E. Mark Windle 21 November 2020.
While undertaking some book research a few years ago on Nashville’s R&B music industry, I remember being drawn to a very competent cover of Barbara Lewis’ iconic 1963 recording “Hello Stranger”. The version in question was by Alpha Zoe (Hall), a young teenager who had just been plucked from nearby Gallatin to record the song at Nashville’s Columbia studios for Hit Records, with virtually no preparation – and within days of the original chart release. After tracking Alpha-Zoe Hall down, the next few months were spent interviewing her about her upbringing, career, and life events. The former singer was now her 70’s, and out of the music business. But as part of the general quid pro quo she mailed me the script of a presentation she had just delivered to her local baptist church. Marking Black History Month, it was written as a retrospective during a period of hope, and in the middle of Barack Obama’s second term as the first African-American president of the United States. It was an illustration of her experience as a young black girl in the times of Jim Crow law, and a perspective on how she felt her race and society has progressed since then. Take or leave the religious element; the core message is poignant. Of course, Obama is no longer president – and to many it feels like the last four years of office by his presidential successor have undone decades of progress, leaving the US very much politically, culturally and racially divided. Hopefully, the next four will redress that.
A presentation by Alpha-Zoe Hall to the Mount Gilead Missionary Baptist Church, Nashville, Tennessee; February 8, 2015:
“Good morning. I hope everyone can see this sign. I went to the UPS store yesterday to have my Colored Waiting Room sign bubbled wrapped for safe transport to church. A young white man, maybe in his twenties, helped me. When I took my sign out he did a double-take. He looked at me and said “I’ve heard of things like this but this is the first time I’ve ever seen one. I don’t know how people could have treated people like that then. Mam, I’m so sorry.” I told him “Honey don’t you feel no ways sad. It was the grace of God and signs like this that made us the strong people we are today.”
Just like that young man, some of you here may not have seen a sign like this before, except maybe in pictures. Some might not even know what it means. And some, like myself, grew up during the period when signs like these were everywhere. At entrances, exits, water fountains, restrooms, waiting rooms and halls. After Lincoln ‘set us free’ – so they say – Jim Crow laws were passed to make it illegal for any business or public entity to allow colored and white people to sit, eat, marry or associate with each other. Thus the birth of the colored signs.
I first saw the sign when I was a little girl walking through Lincoln Station downtown. Union Station was a huge, beautiful building with marble floors, long polished wooden benches with cushions and big brass lights. I was awe struck. Then we went through the door where the sign was hanging. The room in which all people of color had to sit was half the size of the choir stand here, and had just one, hard bench. The room was packed with people and a man got up to give my mother a seat. Well, I was really ticked off because I could see all the empty seats elsewhere in the station. I kept asking my mother why I had to stand up because there were lots of seats out there, until she pinched me and told me to hush.
So, the signs. They were meant to keep us in our place, by repressing, intimidating, humiliating and making us feel less than human. They said we were ignorant. But I believe we were smart and waiting our time. We knew how to act in order to survive. We believed God did not give us any giving up bones, so we obeyed their signs. We were meek but not weak, string but not violent. Our backs were bent but not broken. We turned to our churches and preachers. We loudly sang spirituals with messages of hope and we gave vent to the Holy Spirit who gave us strength to obey the signs. We may have been obedient, but we were no Uncle Toms.
I believe God answered our prayers. He opened a door, and out stepped the generation of the Negro. While obeying the signs, colored people had become Negros. They had not counted on our ability to grow and triumph over adversity. The sign did not impede our progress. It was just a designation, not our destination. We had become doctors, lawyers, educators, nurses, inventors, business owners and politicians. The majority of us may still have been in low paid jobs, but we were not subservient and in the evenings many of us went back to homes that we owned. We built schools of higher learning and established services to provide better opportunities to our people. Yet we looked up, and the signs were still there. And still we prayed.
Again, God opened another door and out stepped the generation of Black people. Those Black people looked at the signs and said “these signs have to go. We have contributed too much to society to be treated as a second class citizen.” So we marched, and prayed, protested, had sit-ins, suffered toils, snares and demeaning treatment. Still we prayed. We instilled pride in our young people and gave them role models. We fought for and won the vote to change the Jim Crow laws. God, in time, had changed the hearts of men, and the signs were taken down.
And then once again another door was opened and out stepped the African-American. A generation of people living, enjoying and demanding the things of life that colored, Negro and Black people had dreamed, hoped and prayed for. A generation standing tall on the bent backs of their ancestors.
Remember that little girl fussing because she had to stand in the room with the Colored Waiting Room sign while there were seats in the big room? Well, years later, that same girl, me, walked into a booth, pushed a button and voted for a man of my race who became the president of these United States.”
Copyright E. Mark Windle / Alpha-Zoe Hall (2020, 2015).
E. Mark Windle is a freelance writer and biographer, working independently, as a senior writer with Story Terrace (London, UK), and as a writer for Sheridan Hill / Real Life Stories LLC (North Carolina, USA). Contact: via this site or emarkwindle@hotmail.com