HairMother’s mother wore hers up in a bun.
Once, when I was spending the night at her home, tucked into bed but not yet asleep, I watched her. She faced the mirror on her bureau and slowly unfurled the white to the level of her waist, revealing minute black streaks. She looked like a different person.
I was fascinated by the “rat” of tangled hair that she left in its spot on the bureau surface, ready to start the morning’s re-roll. By the time I awoke, she was up and so was her hair.
Henry Greenleaf’s was short and nappy, forming a perfect burr about his skull. I had just met Henry that day. He came with his mother, who had been hired to help clean our new home. Henry was younger than I, and I was not yet ten.
Last winter, Mother took me to see her dad as he lay, freshly dead, in the bed at Piedmont Hospital. His hair was thin, pale, and straight. I think I remember seeing him before, perhaps through a car window, as Mother went in to briefly visit him.
I remember being surprised to learn that he, too, lived in Greensboro, but out near Battleground, far on the other side of town from us and Gram’ Betty. I had never missed him, and the idea that Gram’ Betty was divorced shocked and intrigued me.
At Mother’s suggestion, I had leaned in and lightly kissed him goodbye. The $500 mother inherited was enough to make a down payment on the house that our neighbors were in a hurry to sell.
We had already walked all our belongings across the street. Dad was at work and Mother, Gram’ Betty, and Mrs. Greenleaf were working away inside. I had proudly brought out my favorite play props for Henry and me. I had two belts that each holstered two six-shooters, two cowboy hats and a Lone Ranger neckerchief.
We were just beginning to develop our scenario when
Gram' Betty opened the screen door.
Standing at the top of the steps, she said, “Chip! Don’t let him wear your hat.”
I looked up at her. She was erect and far away. She looked down to me, closely, waiting. In that moment, years before I knew that I had a choice, I reached out as Henry took the hat off his head and handed it to me.
Dereliction of DutyThe years of Sunday School, paste, felt-board pictures, and catechism recitations still feel sweet, smooth, and righteous. Going up the side steps into the yellow-brick church was held as familiar to me as my own home. And leaving the little room at eleven o’clock, holding Mother’s hand as we joined the adults in the sanctuary, was an unwelcome test of my ability to be quiet and still and pay the reverent attention that I knew was due. I can’t remember when this ceased to be a serious challenge.
Even when I grew tall enough to see over the back of the pew in front of me I usually had more interest in the things I could touch: the short, perfect pencils, like the ones I’d later see when playing miniature golf; the rack with a hardbound Bible between two hymnals; and the tithe envelopes. Sometimes Mother would let me draw with the pencil. I would usually sit quietly. I would always make sure the Bible was between the hymnals, their faces showing proper symmetry through the wooden slats.
This time, however, just days after my twelfth birthday, we were gathered for a special congregational meeting to decide if Westminster Presbyterian Church would move from Asheboro Street to the northwest section of Greensboro, where folks had finer houses and the neighborhoods were certain to remain “white”.
In recent months, more homes that used to hold white families had been sold to black people. On a few side streets to the east had existed entire neighborhoods, whole blocks of Greenleafs and other black families. But Asheboro Street was the main north-south thoroughfare for southeast Greensboro, and “black” homes there were making it obvious that our neighborhood was “changing”.
Mother had talked at home about “the mission of the church” and the need for Westminster to remain in south Greensboro. [I had heard, again, of her long-cherished desire to have served in Africa as a missionary.] She would clearly find the move to be a dereliction of Christian duty.
I sat on the smooth curve of the pew and listened as a few of the grown-ups stood and spoke their reasons. When Mother rose, she spoke decisively. Without turning, I watched other members of the congregation for their reactions, but I couldn’t discern the feelings behind the passive faces.
Another person I remember from that day is Aiden French. To the best of my recall, Aiden’s was the only other voice raised in opposition to the move. Mother gained stature that day in her young son’s eyes, and Aiden joined her on my list of heroes.
Fellowship, Cover-dish Suppers, and CartwheelsAfter Westminster’s move, Mother and I attended Calvary Methodist Church. Very convenient, half-a-block out our back door, Calvary sponsored the Scout troop that I joined, providing a rustic Scout hut with ample room for rough-and-tumble games and purposeful patrol meetings.
