Growing Up under Southern Apartheid (Part 5)

From Town to Country

It was late autumn, 1960 when our family moved from Wedowee to Jackson’s Gap, Alabama where my father would pastor Jackson’s Gap Baptist Church. It would mark a major shift in my life experience as we made the transition from town to country life. There were many new things there for a six-year-old boy to see. There were woods, creek banks, ducks and chickens, pastures and fishponds. It was a place to explore the woods, catch crawfish in the creek and scoop up tadpoles from the pond using a discarded kitchen pan. It was also a place for a young boy to see a little more clearly how life was lived out in the segregated South.

Jackson’s Gap was not incorporated at the time, and it was just barely on the map. You could see the name on the road map, ten miles below Alexander City and 4 miles this side of Dadeville, but it didn’t merit a dot or a circle, much less a square to indicate its exact location. There was something of a town center with a small Post Office, Davis Hardware, Davis Grocery (each operated by two of the Davis brothers), and Railey’s Store. When you had to make a run to the store or the Post Office, you didn’t say you were going to town, you said, “I’m gonna run to the Gap.” This was long before a certain retail clothing chain confiscated the name.

Davis Grocery was a fairly modern grocery store where you could buy most of what you needed. There were at least a couple of aisles of grocery items and dry goods with a refrigerated produce section and a small butcher section in the back.  The store’s entry was a set of double screen doors with a crossbar proclaiming “Colonial is good Bread.” The candy section was in front near the cash register. You could get a Milky Way or a Three Musketeers bar for a nickel, bubble gum for a penny, and two cents would get you a Tootsie Roll Pop. There was also a Coke machine at the front of the store where a six-ounce bottle of ice-cold Co’-Cola required a nickel and a penny.

Often when you went to the Gap, you would see a few men gathered casually talking or just visiting. There were three places I recall seeing such gatherings. There was a small public building beside the Post Office that served as the local polling place on Election Day. Out in front, sometimes you would see old men sitting around a small table playing dominoes. In front of Davis Hardware, sometimes a few men would sit and talk with at least two of them having to turn a wooden Coke bottle crate on its end to make a stool to sit on. Sometimes people would meet just across the road at Railey’s Store. In fact, Railey’s Store is my earliest memory of the Gap.

First Glimpse

One Saturday before we moved, Dad drove the family over to see where we would be living. That day, we stopped by Railey’s Store which had a front porch where folks could lean against the porch rail and visit. We met a few people there that day. Mr. Railey's daughter came out with a snack from the store. She was a year younger than I. Mr. Paul was there and he struck up a conversation with Dad. He even reached down to shake my hand. Paul Nickerson was the principal of Jackson’s Gap Elementary School. He was an excellent teacher and everyone, including the school children, called him “Mr. Paul.” Jackson’s Gap Elementary was a three-room schoolhouse that held classes for grades 1 through 8. It may have been the last vestige of a time when grammar school went through the eighth grade. With three rooms (and only three teachers), that meant each teacher had to handle more than one grade in the classroom. After completing elementary school, children from the Gap took the bus into Dadeville for junior high and high school*.

That first Saturday when we went to see the house where we would be moving and to see the small crossroads of a community stands vividly in my memory. Railey’s Store was more old-fashioned than Davis Grocery. It was more like a general store with bare wood oiled down floors and even a pot-bellied stove that Mr. Railey would fire up in the winter. There were two gas pumps in front where you could fill up with Gulf gasoline, regular or high octane (this was before the days of unleaded). Inside, a kid could get a candy bar, just like at Davis’s, and there was also a big glass jar full of oatmeal cookies, I think they were two for a nickel. Mr. Railey always had a big hoop of cheddar cheese in the store. If you wanted cheese, he would slice off a wedge and wrap it in butcher paper to put in your grocery bag. Mom and Dad thought he had the best cheese. I liked the oatmeal cookies.

Unspoken Rules

My Dad would become friends with store owner, Hugh Railey, and made a point to stop and talk with him whenever he was at the Gap. What I would come to realize was that anyone could stop by Railey’s Store, but if you were a Black person needing groceries, Railey’s Store was where you had to go. No Black people were allowed in Davis Grocery. It was not something anyone had to declare; not a thing to be written down somewhere. It was just a fact of life.

Throughout the South, communities were organized in similar patterns. Of course, Black people needed to shop. The merchants always made sure that there was a “colored grocery,” usually located at the edge of the Black neighborhood. In Jackson’s Gap, there was a road that ran just above Railey’s Store. If you followed that road around, it led to the Black neighborhood with mostly unpainted shacks. Those shacks were owned by white folks who collected the rent. I don’t know if the rent came due weekly or monthly. I did observe how rent payment could be enforced. One afternoon when I rode with Dad to take our maid Ossie home, there was a padlock on her front door. I remember feeling fear in the pit of my stomach at the very idea of being locked out of one’s home. Ossie took it in stride, though. She would stay with a neighbor until she could come up with the rent money. 

Shotgun shacks c.1950s.

< Part 4, White Christmas                                                                                             Part 6, Neighbors >

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* My older brother, Richard, has clarified my distant memory of Jackson's Gap Elementary School. He was there for fifth and sixth grade (he was five years ahead of me). During most of my time at Jackson's Gap Elementary, there were six grades, but he reminded me that there were still 8 grades when we began. His memory offers a helpful look at how rural education was accomplished:

I went to the last half of my fifth grade and all of my sixth grade there.  When I was there, the three-room school housed grades 1 through 8.  One teacher taught grades 1 and 2, one teacher taught grades 3 - 5, and one (Mr. Paul Nickerson) taught grades 6 - 8.  So, three grades were in one room taught by one teacher.  Each grade was arranged in one or two columns of desks in grade order.

The teacher would teach 6th grade English, assign homework, and then move to 7th grade English class. By the time the teacher got to 8th grade English class, some of us had finished the 6th-grade homework, and we were allowed to leave the classroom to go to the bathroom or even buy a coke from the machine.  Somehow, we knew when it was time to return to class for 6th-grade math.

At the end of my sixth-grade year, the school lost grades seven and eight, so I went to Dadeville High School for seventh grade.

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Photo credit:

• Colonial Bread screen door found on Pinterest
• Gulf gasoline pump found at Barret-Jackson Auction website
• Shotgun shacks in Overtown, c. 1950s found in a University of Miami document, Miami Housing Policy Timeline.

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