Writing on Race: In Conversation with E. Dolores Johnson
by Elizabeth Solar
Long before we curated the Acts of Revision site, we wrote together as a group called ‘Write Where We Are’. We can’t underestimate the level of support and encouragement we give each other. It has paid off. One of our WWWA writing tribe published her first book. Today we’re talking to E. Dolores Johnson, fearless WWWA member and author of Say I'm dead, A Family Memoir of Race, Secrets and Love, published June 2 by Chicago Review Press.
Dolores has additionally published essays on mixed race, racism and identity. Find out more at a edoloresjohnson.com. We spoke with Dolores two weeks ago. Here’s the first of our three-part interview where we cover writing about race, publishing in the time of Covid, and writing memoir.
AoR: Hey Dolores, thanks for talking with us today. Congratulations on the book.
EDJ: Thank you very much. Yes, the book has been out in the world six weeks, and I'm very excited. It's getting some good coverage in the media and lots of appearances have happened. So, I hope this audience will enjoy our discussion about it and the issues that are embedded in the story.
AoR: Your memoir is a family odyssey of race, love and courage. It traces the story of your black father and white mother, who fled Indiana in the 1940’s because interracial marriage in that state was illegal. You follow four generations of females. But one figure that looms large in your book is your dad. I'd love you to read a passage from the book that talks about your dad and the challenges of being a black man in the United States.
Read the excerpt at the end of this post.
AoR: Thank you, Dolores.
EDJ: I want to say that the story centers also on my mother. My mother was white, and my father was black. The scene is one where, as an adult, I'm reflecting on the racism that my family dealt with. Racism, because we were black and racism, because we were a mixed-race family. [The incident in the passage] takes place in the early 50s. And it's interesting to note that in 1958, the Pew Research Center did a study that showed that 96% of Americans were against race mixing.
AoR: We’ve seen some progress, but we have a long way toward racial equality and acceptance. The timing of your book’s release: a week after George Floyd's murder, a few days before the 53rd anniversary of the Loving decision, which struck down state laws against interracial marriage. Then, a few weeks ago, the death of John Lewis, one of the last surviving civil rights leaders of the 1960s. We’re experiencing parallels to the protests of the 1960’s, leading to the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Yet, there’s still so much misunderstanding, particularly among white people, about racial identity. As children, were you and your siblings aware of what that mixed-race relationship meant to your entire family?
EDJ: Yes, because we were constantly abused because we were mixed race. My father was abused, and I was abused and my brothers were abused because we were black. And [there was] the ‘one drop rule’ in the United States, the informal designation that says if you have one-drop of black blood, you are black.
We were black people, but we were also mixed-race people - as I mentioned earlier - and so we had a double whammy, if you will, as far as racism is concerned. My father was unable to rent a decent place for us to live because people didn't rent to black people. We lived in a flat in the second house on a one-family lot, one-house lot and we lived pretty much in darkness because we were overshadowed by big buildings. [Our house] was heated by a potbelly coal stove.
AoR: That potbelly stove figures into an early memory of racial bias based on your zip code. Tell us about that.
I fell against a red-hot potbelly stove when I was a small child and burned my arm very badly. The skin rose up like burnt meringue off my arm. And we didn't have a car. My parents called a taxi and explained that it was an emergency to take me to the hospital. And we waited on the sidewalk in the frozen winter of Buffalo, New York. And nobody ever came. Later on, my father had to call around to people who had a car to see if someone would take us to the hospital. And he said that the cab didn't come because the white cap company wouldn't come to the black neighborhood.
There were so many occasions when my father would come home from work and he would be livid because he was the only black person in his shop. While he was a master welder, they treated him like some lower underling. He never got his correct title or pay and was, you know, subject to the word ‘nigger’ all the time at work. As we grew up, we experienced people who would see our family and shove their children far way, so they wouldn't touch us, who would spit near us…speak nasty things intentionally in our hearing.
AoR: I want to address the issue of slavery because I read something in your book that speaks to the interracial relationships between master and slave. You have some lineage, some experience with that within your own family history.