When the minister heard that Dad had been to Duke School of Divinity and was a preacher, he asked Mother to invite him to take the pulpit on one Sunday morning.
Dad rarely attended church with Mother and me. “White churches are DEAD,” he would say. As a youth, his family’s church had been Moriah Methodist, but he had been gravely disappointed by the liberal revisionism he found at High Point College and at Duke. His righteous crusade to maintain faith in miracles, the immutability of the scriptures, and the divinity and virgin birth of Christ, made him feel at odds with and unsupported by mainstream churches.
He felt much more at home in black churches, where his deep and thorough knowledge of the Bible earned him solid respect, where he would often be invited to preach and to play his violin, where movement was grand and joyful, and where “Amen” and “Hallelujah” were ready answers. He would return home from these churches and from occasional appearances by Daddy Grace or Father Divine with elevated spirits and an eagerness to continue spreading The Word.
On the Sunday of Dad’s one sermon at Calvary Methodist, the solid-white congregation sat and stood and sat, with printed Sunday “bulletins” at hand, through convocation, hymns, and readings. This was a typical Sunday. I don’t remember Dad’s first words, but I remember that they felt familiar. I remember that his voice rose, and he floated out from behind the pulpit, earnestly flowing into the aisle.
Now on the same level as the congregation, close enough to smell or touch, he emphatically stepped out his message, up a ways, back a ways, pacing the narrow carpet, blessing the air, building until the cartwheels could not be denied.
I don’t remember, nor did I ever know, if the congregation was politely quiet or dumbstruck.
Mother and I continued to attend. We went to “cover-dish suppers” in the fellowship hall, and I felt very at home in Vacation Bible School and Sunday School. Calvary was also on Asheboro Street. We didn’t anguish or argue as much when that congregation also voted to move to northwest Greensboro.
Baptist Training UnionAsheboro Street Baptist Church was the remaining “white” church in our part of south Greensboro. Mother had attended here when she was young, before her years at Moody Bible Institute and her deep affection for Presbyterianism, and returning here seemed to be a natural next step for her and, therefore, for me.
As a young teen, BTU became a place to observe budding challenges to the authority of the church. Here, not only alcohol, profanity, and impure thoughts, but also cards and dancing were banned. (Sunday-afternoon card games had always been a joy at Gram’ Betty’s house, aunts and uncles joining her around her small kitchen table.)
Aware of tales of how Mother and Dad had enjoyed dancing (They had won a Jitterbug contest!), and buoyed by what I assumed to be the sympathetic ears of friends and schoolmates, I asked our Sunday School teacher, “What’s wrong with dancing?”
She quickly answered, “If it weren’t for sex, there wouldn’t be dancing.” With what I was sure was conclusive logic, I said, “If it weren’t for sex, there wouldn’t be marriage.”
The vote by this congregation to move to northwest Greensboro was not a surprise.
UptownFirst Presbyterian was a grand edifice, even without the massive steeple that was reportedly still being planned when Mother and I joined. The cathedral innards outdid anything I had yet seen. Important people could be seen there: city councilmen, businessmen, our (liberal) representative to Congress, attorneys (including the one defending the S & W Cafeteria against the onslaught of black students seeking to be served there).
I was pleased to be at the same church with my cousin Jim. Uncle Bill was top something-or-other with Duke Power and had just been transferred from Charlotte back to Greensboro. Jim was just eleven months older than I, and we had always shared lots of likes and dislikes.
Joe Flora, the youth minister, quickly became a supportive friend. He had a relaxed, playful manner, and listened to our teen concerns with serious regard. I felt that he especially cared for me – not primarily because he let me drive his Corvette on Benjamin Parkway, which was a thrill – but because he came to me and said, “I think you would be a good person to attend a series of youth meetings being sponsored by National Conference of Christians and Jews. This will be an opportunity for dialogue between different races and religions.”
Though I had grown up not much farther than a half-mile from Dudley High, I had rarely seen it and had no friends who went there. Later I would learn that there were white students (or a white student) attending there; but at the time, that possibility did not occur to me. After nine years of walking or biking barely one mile to Gillespie Elementary/Junior High, I was now riding the school bus five miles northwest to Grimsley (nee Greensboro Senior High) and trying to adapt to being a small fish in a ponderous stream.
