We arrived in DC as fugitives from the law. Emmon had jumped bail after cops staked out our apartment and arrested him for unpaid parking tickets. Tsunamis happened often in Black Chicago; there was no point in counting on things not being swept away. So when we rolled up to his old friend Vernon’s new, substantial, split-level brick house with its nicely manicured lawn, it was like we’d landed on Mars. We pulled into the driveway next to their late model car, and Vernon’s wife came out to greet us. After introductions, she took me aside and reassured me that their earlier caution to Emmon not to marry a white woman hadn’t been meant as a rejection of me, only that life as a mixed couple could be very hard.
“You are welcome here, okay,” she said, laughing lightly, smiling, looking into my eyes.
It was July of 1969. Vernon had offered Emmon a job, then invited us to stay with him while we found a place to live. Gwen worked for the Department of Immigration, while her husband was making his mark in urban economic development. The federal government had started hiring Black people way back before anyone else, and a middle class had grown up around the nation’s capital that was different from that of any other city. At the dinner table that night, their two children were required to tell us about their favorite after school activities. As they shyly described their roles in the band or theater, I could see Emmon relax.
One night very late we heard the phone ring, then the garage door lumbering up. When Gwen returned with Vernon, he was loud and drunk as she guided him back into the house. It made my hair stand on end—drunks like my father terrified me. The next morning, over breakfast, I blurted out that she should not allow her husband to go to bars like that. Vernon and Emmon had left for the office, and Gwen was about to leave. She patted my hand and told me firmly that it was none of my business. Her even-tempered reprimand snapped me out of my nightmare about alcoholics. Instantly, I felt embarrassed.
But if Gwen had been white, would I have dared to tell her how to manage her personal life? A white woman who was ten years older than me, who had quite a bit more money than me, who was letting me stay at her house and who had just given me breakfast? I think we all know the answer.
In Chicago, Emmon had been pulled over for so many phony moving violations that his license had been suspended. On the street, people stared at my crotch, and every patrolman had murder in his eyes. But no one white ever seemed to notice. Racism was everywhere and invisible to all white people except me, I thought. But that wasn’t quite true. The racial hierarchy I’d been raised on was still operating — invisibly — in the far reaches of my mind.
Gwen let my “advice” roll off her back. She probably had other white friends who unconsciously insulted her on a regular basis. She was one of those Black people who stick with believing in America’s highest ideals, who, with their ancestors, did so in order to fend off despair, to shut down hate and hopelessness, who’d done more work to keep their eyes on the U.S. Constitution than white America had any idea about. Ketanji Brown Jackson is another. In honor of her ascent, and out of respect and admiration for her and Gwen and the multitudes of other strong Black women – including my daughters — we should all look inward.
WhiteWifeChicago1968.blog 