Tam the aunt, granddaughter, daughter, and sister of Baptist ministers. Service was as essential a part of my upbringing as eating and sleeping and going to school. The church was a center of Black children's social existence, and Black adults were buffers(缓冲) against the segregated(种族隔离的) outside world that told us we weren't important. But our parents said it wasn't so.
We couldn't play in public playgrounds or sit at drugstore lunch counters and order a Coke, so Daddy built a playground and canteen behind the church. There were no Black homes for the aged in Bennettsville, so he began one across the street for which he and Mama and we children cooked and served. And we children learned that it was our responsibility to take care of elderly family members and neighbors.
We learned early what our parents and extended community "parents" valued. Children were taught-not by teaching, but by personal example-that no kindness, however small, was ever wasted. I remember a debate my parents had when I was eight or nine as to whether I was too young to go to help clean the bed of a very sick, poor woman. I went and learned just how much the smallest helping hands could mean to a person in need.
The adults in our community made children feel valued and important. They struggled to find ways to keep us busy. And while life was often hard and resources scarce, we always knew who we were and that the measure of our worth was inside our heads and hearts. We were told that the world had a lot of problems, that Black people had an extra lot of problems, but that we ought to and were able to struggle and change them, that being poor was no excuse for not achieving, and that we had the responsibility of sharing with the less fortunate.