NCCJ meetings with black and white high school students, Jews, Catholics, and Protestants, doubters and atheists, gave many of us our first opportunity to hear a different take. And it gave many of us our first opportunity to voice interior thoughts and feelings. This was three years after the Woolworth sit-ns and over five years after Greensboro’s disingenuous-and-soon-abandoned attempt to integrate the entire city school system with six black students, one in each grade level, one at Greensboro Senior and five at Gillespie.
(I had been in sixth grade at Gillespie; the fifth grade was the youngest age at which officials were willing to imperil their white children with the presence of a black classmate. I remember being friendly to Jimmy Florence, but I still have little sense of how it felt to him, even after talking with him years later.)
It was at NCCJ meetings that I learned of our common interests: cars, dating, schoolwork, parents, our futures, fairness, equality. And here started three lasting friendships: Alan Troxler, white, from the new Page High School; Clinard Hinson; and Michael Robinson, both black students at Dudley.
The Company You KeepWalking home in the early evening from an NCCJ meeting, I crossed Market headed south on Elm and saw the dark panel trucks (“paddy wagons”) parked in front of the Center Theatre.
Giant was playing. I had already seen the movie, with my cousins, at the drive-in out West Market Street and knew that those in the theater would be seeing scenes of gut-wrenching prejudice and brave defiance of racial divisions. I wondered if they would relate what they were seeing to what was going on outside by the ticket booth.
I wondered if any of the A&T College students being loaded into the paddy wagons knew what the whites inside would be seeing. I wondered what they thought about – if they thought about the white folks who stood by, watching but not agreeing with the police arresting black people just for trying to buy a ticket for the downstairs, “White Only” section.
I was a junior at Greensboro Senior High School in the spring of 1963 when Clinard invited me to join a picket line at the Oaks Motel on Summit Avenue. I don’t know why this was the prime target for a “public accommodation” challenge, but it was visible, along a busy thoroughfare, and regularly filled by mostly the same college students week-after-week.
I would tell my mother I was going to Hi-Y meetings; after twenty minutes there, I was off to the picket line, often picking up John Keen on my way. John and I would be the only white high school students there, but rarely the only whites. Besides black students from Bennett College and from NC A&T, there were usually one or two white students from Guilford College.
Elisabeth Leizner was a Bennett College professor, white, chain-smoking, bourbon-sipping, Jewish refugee from Austria. After an hour-or-so on the picket line, she would invite all to her apartment for discussions and strategizing. This was heady stuff, my most exotic experience yet.
Even before attaining national fame, it was apparent here that Jesse Jackson had “the gift.” He was A&T’s star quarterback, and the girls were ga-ga over him, but we all recognized that his eloquent tongue and earnest commitment were making him a worthy leader. He was four years older than I, and I easily looked up to him. I was proud to sign on as a member of the Congress of Racial Equality.
When our youth group at First Presbyterian heard that the Session had passed a policy that attendees at services would “be seated, regardless of race,” we wanted to lend our voices in support and to encourage further openness. We worked to develop a statement saying that “we were pleased” to learn of this action by the Session and that “the answers to the problems of race relations are to be found in the teachings of our Lord, Jesus Christ.” (Some of us had joked that it should say “we were surprised and pleased” to communicate our view of the Session as being timid Neanderthals.)
Joe Flora presented our statement to the next session of the Session and reported back to us that they had demanded of him, “Who were the “outside agitators” that put them up to this?” By this point, certainly, my disillusionment with Christian churches was jelling.
It was about this time that I heard of one teen’s visit with another of the associate pastors at First Presbyterian. She was struggling with doubts, as many of us were, her faith weakening. We could not see how God could be both omnipotent and benevolent, given the realities of the world. Salvation through suffering felt as illogical as it did glorious.
Report was that she entered the minister’s study, spoke of some bothersome contradictions, and explained her uncertainties. He then pointed to the light switch on the wall, and drew the parallel that there are things that we must take on faith, that we may not understand God’s teaching any better than we understand electricity. She then explained to him how electricity was generated and the function of the switch. By this, she became, at least to me, a hero of the enlightenment.
