the thing out from underneath the cabinets.

Then you had to plug it in, then you to drop in the bread.

Then you had to watch it carefully, and as soon as the toast was ready, you had to unplug it, and then finally, pry the toast out with a knife.

We understood all of the steps.

What we didn't understand was that if you didn't do the steps, the toaster would burst into flames.

And so, for obvious reasons, my mother declared the toaster was absolutely off-limits to the children.

And so, of course, the moment my mother left the house and left us in care of my father, we went right for the toaster.

We executed step two, plug it in, and step three, drop in the bread, perfectly.

We failed epically at steps one, four, five, and six.

So, when the toaster burst into flames, my dad smelled the smoke from upstairs.

He came down in two steps, one in the middle of the landing and the second one on the ground.

He scooped us both up, one in each arm.

He kicked open the door.

He laid us out safely on the front lawn, and then he ran back in to put out the fire.

It wasn't a big fire, but it could have been.

I'll never forget the look in his eyes when he emerged from the kitchen.

It was kind of this combination of, like, relief and terror, and he sat down next to us and said, "So what have we learned here?"

It wasn't so much that he was lecturing, 'cause my dad didn't do that.

It was more like self-talk.

And it was my first glimpse into the two most important elements of parenting.

One, keep the children safe, and two, always be open to learning.

So 30 years later, when I brought my first son home, I considered myself so much better equipped than my parents.

I had a master's degree in counseling with a specialization in child and adolescent services.

I was the director of the Children's Crisis Service, and I was part of a hostage negotiation training team for law enforcement.

What could possibly go wrong?

I also had a very wide circle of diverse friends and a connection to the larger community, who all supported my decision to adopt a Black child from foster care.

I knew how the excessively dominant white culture was built.

I knew the intention was to perpetrate racism and oppression.

And I knew that as a white person, I was never going to know enough in order to adequately raise a child.

That first night, I lay awake with him sleeping on my chest, and just looking at him and dreaming about everything that he could become, excited about the adventures he would have and then dreading the struggles that I knew he would endure.

I thought about my parents, and I tried to focus on keeping him safe and being open to learning.

After a few weeks of us staying in the house, doing that sort of new parenting thing-- sort of watching him sleep, watching him poop-- we needed to go out.

And so I wrapped him up in his Snugli and put him in his car seat, and we headed out to the market.

We weren't in the market more than five minutes when this older white woman approached us and said, "What an adorable baby."

Now, I understand this, because I find babies adorable.

I want to smile at them, I want to coo at them, I want to make them laugh.

And then she starts to take a step closer and says, "He's beautiful," almost kind of in this fascination sort of way.

And I said, "I think so, too."

And then she reaches in to try to touch his head, and I pull the cart back abruptly, and she looks kind of shocked and she says, "Oh, no, I don't mean him any harm.

I just want to touch his hair."

And she starts to reach in again, and again I pull the cart back.

And I say, "You know, I'd really prefer that you didn't."

And at this point, she looks offended and sort of outraged, like as if I had done something wrong.

And she grabs onto the handle of my cart so I can't really pull it away, and starts to reach in for a third time.

I'm younger, I'm stronger.

And now I am pissed.

And so I wrestle the cart away from her, and maneuver around her, and I hear her parting words, which were, "Well, I never."

And as we cut through the frozen food aisle, I can remember thinking to myself, "Never what?

"Never been told no as a white person?

Never been denied something that you wanted?"

I started to smell that familiar waft from my son's bottom, and realized, okay, it was time to go.

And I scooped him up and I held him close, and I thought, "Okay, what have I learned here?"

This kind of interaction would happen 1,000 more times over the next several years, with both him and his younger brother, who came a few years later.

Random strangers reach in to touch their hair, child care workers wanting to put their pictures on the brochure page, touting the diversity of the program.

Teachers not understanding why they couldn't cast them in the role of the slave in the school play, my younger son's baseball coach telling me that he would need to cut off his dreads if he wanted to play on the team.

And my own family, saying how they loved my sons so much that they didn't even notice that they're Black.

And for all of those times, I know there were many more that my sons never told me about, because there were too many more.

Or because they're too painful.

Those interactions don't happen now that they're older.

Now those interactions appear as questions.

"What are you doing in this neighborhood?

"Do you know why I pulled you over?

"What's in your backpack?

Why are you wearing that hoodie?"

Mall security, Border Patrol, police officers, all reaching in without consent.

And with every one of these interactions, there's another piece of learning for me about my privilege and my racism, and the things that I don't know, and the inability for me to understand what both of my sons have always known.

Unlike my father, there's no way I can scoop them up, and there's no safe place that I can put them down, because every day, the house is on fire.

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