When I was ten years old my mother got sick, so sick she had to stay in the bed.; she was pregnant with my brother, Bill.
There were five coal mines in that area and only one doctor. When the doctor finally got to come see my mother he gave her medication and said she needed ice packs for her head. I guess because she had headaches really bad.
We had an ice man who came on Tuesdays; he would put ice into our little wood icebox which only held a weeks worth of ice. I had chipped all the ice we had and there was non left and no place to go get more unless I borrowed from the neighbors. There were five white families and one black family in the coal mining camp we lived in. One by one I knock on the door of each of the white families. The answer was the same from all five of the white families; no one would loan ice, each said there was only enough ice until the iceman came the next Tuesday. No one asked questions about my mother.
The father of the black family was named Robin. His wife was named Annalee. Annalee asked me questions wanting to know what was wrong with my mother. I couldn’t tell her because all I knew was that the doctor had given her medication and said she needed icepacks for her head. Annalee went home with me, taking all the ice that their family had.
Because there was no one to cook for us my father brought lunch meat and bread home for our supper each night. When Annalee saw this; she said “Miss Alberta, pull that powder crate over here to the table and I will show you how to make biscuits.”
Each and every day Annalee would come to our house. She cooked, cleaned and scrubbed floors showing me how to do each thing, so that I could learn to take care of my family by myself. She was very good to us taking care of us and doing everything that was needed. Five white families and only one black family and my father prejudiced, but that one black family made sure we had all that we needed until my mother had my brother and was well enough to take care of us.
Annalee introduced me to another black family who moved from Alabama. This family had brought cottonseed with them. I have always been interested in history and everything associated with it. I thought of that cottonseed as a part of American history. They showed me the cottonseeds as they planted them; showing me each step that must be taken to help the cotton grow.
I could hardly wait to get home from school each day to see how much the cotton had grown. I watched each step and that family showed and told me each step as it grew. That was two families of blacks that I met and liked.
I was named after my grandfather, Albert Vaughn, who lived on Black Mountain. My Grandpa Albert taught me how to dance; something my father didn’t like to do. Grandpa Albert also had a different attitude toward blacks; and he loved the black boxer Joe Louis.
My family owned a floor type Crosby radio that we all would gather around to listen to programs on. When I was almost twelve the radio started having boxing matches as part of their week end programs. Grandpa Albert would ride the bus each weekend from Black Mountain. In Harlan he changed buses and rode on to Yancy, then walked on up the mountain to where we lived. Grandpa Albert made this journey each week so he could listen with the rest of the family to the boxing matches that were on the radio. We would spend the night listening to the boxing on the radio.
NOTE: The black boxer Joe Louis was said to have had a cultural impact that was felt outside the ring. It is also said that Louis was widely regarded as the first African American to achieve the status of a nationwide hero within the United States, and was also a focal point of anti-Nazi sentiment leading up to and during World War II. (Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, article Joe Louis)
In June 1936 Louis boxed and lost against former world heavyweight champion Max Schmeling.
As we all sat around and listened to the Joe Louis fight I also listened to my father and grandfather make comments about the two boxers. It was obvious that my father was prejudiced and that my grandfather wasn’t. I wondered why they even bothered to listen to a black man if my father felt the way that he did.
When I caught my father out of the room I asked Grandpa Albert. “Why do you all listen to a black man on the radio if you don’t like blacks? And why don’t you sound like my daddy about blacks?”
He told me that he felt my father would eventually find that the same blood runs in our veins as in theirs that we were all humans and that we all bled the same color of blood when we were cut. He also told me that he would not live to see it but that I would live to see a black man in the white house. This was in 1936 that my Grandpa Albert predicted a black man in the white house. In 2008, when Obama was elected my Grandpa Albert’s words came to mind.
I had to agree with him about us all bleeding the same; Annalee and her family were good to us and they helped us when we were in need of help and in need of a friend. I didn’t share my father’s feelings toward my black neighbors.
June 22, 1938 my grandfather came to listen to the rematch between Louis and Schmeling. That fight didn’t last very long, two minutes and four seconds. Joe Louis just whipped the tar out of that German man!