I was doing my father's genealogy, so I went south to meet my Great Aunt Willie …We were looking through pictures, and she was telling me who these people were and how they were related to each other. We were building this genealogy chart on her dining room table and she pulls out a picture of my grandmother at about the age that I was when I went for this visit. She holds up the picture and she says, “Well look at that. You and your grandmother are the spitting image of each other because you know, you both have that white side.”
I said to her, “What white side are you talking about?” She said, “Your grandmother's father was white. You don't know that?” And I said, ‘No, I've never heard that.’
[My great-grandmother] worked on the plantation where all the ancestors were slaves and was raped by a white man on the plantation. I was so revolted. To imagine my great grandmother, who…must have been about 15 being repeatedly abused by this man, and my grandmother being the issue of that. And I said, “Well, my Grandmother must have been ashamed. That's why she's never spoken of that to me.” My great aunt said, “Well, why would she be ashamed? She didn't do anything wrong. That's what white men have always done to black women, and there's nothing we could do about it.’
So yes, there's a plantation rape in my background. And as [African American historian and scholar] Henry Louis Gates has stated - because he's done tremendous work around the mixing of races in America - that the very blackest-looking African American in America is still 12% white. That's why I say every African American shares that audacious history.
AoR: The one drop rule is so insidious because it negates everything else that you are as a person. In a more perfect world race would be something that, you know, could be as incidental as the color of your eyes, or your IQ, or personality quirks. It could just be one other thing about you. Yet so much attention has been paid to blackness. Do you find that there's now a bit more clarity [among white people] about what it means to be black or interracial in this country?
EDJ: The one drop rule…was actually codified. If you look at the US census records, which I have studied all the way back to 1790, you see that the classification of people is, first of all, the category of race. This is the mentality about America that's been embedded in our psyche all along. There were black people and white people. Then there was a category called mulatto, which is half black and half white. But mulattos were slaves, because the slave masters were raping the slave women. That's how mixed-race people appeared in United States - from slave rapes. But the masters had their own children out in the field as slaves, giving them no benefit of their paternity.
…The federal government has been a party to this one drop mentality all along. Now we have a census that has offered a category where you can actually check off and self- identify as multiracial. And 2000 was the first time that I was able to honorably recognize my white heritage and my black heritage.
AoR: How did you finally come to terms with your own mixed heritage?
It wasn't until I looked at [my father’s geneology] chart of generations of black people that I actually had a light bulb go off. That my mother was my white family all by herself. She had nobody else on that genealogy chart. And that wasn't right. She had to be from somebody, somewhere.
AoR: Having written this book and considering what's going on in our country right now, are you leaning towards the hopeful side, or the skeptical side of things?
EDJ: I look at the overall trajectory of race in America. And by that, I mean I've been a student of African American history all my life and starting from slavery through reconstruction through Jim Crow through the civil rights movement. I was an activist and remain an activist in a number of ways. I see that changing America's mindset on race is a very tall order. And so many thought it would be conquered during the civil rights movement in the ‘60s, and that more doors would be open, and progress made. I think that we have been inching towards more social justice in this country, but we have a very long way to go.
AoR: A much longer conversation, and one we will continue. In the meantime, what can we do to build a bridge between white people and people of color?
EDJ: There's lots of books* and articles available, but also by talking to and interacting with black people. An opener could be something with people that you work with, who live in your area, who you cross paths with. To say to them I, you know, I haven't been as aware before as I would like to have been, to understand what it is to have a black life in this country. And I wonder if you would talk with me about it. And if you get a positive response to have a conversation, the number one rule is for you to listen.
[You can] back policy changes and politicians who are going to change things like police policies and working to stop voter suppression… If we can have advocates in the legislature, and in key political positions, who will help make these changes, there's a much better chance to see things change… People can also advocate for revised American history lessons in schools …It's time to start teaching that to children…Think about mentoring minority children… making space for other people in your neighborhood, in your jobs, in your schools.
AoR: So, start with a conversation. Really listen. And engage. One more question. Having done all of this work and soul-searching, do you embrace your white side, in the same way you have your black?