(Not) Tantamount to Good CitizenshipSenior year in high school started about six weeks before my eighteenth birthday. Fortunately, Rick Spencer sat across the table from me in home room. Rick was a Quaker willing to ask me my views on war. I told him that I could see that war was foolish and I knew that war was immoral; I had learned that from the Bible. I hadn’t heard of conscientious objection, but Rick explained it to me.
On my birthday, I walked into the Selective Service office in the federal courthouse, found Ethel Kirkman sitting behind her desk and proudly told her, “I’m here to sign up as a Conscientious Objector.” I was letdown when she told me all I could do was register, and that classification would not occur for many months.
I talked with Joe Flora about my decision and felt that he understood, perhaps even supported it. Even so, I was uncomfortable with the ribbing I took from him, good-natured though it probably was. Standing next to him, singing from our hymnbooks, I felt his elbow nudging my arm and looked to see him grinning at me. It took me a few seconds to see that he was teasing me about singing “Onward Christians Soldiers.”
When I told my mother that I was registering as a conscientious objector, she knew what I was talking about. She became visibly sad and angry. She reflected on how her brothers had served their years in the military, except for Bill, whom she said had been terribly disappointed when Duke Power had him deferred from military service due to the importance of his work. She looked at me from her sad anger and said, “This is just not tantamount to good citizenship.”
I always went to church. I didn’t even skip a Sunday when I left First Presbyterian to attend the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship on West Market.
John Keen had discovered it. He told me of how they had discussions and listened to stimulating speakers, that they supported civil rights and peace, and that the leader of the youth group was a beautiful and foxy student from Bennett College. Here was a predominantly-white church that supported integration and peace and encouraged questions! I felt like I had found a home.
A Traitor to My RaceAs the marchers rounded the corner from East Market onto South Elm, I moved in to join them. I knew that they were to start from A&T, swing by Bennett College, and present the largest-yet demonstration of demands for equal treatment at public accommodations.
I was not the only white expecting them. Spread across South Elm, facing north, were boys, young men from my neighborhood. I recognized some of them, dressed in the usual jeans and t-shirts, strands of hair falling from their perfect ducktails as they yelled and raised their banners.
Danny Knight was there. I didn’t know Danny well. He was a year-or-so older than I and often seemed to be causing trouble, had been among those that tormented the black students at Gillespie. His younger brother Wayne was my age, a good friend, and a solidly respectful boy. Wayne was not there.
Ronnie, my best friend since sixth grade, was at the front of the mass, holding up a large-lettered sign, “NIGGERS GO HOME.” Ronnie had known I planned to be there, and I learned nothing, then or later, to disprove that he was there as much to needle me as for any other reason. Across the gulf, we glimpsed one another.
Late that evening, riding my motor scooter homeward down Asheboro, I sighted figures moving from the storefronts on the right, into the entrance to Randolph, blocking my way home. I veered way to the left, accelerating on Asheboro, hoping to get past them quickly enough to round the block, park in the backyard, and make it inside before they could reach our house. As I sped past, barely noticing their yells, they peppered me with rocks and gravel. I wasn't injured, but the next morning I could see nicks and scratches on my Vespa.
A few days later, heading toward town, a cluster of guys in front of the Soda Shop beckoned me. Had I not paused at the stop sign on Randolph, I might have ignored them. But I could not pass up the opportunity to show calm courage and possibly convert someone with my reason.
Almost as soon as I rolled up to the curb, the threats turned to pushing. I tried to explain how it was that I was not a traitor to my race, how we would all be better off in an integrated society. Someone swung. The blow cost me my balance. Down on the pavement with my Vespa, I could see some were ready for more and I could see Jerry step forward.
“Leave him alone. Let him go.”
Jerry seemed calm and steady. I felt myself shaking as I lifted my Vespa and started off, deeply disappointed that I was unable to come up with transformative parting words. I appreciated Jerry for his protection and for the hope he had given. He had risked at least as much as I had. I was grateful that Jerry was such a large fellow; perhaps the rest of them were glad for that also.
How did I know I was not a traitor to my race? I was sure enough to say it, but not sure enough to remain unshaken. I looked to the whites in CORE, the UU Fellowship, Kay Troxler (Allan’s Methodist-but-activist mother), Pete Seeger, Joan Baez. The inspiration and support that I received from all these helped me keep to what I felt and believed.
