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'Mom's prayer meetings' taught us to
fight racism
By Edward Ordman FEBRUARY 3, 2003
Parents sometimes try to hide the problems facing adults, and the
world, from their children. Sometimes they try to educate them.
And sometimes the conversations get started in unusual ways.
In the middle 1950s my parents, who grew up around Boston, moved
our family to Wheaton, Md., just north of Washington, D.C. We were
in a large tract of middle-class suburban homes that attracted
newcomers to Washington from many places - not least of all from
the South. Housing was still very segregated then, and there was
always suspicion if a black face appeared in an unexpected place.
As far as I knew, the suburban schools were not legally segregated
in my area. But no nonwhite students lived anywhere in the
suburban school district.
It was clearly understood by most residents of the neighborhood
that no homes in that area would be sold to any nonwhites, whether
there was any such provision in the deeds or not. My parents were
distressed at the local attitudes and very much worried that they
might be transmitted to us two boys, especially at school. My
mother watched the school closely, and looked for ways to
encourage progress.
As a result, she became very active in the Parent Teacher
Association (PTA) at the elementary school my brother and I
attended. In her low-key way she improved the library and the
school considerably. In due course she also became active in the
Montgomery County Council of PTAs. This covered more than 100
schools, from the D.C. suburbs well north into the rural farming
country that was culturally even more Southern.
When my mother discovered that a black woman (albeit a very
light-skinned one) was appearing at meetings of the county-level
PTA organization, she was delighted.
My mother quickly found a way to invite Mrs. Lawson, for that was
the black woman's name, to be a member of the library committee,
which my mother chaired. So Mrs. Lawson came to our home for the
once-a-month meetings, along with the other committee members. In
bad weather,
Mrs. Lawson even spent the night a few times, as her home was
quite a way north in the county and roads weren't so good then. It
might have been a two-hour drive back to her house.
Among our very Southern neighbors was a lady I'll call Mrs.
Garman. Mr. and Mrs. Garman were an older couple with no children.
They were very friendly, and she was a reliable source of cookies
for us young children on the block.
And it happened, of course, that eventually Mrs. Garman saw Mrs.
Lawson on our front walk. Mrs. Garman wasn't one to jump to
conclusions or get overly excited, but she did have to look into
things. She called her friend Mrs. Lee Burley, who lived a couple
of blocks away. Mrs. Burley was also a good friend of my mother.
"Did I see a Negro coming out of the Ordmans' house?" Mrs. Garman
asked Mrs. Burley.
Mrs. Burley was quick. "It's very possible," she said. "You know,
the Ordmans are Jewish. They are awfully nice people, and I know
they wouldn't do any harm. But I don't know what kind of prayer
meetings the Jews have. Of course, if someone came to a prayer
meeting, they'd have to be nice to them."
Within a day or two, Mrs. Garman asked us boys if our mother had
been "havin' any prayer meetin's." We were quite sure she hadn't -
we weren't even sure what a prayer meeting was - but we weren't
about to contradict Mrs. Garman and endanger our supply of
cookies. So we said we'd find out. And we went home later and
inquired. "What's a prayer meeting?" and "Mrs. Garman wants to
know: Have we been having any prayer meetings?"
Fortunately, Mrs. Burley had let our mother know about the
conversation, and our mother had agreed that this was a solution
that would satisfy Mrs. Garman. So my mother explained to us that
sometimes blacks came to her PTA meetings, and she thought that
might bother Mrs. Garman. She said we should go ahead and tell
Mrs. Garman that yes, she'd be having some prayer meetings maybe
once a month for a while.
This led to some interesting family discussions about race,
integration, and what our parents were doing, and what we children
might do to end discrimination. We discussed the role of local
organizations like the PTA. We also talked about choosing one's
battles, dealing with neighbors who disagreed, and dealing with
disagreements. Our mother's reports of the issues she faced at PTA
meetings, and how she dealt with them, became part of our
education.
One result of Mrs. Garman's inquiry, though, was that for many
years after that any PTA meeting in our home (and even some
meetings our mother attended elsewhere) were referred to as "Mom's
prayer meetings."
And in a very real sense, they were.
• Edward Ordman is a retired associate
professor of computer science at The University of Memphis in
Tennessee.
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