I met my white family the expectation of racism and [those feelings] vanished because they were much more concerned with a loving family relationship than they were about race. And after my mom was reunited with her sister, we had 26 years [together] before these two passed away.
I still am in touch with my cousins.
And there's an understanding that I received through not only my mother's, but my relatives’ example about what family means, what relationships mean, and how the construct of racism …can be taken out of the equation and we can just be people together. And we can love each other.
To prove that we now have so many more interracial marriages in this country than we used to. [the US Census] shows the growth rate in birth of mixed-race children now outstrips the growth rate in single race children by three to one. So, I think a lot of people are understanding what my family came to understand: that race is not important. Family is getting along and loving people and giving people the humanity that you want given to you is really what matters.
AoR: Dolores, thank you so much for spending time to share your story. Continued success with the book. We’ll meet up next time to talk about publishing in the time of COVID.
EDJ: Thank you, delighted to be your guest today.
*Dolores book recommendations - So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo, How to Be an Antiracist, by Ibram X. Kendi, White Fragility, by Robin DiAngelo
From Say I’m Dead, by E. Dolores Johnson
Maybe the worst of mixed- race prejudice was that cloudless afternoon when my Sunday sharp daddy put on his wide brimmed hat, and said he had a big surprise for us. We followed him out of the alley from our flat to the street, where he opened the passenger door to a green 1940- something secondhand sedan. With an amused bow to mama, he helped her into our first car, while we three kids shrieked and excitement and jumped in the back. I felt as grand as a TV star as we started off on what mama called a leisurely ride. Daddy drove beyond downtown and up onto a bridge in a part of town I'd never been to. Smiling over his shoulder. He said we'd see a part of the bridge he built, some work he did on his job.
“Where Daddy? What part did you make?” David asked.
He slowed way down at the center of the bridge, pointing out seams in the gray metal where he welded parts together with a blow torch. As he continued past it, we kept looking out the back window, imprinting the amazement of Daddy's own bridge. A bridge he said wouldn't fall, no matter how many cars and trucks were on it.
In a low voice, Daddy told Mama to look left, at the police car driving up alongside. Two white officers leaned over, eyeing both my parents menacingly. Daddy stopped at the red light at the foot of the bridge, just as their blue lights began flashing.
“Please, Charles, don't say anything.” Mama pleaded, patting his leg. “Don’t argue with them.” Daddy shifted his weight and sat up straight. A policeman built like a wrestler in the arena shows we went to came to Daddy's window.
“What did we have here?” he said. A nigger and a white woman. With their three little mongrels in the back. Speeding too.”
When he went to write down our license plate number, Mama warned Daddy again. “Put your hands down where he can see them, and don't talk back. Please.”
The officer shoved a ticket through the window at Daddy. “Go back where you came from, nigger, and don't you dare be driving over here again, where you don't belong. I'll be watching for you, and this woman.”
I wanted so badly for Daddy to explain, to tell the police and we were looking at his bridge. But he didn't. The father who always lectured and shouted us, that we were afraid would spank us, sat mute and stared into his lap. Both officers stood in the street considering him, like a dare. One spit on the ground by our car before they went back to the squad car, lights still flashing. Daddy started our engine and made a U-turn, heading back over the bridge at a crawl, while the police stood by their car and watched us with revulsion.
Once back over the bridge and out of earshot Daddy exploded. “Sons of bitches,” he roared. Motherfucking rotten sons of bitches. Seeing his face turned as hard as those steel beams he'd made, we children cowered in the backseat and kept our mouths shut.
“OK, Charles ,” Mama said. “We’ll pay the fine and you can go home in one piece. They might’ve beaten you up or taken you in if you gave them any reason. You did the right thing.”
…The police had rendered my powerful father a timid subservient in front of us, because he had a white woman. They disrespected Mama for having a black man, skipping any normal courtesies given white women. Because she was only a sort-of -white woman.
Oh, but I was grateful mama had not belabored those prejudices in my impressionable years. She carried herself as a decent person and helped us see ourselves the same way, despite how others acted towards us. We never had the woe-is-me talk about mixed race prejudice. Instead, she modeled how to let such “foolishness” roll off our backs as best we could.
