Sandy hated even to think about going back to school. He was having much fun playing, and Jimboy had been teaching him to box. Then the time to go to classes came.
“Wash yo’ face good, sir, put on yo’ clean waist, an’ polish yo’ shoes,” Aunt Hager said, bright and early, “ ’cause I don’t want none o’ them white teachers sayin’ I sends you to school dirty as a ’cuse to put you back in de fourth grade. You hear me, sir!”
“Yes’m,” Sandy replied.
This morning he was to enter the “white” fifth grade, having passed last June from the “colored” fourth, for in Stanton the Negro children were kept in separate rooms under colored teachers until they had passed the fourth grade. Then, from the fifth grade on, they went with the other children, and the teachers were white.
When Sandy arrived on the school grounds with his face shining, he found the yard already full of shouting kids. On the girls’ side he saw Willie-Mae jumping rope. Sandy found Earl and Buster and some boys whom he knew playing mumble-peg on the boys’ side, and he joined them. When the bell rang, they all crowded into the building, as the marching-lines had not yet been formed. Miss Abigail Minter, the principal, stood at the entrance, and there were big signs on all the room doors marking the classes. Sandy found the fifth-grade room upstairs and went in shyly. It was full of whispering youngsters huddled in little groups. He saw two colored children among them, both girls whom he didn’t know, but there were no colored boys. Soon the teacher rapped briskly on her desk, and silence ensued.
“Take seats, all of you, please,” she rasped out. “Anywhere now until we get order.” She rapped again impatiently with the ruler. “Take seats at once.” So the children each selected a desk and sat down, most of the girls at the front of the room and most of the boys together at the back, where they could play and look out the windows.
Then the teacher, middle-aged and wearing glasses, passed out tiny slips of paper to each child in the front row, with the command that they be handed backwards, so that every student received one slip.
“Now, write your names on the paper, turning it longways,” she said. “Nothing but your names, that’s all I want today. You will receive forms to fill out later, but I want to get your seats assigned this morning, however.”
Amid much confusion and borrowing of pencils, the slips were finally signed in big awkward letters, and collected by the teacher, who passed up and down the aisles. Then she went to her desk, and there was a delightful period of whispering and wriggling as she sorted the slips and placed them in alphabetical order. Finally she finished.
“Now,” she said, “each child rise as I call out your names, so I can see who you are.”
The teacher stood up with the papers in her hand.
“Mary Atkins … Carl Dietrich … Josephine Evans,” she called slowly glancing up after each name. “Franklin Rhodes … James Rodgers.” Sandy stood up quickly. “Ethel Shortlidge … Roland Thomas.” The roll-call continued, each child standing until he had been identified, then sitting down again.
“Now,” the teacher said, “everybody rise and make a line around the walls. Quietly! No talking! As I call your names this time, take seats in order, starting with number one in the first row near the window. … Mary Atkins … Carl Dietrich. …” The roll was repeated, each child taking a seat as she had commanded. When all but four of the children were seated, the two colored girls and Sandy still were standing.
“Albert Zwick,” she said, and the last white child sat down in his place. “Now,” said the teacher, “you three colored children take the seats behind Albert. You girls take the first two, and you,” pointing to Sandy, “take the last one. … Now I’m going to put on the board the list of books to buy and I want all of you to copy them correctly.” And she went on with her details of schoolroom routine.
One of the colored girls turned round to Sandy and whispered: “She just put us in the back cause we’re niggers.” And Sandy nodded gravely. “My name’s Sadie Butler and she’s put me behind the Z cause I’m a nigger.”
“An old heifer!” said the first little colored girl, whispering loudly. “I’m gonna tell my mama.” But Sandy felt like crying. And he was beginning to be ashamed of crying because he was no longer a small boy. But the teacher’s putting the colored children in the back of the room made him feel like crying.
At lunchtime he came home with his list of books, and Aunt Hager pulled her wet arms out of the tub, wiped her hands, and held them up in horror.
“Lawdy! Just look! Something else to spend money for. Ever’ year more an’ more books, an’ chillens learn less an’ less! Used to didn’t have nothin’ but a blue-backed speller, and now look a-here—a list as long as ma arm! Go out there in de yard an’ see is yo’ pappy got any money to give you for ’em, ’cause I ain’t.”
Sandy found Jimboy sitting dejectedly on the well-stoop in the sunshine, with his head in his hands. “You got any money, papa?” he asked.
Jimboy looked at the list of books written in Sandy’s childish scrawl and slowly handed him a dollar and a half.
“You see what I got left, don’t you?” said his father as he turned his pants-pockets inside out, showing the little boy a jackknife, a half-empty sack of Bull Durham, a key, and a dime. But he smiled, and took Sandy awkwardly in
