My People Are Rising. Aaron Dixon
his pipe or played his harmonica, rubbing his rough, tickly whiskers against our soft brown faces. I would miss watching Bop Bop come home from work at the post office, dressed neatly in a suit and tie, bringing us his bus transfers to use as play money. He would quietly go upstairs to change, come down with his Bible and Christian Science Monitor, sit quietly on the corner of the black leather sofa, put his spectacles on over a serious face, and silently read. This was his way of keeping at bay the demons of alcoholism, which he had soundly defeated many years earlier.
I would miss my grandmother DeDe, who always reminisced about the old days, sharing stories of her family, demonstrating the Charleston; my father’s sister, Aunt Doris, and my cousins, Mark and Keith; and Ma, dressing us like prissy rich kids, greasing our faces with Vaseline, feeding us non-fried food and wheat bread, and constantly reciting from the Bible.
My grandparents represented everything that we were and hoped to be. Now, we sadly had to leave them behind. I remember Grandada standing there with his bug eyes and thick eyelashes, his stomach bulging over his brown trousers. DeDe stood next to him in the brown flowered dress that she often wore on hot, muggy days.
“Have a safe trip, and, Brother, you be careful, you hear?”
DeDe always affectionately referred to her son as “Brother.” We drove off slowly, with us kids looking out the back window at the two figures standing on the green lawn, looking back at us. I would never forget that image.
It took me many years to forgive my parents for taking us out of this haven of comfort. I carried a lot of anger for a long time, not really understanding or caring why. I never quite felt that security, that contentment, that familiarity again.
3
The Search for Home
When the night has come And the land is dark And the moon is the only light we’ll see No I won’t be afraid, no I won’t be afraid Just as long as you stand, stand by me
—Ben E. King, “Stand By Me,” 1961
Moving two thousand miles away was a traumatic experience for everyone, especially my mother. I remember her bursting into tears at the sight of the Lake Washington floating bridge, the portal to the Pacific Northwest. Despite her relief at being free from Ma’s tight hold on her, Mommy missed her mother and father and Chicago, with its segregated neighborhoods and Midwestern culture, a distinct Black culture that enabled Black people to develop their own system of self-sufficiency. Poppy, in contrast, was an explorer, an adventurer, and an artist. He was sincerely inquisitive about the unknown, the taboo, and was excited about the possibilities that lay ahead. We kids just sat in the back of the ’52 Plymouth, looking at the new topography of mountains, evergreen trees, and water, homesick for Grandada and DeDe, Ma and Bop Bop, and our first home, Birch Village.
Those first couple years we must have changed residences and schools three or four times, trying to settle down to something as secure and familiar as what we had left behind. Early in our search for a permanent home, I saw Mommy and Poppy perform an act of compassion that had a lasting effect on me. We were living in a very rundown part of Seattle, on Hiawatha Street. Our two-bedroom flat was dingy and dilapidated, but it provided our family a place to rest after the long trip. One cold, rainy Sunday evening there came a knock on the door. It was an older Black gentleman, dressed in worn, tattered clothing. He had a sad, hopeless look on his face.
He asked, “Can you spare something to eat?”
Mommy and Poppy invited him in. Mommy went into the kitchen and made him a sandwich from the roast she had been preparing for supper, along with chips and cookies, packing all of it neatly in a brown paper bag, and gave him some money as well. It was something I would see Mommy and Poppy do many times over. These acts of kindness helped shape my concern for others.
In 1960, three years after our departure from Birch Village, we moved into our permanent Seattle home, in a mixed neighborhood called Madrona Hill in Seattle’s Central District. Across the street from our house was a neighborhood park with a baseball field that doubled as a football field, and at its other end a tennis court. The streets of the neighborhood were lined with large maples and reddish-brown Madrona trees, native to the Pacific Northwest. On our block and the blocks west of us, most of the inhabitants were Black, Chinese, Filipino, and Japanese. We lived on 33rd Avenue. On 34th Avenue and down the hill heading east toward Lake Washington, the residents were mostly white.
Madrona was like a lot of the neighborhoods in central Seattle back then. Formerly occupied largely by Italians and Jews, these neighborhoods were now “in transition,” as many Black men and women had returned from WWII and the Korean conflict and moved in. They had served their country and many had worked in munitions factories, helping the United States to victory. Now it was time to enjoy a piece of the pie—and home ownership was part of that pie.
Japanese Americans released from WWII internment camps, who had in many cases lost their homes, businesses, and possessions, also moved to the area. The Central District was the only part of Seattle where Asians, Jews, and Blacks were allowed to live, due to the racist zoning practice known as “redlining” and racial restrictive covenants. In response to the influx of Black and Asian families, many whites had moved out in droves, relocating across Lake Washington and farther south into the suburbs.
Two blocks to the north of us was a small business district with a little Chinese mom-and-pop grocery store, owned and operated by Joe and Mae, who would give credit to anyone in the neighborhood who needed it. On the corner was a Black-owned cleaner, and across the street was a Chinese drugstore. Two Black-owned gas stations stood directly across from one another on 34th and Pike. Nearby were an A&P grocery store and a Bavarian bakery that my parents were very fond of.
Madrona was a little paradise of Asian, white, and Black families, a bit removed from the rest of the city, with Lake Washington as a natural boundary to the east and the Harrison Valley to the west. The park was the hub for all the kids in the neighborhood, the focal point where much of our growth and maturation would take place. It was a battleground of sorts, a training ground for athletic endeavors, a spot to meet friends and acquaintances, and often the scene of physical confrontations.
On hot days we would go down to Collins’ Soda Fountain, an old-fashioned soda shop operated by Mr. Collins, a slim, white-haired, elderly white man. We would sit on the twirling stools, surrounded by old wood and leaded glass, sipping hand-mixed sodas or malts or milkshakes. When we were done, Mr. Collins would carefully bring out a wooden box of penny candies, wrapped in waxed paper. Afterward, we would run across the street to the Rental Freezers and take refuge inside the cold store, trying to cool down from the scorching sun. Along with our newfound friends, on summer days my brothers and I would make go-carts with broken roller skates and wooden crates. Or we would make stilts, swords, bows and arrows, and slingshots. We would play marbles on patches of dirt or lag pennies against the wall, winner take all. Sometimes when we needed spending money, we would cut the grass of our neighbors’ overgrown lawns.
Our house was large and spacious. Its hardwood floors were softer than the concrete floors in Birch Village. Joanne got her own room, but even though there was an extra room designated as the “TV room,” Elmer, Michael, and I had to share a bedroom. The front and rear verandas, extending off the upstairs bedrooms, soon would serve as our escape route out into the night. Sometimes I caught Poppy standing and surveying his new home, beaming with pride and contentment. He brought home young trees and planted them around the house, one for each child. Seattle, especially Madrona, was much more racially and socially diverse and tolerant than the segregated Southside of Chicago had been; for Poppy, that is what his artistic soul needed to heal from the scars of war.
Poppy always sought out people from other cultures. I remember the friendship he struck up with Mr. Aschak, the old Russian man who lived down the street from one of our temporary apartments. Poppy and Mr. Aschak would get together and drink vodka and eat Russian rye bread. Even though Mr. Aschak could barely speak English, he and Poppy seemed to have a genuine liking for each other.
It was not until we got to Seattle that I had any lasting contact with a white person other than schoolteachers. Mr. Santo lived across