View of Race

Lost Voices

Ancella knows the fact that she is black has greatly shaped her life. If I had been white, I might have done other things with my life that I didn't do. She also realizes that in the eyes of society I am black first--no question about it.

Ancella has had many experiences of discrimination, all of her life. As a child, she remembers when I was growing up the Orpheum theater sat blacks in the balcony...and I can remember I would want to see a movie that was there, but you had to go in this little side door and down a long passageway, so there was always this kind of embarrassment of really feeling like a 15th class citizen when you darted in that little door and bought tickets and went up and sat in the balcony behind the posts in order to try to see the movie.

Ancella's bouts with racism, as an adult, were just as devastating and bitter. She speaks of joining her husband, who was stationed in the military, at Norfolk, Virginia. We were living in what were called temporary quarters. We were in rooms with two army cots pushed together for a bed with a bathroom somewhere down the hall...they were one-story, wooden, old converted barracks buildings. There were brick houses and apartments in the area for the families of white military personnel, but there were not any for the families of black military personnel.

Ancella later realized that racism in America was directed at Black Americans. I have a cousin who is as brown as I am, but he had very straight hair. He came to the United States as one of the agricultural workers during the war. This was about 1942 or so. We took him downtown to the Orpheum, stood across the street while he went over and bought a ticket and went into the movies. He could do that. It wasn't a matter of being colored because he was my color, but he spoke with an accent and there's this peculiarity, in the United States, as long as you weren't an American Black, you could do anything you wanted to do.