Summer of 1964
ME: In the summer of 1964, Will, my older brother, was a toddler and you were pregnant with me, and you went to Mississippi and saw other mothers there. What do you take from that experience in terms of what those women were dealing with and how it kind of impacted you overall as a mom?
MOM: Of course, it occurs to me that in a certain way, this was—this venture to Mississippi was a parallel to my mom being in China with small children. I was in a foreign country. There was no two ways about that. Another striking thing about the experience was that as time went on and I was being a mother in New Haven, which was where we were living then, one of the things I hadn’t sort of understood or anticipated was how isolated I felt. When you’re with little children all day and you don’t have any structure of contact with adults, that’s really challenging. So when we went to Mississippi, I was suddenly on a college campus with lots of people around. There were six of us in the group who went, so I was in constant contact with them. We ate in the college dining room.
So I was part of a community in a way that was really different. I didn’t have close contact with mothers, young mothers in that community. But I saw those mothers as I walked them out to town, and of course, I was by definition part of the black community, not part of the white community. So I saw mothers living in a kind of poverty that I didn’t know anything about. And I also saw the one family that we were connected closely with was the college chaplain and his wife. And they were very involved in the Civil Rights Movement. And I saw them taking risks that just took my breath away. The whole experience in Mississippi—I don’t think I understood when we went how dangerous it was all going to feel, and it felt very dangerous. And at the level of danger that this young couple, who were part of the college—permanent part of the college community were taking, the kind of risks they were involved in was way more than anything I was involved in.
Image Taken By Dad, Summer 1964
ME: Were they white or black, and what were the risks they were taking?
MOM: They were black, and had children. The risks they were taking was that many, many people in that college community were not willing to be part of the Civil Rights Movement. The chaplain and his wife were. And so they were risking being excluded, on the one hand, from their own community, and losing their job. And on the other hand, they were at risk of being violently treated by the white opposition, who were murderous.
ME: That sounds pretty scary [Read more on my parents’ experience during Freedom Summer here]
MOM: When we arrived that summer, we were told that whites have driven through the campus shooting into the buildings. If it happened, no one was hurt by those gunshots. But the very thought that that kind of thing could happen just struck terror in my heart, and for several days, I couldn’t sleep, and I could barely eat.
Photo Credit:Â Miami University, Dad
Next: Feminism
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A nice article. We are the same age, Tom. My mother did not join the feminist movement and revolutions of the 60s. My father was dean of a law school and very establishment-oriented, and she devoted herself to support of his career. Instead she subconsciously channeled her objections to the patriarchal system through me – and my father made me his intellectual ally and friend because my mother could not – or would not – relate to him on that level. So I see some parallels in growing up in revolutionary times, which in some sense continue today. I too… Read more »
I loved this interview. My mother’s parents were Presbyterian missionaries to Cuba. When I was 9, my family lived In Mexico and I remember my mother putting Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth in my hand and telling me how much she identified with her, for the love of adventure, the giving to others, the religious background, and the fact that both were adoptive mothers.
And about your mother–she sounds like a fascinating woman and it’s remarkable what she accomplished given the fact that she often felt depressed and isolated. Thanks for sharing her with us.
Very cool Pauline. Thanks for reading. Glad we have that Presbyterian missionarie blood in common…