A few months passed. I had traded in my Vespa at Rice Auto for a Fiat. I liked having four wheels under me and a roof above. When I told Clinard that John and I were planning to drive to Chapel Hill to check out the campus and make arrangements for my entry there next fall, he wanted to come along for the chance to connect with another local CORE chapter.
After a brief tour of two dorms, the library, and some Main Street hangouts, we reached the CORE meeting in Carrboro in time to find out that the agenda for the day was to send small teams to public accommodations as a retest of whether they would serve blacks. There were to be no sit-ins and no arrests.
With so many volunteers, the groups became larger than necessary. John, Clinard, and I joined eleven others headed to The Pines on the outskirts of Chapel Hill. We parked our cars in the restaurant’s lot and gathered before entering the swinging glass door.
As all fourteen of us stood there facing the counter, Clinard told the waitress, “We’d like to be seated for lunch.”
“We don’t serve colored.”
Reluctant to let it rest with that, I asked, “Is it your choice, or is that the policy of the restaurant?” She looked at me.
“You wanna talk to the manager?”
“Well, yes.” She turned to the phone and placed a call.
One young woman in our group stood in the doorway, ready to leave. The rest of us silently agreed to wait.
Within minutes, a tall, youngish man came through the door, turned and locked it, and told the waitress to call the police. The remaining thirteen of us became aware that it was now time to leave and that we couldn’t. Patrons ready to leave after finishing their meals stood patiently, watching the unfolding of a familiar event. Only when the police arrived, did the manager unlock the door and allow us to be escorted to the two paddy wagons.
The hours we spent in the Chapel Hill jail cell, together, laughing as comrades, passed quickly. I dropped John and Clinard at their houses and made it home before Mother thought anything amiss.
With only a vague plan of returning to Chapel Hill to stand in solidarity at the yet-to-be-announced court date, I had seen no reason to tell my parents. Dad would have objected to the confrontational manner; he felt that good Christians would act without creating strife. Mother would be deeply disturbed by any flaunting of law.
I was home the day that Joe Montgomery called. Joe was a junior at GHS, a good friend, and one of our small circle of high school iconoclasts. Mother answered the phone, listened for a moment, turned to me, and said, “When were you going to tell me about this arrest?”
Joe later claimed to me that he had assumed that my mother already knew, that he had innocently asked, “Does Chip know yet when he’s going to court?”
Mother shifted into high civic/motherhood gear. Though I said I didn’t want a lawyer other than the one provided by CORE, she found one. He advised her that I should plead nolo contendere. I didn’t like being tempted by white privilege. Neither did John, but Mother included him in this lawyer’s charge. Clinard was not included: he was black; he was a repeat offender; Mother didn’t know him as well; and he chose to stand with the others and plead “not guilty.”
It really was much easier for John and me; all we had to do was show up at court and go home. All the others received probation, if not jail time, dependent upon the number of prior arrests.
In advance of the court date, I requested an excused absence. It was denied. I asked to meet with the principal to appeal.
I sat across from Mr. Routh and explained that I knew that students who had received a ticket for speeding or running a red light could have an excused absence in order to meet their court date. A. P. Routh moved his head lower and closer ever-so-slightly. His eyes narrowed as he conveyed to me this most important moral distinction. “But Chip, they did not intend to be arrested.”
My grandmother learned of my arrest. Though I had always been very close to her, spending many sweet afternoons with her while Mother worked, I knew by now that our opinions about segregation would likely always differ. I could tell by the sound and the way her lips curled when she said it, that the “N-word” came from spite and hatred, not mere convention.
Across the corner of her kitchen table, Gram’ Betty solemnly laid her hand across the back of my forearm. Her tone was deep, close, and caring: “Son, don’t you know that they judge you by the company that you keep?”
Academic FreedomOur Greensboro CORE chapter had put together a panel of white students from Guilford College and black students from A&T, Bennett College, and Dudley High School. We sought any opportunity to present information on the civil rights bill which had just passed in the House of Representatives and to model civil, interracial cooperation before church, civic, or other gatherings.
I longed for them to speak at my high school. As certain as I was that an assembly or general presentation to interested students would not be permitted, I was sure that our History Honor Society would provide an appropriate and appreciative audience; these were mature, thoughtful students, eager to engage the world.
