Growing Up Under Southern Apartheid (Part 6)

Neighbors

Jackson's Gap was not named after Gen. Andrew Jackson, whose defeat of the Creek Nation at nearby Horseshoe Bend opened much of eastern Alabama to white settlement. Rather, the town was named for another man who erected a cabin and traded with the Creeks and local settlers and travelers, possibly in the 1810s or 1820s. Soon after, a man named Patterson established a blacksmith shop there and more settlers began to arrive from Georgia and South Carolina in the 1830s. There was some gold mining activity in the vicinity of Jackson's Gap, most likely in the 1840s. The Tallapoosa Baptist Church was established in 1854 and currently exists as Jackson's Gap Baptist Church. 

                                                                       ~ Christopher Maloney, Auburn University

                                                                          From the Encyclopedia of Alabama

Young Charlie with the family dog, Trixie. In the background is a corner of
Rex Nickerson's pasture, Not seen, but to Charlie's right would be Bill Ornsby's house.

Tallapoosa County is filled with low rolling hills and quiet hollows. In Jackson’s Gap, the narrow country roads wind about through those hills and hollows. My family moved to Jackson’s Gap, Alabama around the time I turned six. It was a small rural community, known as “The Gap” to folks living around there. Small farms were scattered throughout the county where textile mills had become the major source of employment.

My Mamma once said that she preferred living in the city, but she was fine with life in the country as long as your nearest neighbor was close enough that you could see their laundry on the clothesline.  Our move to Jackson’s Gap was a move to the country, but we had neighbors in sight. Our small house sat on a hill, and just down the hill from us was where the Nickerson’s lived. Mr. Rex Nickerson was the brother of Paul Nickerson, the principal of Jackson’s Gap Elementary School. Mr. Rex had a large pasture that lay within the small valley between our house and his. His horse, Tony, grazed happily in that pasture. In the far corner of the pasture, just across the creek that ran at the bottom of the hill was a small garden plot that he let my Dad use for a couple of summers to grow vegetables for the family table.

Just across the road from our house lived our nearest neighbors, a Black couple, Mr. Bill Ornsby and his wife Ludie. Our two houses faced one another on what must have once been the same hill before it was cut in two to make the road that led from the Gap to the train depot. Mr. Bill had a one-eyed hound dog named Red and always kept some chickens in the yard. The house that Mr. Bill and Ludie lived in would have to be described as a shack, but it was well kept. It had a small unpainted porch, but there was siding on the house that resembled sand-covered tar roofing shingles but it was in large sheets that were nailed to the side of the house.

Mr. Bill was better off than many of the Black people around. He had a steady job at a warehouse 45 miles away in Sylacauga, which I always thought was a long way to drive to go to work. Dad said that Mr. Bill got that job during the War (that would have been WWII) and that after the war was over, he was able to stay on. It was said that Mr. Bill made the best moonshine in the county. He must have been very smart about it if that was true, because no one seemed to know where the still was, and I never knew him to have any trouble with the law in our dry county.  

There is something quite poetic about a Baptist preacher and a moonshiner, one white and one black, living right across from each other in a dry county in the Jim Crow South, and on the same hill that was cleaved two generations before to make a road to the train station. We looked out each day across the gulf between our two houses on two sides of the same hill. It was a small gulf to look at, but we were also looking out over a larger gulf that had been 300 years in the making.

Mr. Bill owned the house and the land he lived on across the road from us. Within a couple of years, in fact, he had built himself a nice new house under the big oak tree next to the shack. It was a fully modern brick house that he and his wife moved into. I can remember walking across the road with Dad to see Mr. Bill’s house-in-progress after the foundation was laid. There was already framing going up and Mr. Bill was out there looking things over.  It was a comfortable autumn day. The reason I remember the season is that we were going to the county fair that day. The reason I remember the county fair is that I had awoken that morning with a gimp in my leg, as sometimes happens with growing children.  I was walking with a limp because of that pain in my leg whenever I put my foot down. As I was walking around looking at Mr. Bill’s house that he was building, and limping with each step, my older brother teasingly said, “Charlie, if you still limpin’ this afternoon, ya cain't go to the fair.”

With that comment, I started walking about a little faster, still limping with each step. Mr. Bill let out a big laugh and said, “He sho’ want to go to that fair don’t he!”

Separate but not Equal

In Jackson’s Gap, we lived with the Jim Crow laws that kept white people in power and kept Black people in poverty, or as some said, “kept them in their place.”  Out in the country, though, there was no city council, no zoning board, no housing regulations. Even though there was a “Black neighborhood,” there were also houses scattered throughout the countryside where a few Black families lived. Thus we lived in close proximity to Black people while maintaining separate lives.  For example, that county fair that I mentioned, the one that Mr. Bill laughed about me wanting to go to, would be an all-white event. The carnival rides and exhibits at the cattle barns would be attended by white people only. There may have been a day set aside for Black people to attend, but it was definitely not an interracial gathering in the early 1960s.

Even so, perhaps country life gave me a closer look at our separate lives than I had been able to see in Wedowee. It was a chance for a young white boy to see how our Black neighbors lived. In addition to those rides into the Black community when Dad took our maid home, I often witnessed the comings and goings and the family gatherings at our Black neighbors’ house across the road. Mr. Bill’s friends would drop by as would his nieces and nephews.

I remember one day a Black man walking down the road in front of our house while I was playing in the yard.  As his friend walked by, Mr. Bill called out from his front porch to ask him how he was doing and inquired about a mutual friend. “He’s sick in the hospital,” the man said.

“What’s he in the hospital for?” Mr. Bill asked

“He got the flu,” his friend replied.

That was the first time I became aware that the flu could be bad enough to send someone to the hospital. That little exchange was also an example of how those country greetings would often occur, with brief conversations shouted from the porch to the road as one passed on his way home or to a job.

The pace was slow and people did what they had to in order to make a living and to get by. Most lived by routines set by earlier generations. In 1954, the year I was born and six years before we moved to Jackson’s Gap, the Supreme Court handed down the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision that declared segregated schools to be unconstitutional and that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.*” In my world, as I entered the first grade at Jackson’s Gap Elementary, there was no inkling of recognition of that court decision, and no rumbling to be heard of any changes coming down the pike.

~  ~  ~

< Part 5, From Town to Country                                                Part 7,  Breaking Ground >


___________________________

* See Brown v. Board of Education at Wikipedia

Photo Credit: The picture of me and our dog at the top was taken by my younger brother, Bill, using a Kodac box camera my uncle had given to me for Christmas. I would have been around nine or ten years old, and I really wanted my picture taken with Trixie, so I asked Bill to take it using my camera. He was three years younger than I, and I think he did a great job for a kid who was six or seven years old at the time!


-

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 >

*   *   *

* 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.

______________________

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.

-