Growing
up I did pretty well in school, but I knew that the end of high school would
mean the end of schooling for me. My family just didn't have the money for me
to attend school. So two days after I graduated from school in 1935, I went
into the orange groves near Eatonville in order to find work. Since I was young
and strong, the overseers chose me to pick oranges. Man, it was the worst type
of labor a man could ever be subjected to. The sweltering Florida heat was
downright unbearable, even under the shade of the orange groves. I tried to
fill as many crates as possible, but it was just too strenuous. After a few
months of picking, I knew that I had to get out of Florida. I began to plan my
escape from that moment, but first I had to save every bit of money that I made
from picking in order to get a ticket North. I only made 15 cents a day picking,
so it was going to take a few years to save enough money to not only leave, but
buy a place in the North. I also could not tell a single soul, as I could get
in trouble from the plantation owner for leaving. I hoped to leave as soon as
possible, but that would not be the case.
The
biggest reason was because I fell in love. There was a girl named Beatrice
Johnson, who had stolen my heart in school. She would never go on a date with
me in high school, but that soon changed when we graduated. She saw my
intellect and work ethic, which she said was so much greater than any other
guys within miles around. After about nearly two years of dating, we decided to
get married. Six months later, she was pregnant with our first child. It seemed
as if my life was beginning to become cemented in Florida. I felt that the
opportunity to leave was slipping out of my grasp.
After my
wife had our second child in 1941, the war broke out. One of my cousins said
that the war had created a ton of opportunities in the Detroit car factories.
All of a sudden, my dreams could possibly become realized. So I told my wife
that I wanted to move to Detroit. I knew that I would be able to make more
money working in the factories than I ever could in picking oranges in
Eatonville. I would go up after the beginning of the year and send for her soon
after I was settled.
I still
remember the first time I saw Detroit, I could feel the freedom in the air.
There were black people everywhere, some who had even made huge riches by
owning their own businesses. The chains of Jim Crow seemed to be stripped
there. I found work in the Ford factory in Dearborn. While working there for my
first few months, I ran into another person from Florida. His name was George
Starling and he was from Eustis, a city not too far from Eatonville. He too
worked in the orange groves and decided to move up to Detroit for work.
However, he knew that he would soon have to head back to Florida. He was having
troubles with his wife and needed to be back in Florida to keep the marriage
together. He asked me how I kept my marriage so strong.
“The key
is being 100% honest with each other. Always keep your word and always have some time for each other.” I told him.
He nodded
in agreement and thanked me for the advice. A few weeks later, he left to go
back to Florida. I hoped he could save his relationship because he was so young and had just gotten married, but
it seemed that he truly loved his wife.
This weekend I went to the Motor City to attend my nephew's weeding. I remember going to Detroit at as a young man in order to work at Ford Motor Company plant for a few years during the 70s. It was a tough job with long hours, but the pay and benefits were too good to pass up. The city was so industrial and I definitely found the people there more welcoming than those in New York City (So sad that the city is such a dump now). Detroit was at the time, and remains today, a chocolate city with a strong and proud Black community. Hearing the stories of how my Black American co-workers and their families ended up in the city was quite shocking. When I was growing up in Jamaica, I was always told that if I ever went to America, I should never go to the southern parts of the United States (For a Black person pre-Civil Rights era this was definitely a no-go zone). The turmoil that my coworkers faced in the South gave a clear explanation for their vast migration to the North. They were tired of being treated as second class citizens, being viewed as inferior to whites, getting abysmal wages, and living in constant fear that any little misstep against the overwhelming racial caste system would leave them out of a job or even dead. They saw the North as a promised land which was free from the burdensome shackles of racist hatred (Unfortunately, the grass isn't always much greener on the other side). In the end, I guess any sort of migration, wether it be an immigrant from a foreign land, to a refugee in their own nation, is one that is often does with an equal sense of hope, fear, and determination for a better future not just for oneself, but for their future generations. It is a sense of urgency that can never be completely stopped no matter what the social conventions, laws, or physical barriers are in place. To move toward opportunity is as instinctual as it is for a toddler to walk (If only more people understood this during our currently corrosive political climate).
ReplyDeleteAccompong Fannon
(Transcribed by David)