The student president of the History Honor Society agreed, and we proposed the presentation to the faculty advisor. The principal blocked it, telling me that we must “stay clear of this” and “remain neutral”. I wrote a “letter-to-the-editor” of High Life, our school newspaper. When I was informed that Mr. Routh would not permit the letter to be published, I shared my outrage with some fellow students.
Ten of us wrote and signed a letter to the
Greensboro Daily News about freedom of the press and attached the banned letter concerning academic freedom. After the
Daily News published both letters, some Unitarian Universalists and Kay Troxler personally commended and encouraged us.
I don’t know what feedback, if any, the high school received from the community, but Mr. Routh spoke to two of the signers. He warned Gail Pfaff (already a Senior and a cheerleader) that she risked being able to be a cheerleader or join clubs in the next year. (At least he was aware of some of her interests, if not her class.)
To Leigh Manley, a work-study student in her second year as an office aide and whose widowed father was very poor, Mr. Routh said, “A person in your position cannot afford to take controversial stands. I have on my desk your application for a scholarship to nursing school. I don’t know if I can sign it.”
[Some six years later, in my work coordinating draft counseling for American Friends Service Committee, I was invited by some current GHS students to join them on the sidewalk in front of the high school for a lunchtime peace vigil. The weekly vigil by the federal building downtown had been going for a few years, and they wanted one of us to stand with them at their first demonstration.
Assistant Principal Lody Glenn had succeeded A.P. Routh. I heard that he had warned that if I sat foot on the campus, he would have me arrested. As the students and I stood silently facing cars that passed on Westover Terrace, Mr. Glenn watched our backs from the top of the bank.]
Hamburger Clinard came over early on a Saturday. Mother, Dad, and I had lived here nearly nine years. The maple tree had grown tall enough to afford some shade, and the garage now held a fine supply of tools as well as my six-shooters and cowboy hats.
I had plans to repaint my Fiat (with a brush!) and Clinard was eager to help. We worked hard and, by dusk, were tired, dusty, finished, and hungry. “Let’s go to Biff-Burger. My treat,” I said.
We drove (Primer dries fast!) out West Lee, parked in the lot, walked to the window, and ordered hamburgers, fries, and shakes.
“We don’t serve them.”
It only took a second to realize he wasn’t talking about hamburgers, fries, or shakes. The tilt of his head and the cast of his eyes showed that “them” was Clinard. I don’t know about Clinard, but I was too tired to expect this and I was ready to argue, to find a way to resist, insist. I turned to Clinard. He shook his head. We agreed he’d go back to the car while I ordered. We were both too tired and hungry to boycott.
For the beauty, the splendor, the wonder…like Jesus wore it. Hallelujah I adore it!Sitting with Clinard and Michael in the Robinson’s upscale kitchen, we were snacking and talking about girls, cars, “the movement.” They were clearly quite used to sprawling in each other’s space. But for me, being welcome in Clinard’s or Michael’s home was a wondrous blessing. And, while less taboo than inviting either of them into my home as social equals, just being there was a tasty smashing of the dying mores.
As we relaxed into one of the lulls in our talk, Michael, without any obvious precursor, moved his open palm smoothly and deliberately across the top of his head, as though caressing his aura. “You know, I like my hair.”
About the authorA young Chip Sharpe aspired to bring peace, love, and understanding to the entire world. Later, he became content with achieving that in his family and facilitating it in his neighborhood.
Chip graduated from the University of North Carolina; trained draft counselors for American Friends Service Committee; and lived on a commune in the Arkansas Ozarks before moving to California in 1972. His thesis, Community-Based Mediation of Neighborhood Disputes, earned him a master’s degree from Humboldt State University in 1980. Chip still trains volunteer community mediators through Humboldt Mediation Services which he founded in 1983. And he has volunteered as a Scoutmaster for more than two decades.
Chip retired in 2007 after working 32 years as an “Operations Technician” (handyman). He and Celestine Armenta, his wife, live on the rocky coast of northern California within reach of one daughter, three sons, and six grandchildren. Click here to read how Chip Sharpe decided to share these stories.
Contact Chip at
chipsharpe@sbcglobal.net.
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