THE UN-PRIVILEGED

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

About the Author

THE UN-PRIVILEGED

Sandy Roberts

Copyright © 2024 Sandy Roberts

All rights reserved

First Edition

Fulton Books

Meadville, PA

Published by Fulton Books 2024

ISBN 979-8-89221-999-0 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-89427-005-0 (digital)

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Printed in the United States of America

Preach the gospel at all times, when necessary, use words. This quote is attributed to St. Francis. I believe the best translation to this saying is as follows: The best sermon is one that is lived (source unknown).

Privilege is a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group. Since the beginning of modern times, it has been sought after and defended by wars and some of the most sinister acts of man against man or brother against brother. One of the earliest premodern examples was Cain against Abel. One of the most egregious examples was the execution of Christ, which was orchestrated by the Sanhedrin, the ruling council of the Jews in Jesus's time, to protect their positions of authority and privilege. And the practice lives on!

I was born in the tiny northeastern town of Wedowee, Alabama, located in Randolph County. Wedowee means old water in the Creek Indian language. A Muscogee Creek Indian chief originated the term. My father died when I was six years old, and my two brothers, Alvin and Larry, were eleven and ten. Wedowee was a farming community, and most of the life of the locals centered on farming.

My first memory of our home was when we lived east of town, off Highway 48. I remember meeting my father at the road's edge when he came home from work. The home was somewhat nondescript, with city water but no indoor bathroom. There were two bedrooms, a small kitchen, and a front room that had a fireplace, and there was a front porch that ran across the full front of the house.

Shortly after Dad died, we moved back toward town to a more modern home, located near the community Cotton Gin. In retrospect, I believe the home had some connection to the Gin. It was positioned in such a way that it could have controlled entry and exit to the Gin, maybe as home to the owner during earlier years. We lived there for maybe a year and a half before moving into a new home.

Mom's employer provided our new home. The family lived in a new brick home located on a side road off of State Road 48 that formed sort of a quarter circle below and around the town's new high school, for whites only. Our home was closer to State Road 48 but farther from the side road on the edge of a cornfield and less than a hundred yards from the home of Mom's employer.

Mom's employer was the owner of the local hardware store, and to this day, I have no knowledge of what the rental payment arrangements were between them. The family treated us well, and Mom maintained a life-long relationship with all the family members.

Our grandmother, Rebecca, was also a domestic in the home of the local postmaster. Together, she and Mom provided for me and my two older brothers, despite the harsh conditions of that time. Still, it is not very hard to imagine just how difficult and meager our lives were in the mid and late 1940s, subsisting primarily on the income of my mother. Somehow, she made it work.

My brothers, Alvin and Larry, contributed to the household income with what little money they made from the small summer jobs as farm helpers, the only work available at that time for young blacks. I joined the workforce when I was about nine, providing Mom with a few more dollars to put away in preparation for the school year.

I finished elementary school a year ahead of schedule. I had been moved ahead, from third grade to fifth, because of advanced reading skills. I began my first year of junior high at Randolph County High School (RCHS), Roanoke, Alabama, and fourteen miles away by bus. There was a shiny new high school just a five-minute walk from my house but for whites only.

My experience at RCHS was the type that no kid in a learning environment should ever have to endure. It ran the full gamut of every kind of bullying that one could imagine—from put-downs, name-calling, pushing, shoving, hitting, and other demoralizing acts. It got to the point where I could no longer concentrate on schoolwork, and I dreaded each school day. Did my schoolwork suffer? Of course, it did, and it frustrated me because I loved to learn.

Luckily for me, midway through the school year, we moved to Anniston, the south side of town, and I finished the school year at a County School located in Hobson City, Alabama. The following year I transferred to Cobb High in West Anniston. My experiences there were much better, but the bullying and put-downs continued, and so did its effect on my grades and desire to attend school.

By the time I became a junior, the bullying had decreased significantly, and my friendships began to blossom. Now involved in sports, I began to concentrate on my schoolwork again. In my French and typing classes, I began socializing with the group of students considered to be the smarter kids, and my whole experience improved. I brought my grades up and was now happy for the first time since my elementary school years.

By the end of that school year, I had made friendships that carried over into my senior year and graduation. My girlfriend, Jessica, was a part of this group, and she was a large part of the happiness that I now enjoyed. Our relationship had started the previous year, and I was starstruck. Jessica was one of the cheerleaders, and I was this silly sixteen-year-old and madly in love.

Was she in love with me? I seriously doubt it. She was beautiful and much too mature and experienced for the mere boy that I was. Nevertheless, we had some great times together, and at the end of the school year, after graduation, she went to Saginaw, Michigan, to visit family members, and I never saw or heard from her again.

I was seventeen when I graduated, and while I did not have a plan, I knew I needed to do something to prepare myself for life ahead. My mother could not afford to send me to college, and I wasn't sure of what I wanted to do at that time and whether I was capable of handling college-level material. What I did know was that I did not want to spend the rest of my life in a small town like Anniston. The only local opportunities were working at any one of the nonprofessional, menial jobs available to blacks at that time.

I had been employed as a waiter at the Country Club for the last two years, and I knew that I could stay there until I decided what I was going to do. I also worked as a bar back, helping the bartender keep the bar supplied and sometimes pouring drinks. Before becoming a waiter, I was a caddy at the course for a few years and knew that the members were, for the most part, the movers and shakers of the city. And being a keen listener and observer, the time that I spent there was both enjoyable and educational.

I was no longer the barefoot kid from Wedowee, but my education, the environment, and cultural indoctrination had not prepared me for the level of social exposure that I experienced and observed at the Country Club. My personal interaction with the members provided a level of learning that I could not have possibly obtained in the environment where I had grown up.

I was serving and observing the upper level of the local privileged class enjoying their leisure, and I embraced it as a learning experience. Their level of self-confidence, communication skills, and variation of the subject matter along with other cultural revelations were foreign to me and unobtainable without physically experiencing the process through education or observation.

I may have had the intellectual capacity to learn all this in a proper college setting, but I firmly believe that the two years of exposure was more practical for me. I could use what I learned as I interacted with the members daily. I changed my reading habits toward current events, usually from news articles, and sometimes subject matter that I would overhear in general conversations.

After my first year, I began to receive compliments for my informed response to occasional questions. And by the time I left the job, I was being complemented by several members for educational growth and maturity. And at eighteen, it served to increase my confidence significantly. Moreover, the experience made me impervious to many of the labels directed toward blacks during those years, and this freed my mind from the distractions it caused.

I was finally able to understand fully that as a black person, there were no privileges for me. It was now my responsibility to choose the proper course of action to have a better life. And I was not afraid! I could have become bitter and allowed myself to become a victim, but instead, I was motivated to learn all that I could from this experience and then leave the area to have any opportunity for success.

The following year, 1954, I decided to join the air force. I informed my friend, Al Green, of my decision, and he decided to join also. We went to the recruiting office for more information and were told what documentation to bring the following day when we were to return for testing. The exam was to determine our qualifications for entry and to identify the career field for which we were most qualified. Unfortunately, my friend Al did not