Sunny Nash - Race Relations in America: February 2012

Tea Service
Similar to My Own

When I was six years old, my mother bought me a miniature Tea Service--cups, saucers and teapot--made of matching fine China, unlike the unmatched China dishes we used at mealtime. When I opened the gift, I loved the look and feel of the cool smooth surfaces, but as my fingers glided over it, I had no idea of its significance to my life and the value it would be to my mother's goal--my global education, which included elementary school and college. Although getting into college and receiving scholarships was a priority, getting college scholarships was not her only purpose in teaching me about the world. She wanted me to have a global understanding of different people and their cultures, which included meditation and other types of rituals, both historical and current, training I would not get in school.

My mother's global approach to educating me had to do with accepting and appreciating differences in people and the way they lived, and extending myself to assist when it was possible. She believed this opened up a person's understanding of the world and also gave them a sense of confidence and independence of thought. "You can't let other people tell you what to think," my mother said. "Listen but make your own decision based on what you know. And do not follow or be bullied into going into a certain direction just because others do. Do not be afraid of thinking for yourself. And, likewise, do not bully others into thinking like you."

Texas A&M University

My mother would use that tiny toy tea set to teach me about the world outside of our Jim Crow neighborhood, movies and schools during the era of Jim Crow laws, under which my family had lived for decades and would live for years to come. I saw my mother many times siting on the porch staring off into the distance, almost trance-like. When she was meditating on something, I knew not to bother her.

Jim Crow laws affected the entire nation, not just African Americans.

Jim Crow laws affected everything about our lives and the schools I attended until I graduated from high school. But Jim Crow laws did not affect the global education my mother presented to me with my tea set and other tools, like meditation, she discovered and then adapted to her global educational purposes. I believe helped me to get into college and earn scholarships at various times during my attendance to Texas A&M University.

Living within the circumstances of Jim Crow laws did not give a person an excuse to do less than the best they could offer, my mother always told me. "Even the house you live in. Make it a home. Make your home the best home you can. Organize it. Keep it immaculate. Decorate it. It's where you live. Respect where you live. Take care of your home and it will take care of you; shelter you, nurture you, be standing when you need it!" With this and other valuable advice and lessons, everyday was Mothers' Day with my mother. She understood what I needed and gave freely.

My mother never had a great house, but she made a great home. This, she taught me, along with making something special out of something others considered nothing special at all. But when she'd finished her magic on a task, everyone could appreciate what she created. Her approach to life was finding meaning in the smallest of things. "You can find meaning where there seems to be none," my mother said. "People have been doing that throughout time. Whatever you're doing, do it the best you can. Give it your full concentration. Challenge yourself with every little thing that comes your way; think of them as opportunities. Do all you can with whatever it is that you have or that you are doing." My mother made ordinary things into something special. She taught me how to make my life rich without any reference to having a lot of money.

Bigmama Didn't Shop
At Woolworth's
by Sunny Nash

From my book, Bigmama Didn't Shop at Woolworth's

The essay, The Dressing Table:

"I stepped over the threshold into my mother's tiny bedroom, where everything had a place. Framed magazine landscapes hung on fading floral wallpaper. Pillows nestled under a shedding white chenille bedspread. Draped over open windows that formed a perpendicular angle of light in the room, sheer curtains were pulled apart with dime-store ribbons. On a bedside table, my mother conveniently had arranged a reading lamp, writing pad and pencil, old issues of National Geographic and McCall's Magazines, two paperback novels, a current calendar showing June 1959 and a dogged-eared copy of..."

Hawaiian Green Tea Eye Gel -
1 oz (Google Affiliate Ad)

Many times, I saw my mother sitting at her dressing table applying her homemade potions, herbal cosmetics and homemade remedies, some of which involved tea and used teabags and tea leaves. The tea was not special herbal tea; it was regular tea. Sometimes she mixed the tea with other ingredients like cucumber, making herself an eye cocktail of tea, cucumber and aloe gel, which she kept in the refrigerator.

My mother turned our kitchen into a lab on more than one occasion. Most people today, me included, don't have time, patience or knowledge. So, I found a substitute, Hawaiian Green Tea Gel, which does a great job and, unlike my mother's tea and cucumber eye treatment, mine comes from the manufacturer ready to use. To keep it ultra fresh, I keep my eye gel in the refrigerator.

"Tea is good for the skin," my mother said. "Tea tightens the skin around the eyes." Of course, I didn't care about skin tightening when I was six years old, but I saw her put her feet up, place cold teabags over her eyes in the evening and relax while listening to jazz. My mother learned this technique and many other cheap homemade beauty secrets from her part-Comanche mother, my grandmother, Bigmama, who never looked her age; neither did my mother; and neither do I.

Rosa Parks: A Life

The year I received the toy tea set from my mother was 1955, the same year Rosa Parks went to jail for starting the Montgomery Bus Boycott. At the age of six, I was vaguely aware of Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., not from teachers in my segregated school, but from hearing their names in conversations between my mother, father and part-Comanche grandmother, Bigmama, when they talked about this event and others, like Brown v the Board of Education the previous year. At the time, though, I had no idea of Rosa Parks' involvement in the protection of black women from rape and lynching. My family was very concerned about the racial and political climate of our nation, and kept informed because of issues concerning my education, life and future.

I was only six years old when I began to understand that Rosa Parks, Montgomery Bus Boycott, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the rest of them were doing something important for us, something they were giving their full concentration, a thought process shared by my mother and Rosa Parks, and others involved in important work, as well as ordinary daily tasks. "If you think enough of a thing to do it," I can hear my mother's voice echoing in my head as I write. "Then you should do it as well as you can or leave it to someone willing to give it their full attention."

Freedom Walkers:
The Story of the Montgomery
Bus Boycott

Greyhound Bus a few times on out-of-town trips with my mother and I didn't like the noise or fumes. But for the Freedom Walkers, as the Montgomery protesters became known, the reason for staying off of city buses during the Montgomery Bus Boycott was much more significant than my childish notion of not liking to ride buses.

Freedom Walkers were those who refused to ride Alabama buses during the Montgomery Bus Boycott. In Freedom Walkers: The Story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott by Russell Freedman, the School Library Journal credits Freedman with excellent prose, a rich selection of photographs, extensive chapter notes and a large annotated bibliography. Many of the photographs in this book are the boycott images I remember from magazines of the time, particularly Life Magazine.

Less than 10 years later, Freedom Walkers were replaced by Freedom Riders, both groups using buses to protest discrimination. The difference was that Freedom Walkers stayed off all city buses during the Montgomery Bus Boycott in protest of Jim Crow laws that enforced discriminatory seating and service.

The Freedom Riders boarded buses to challenge southern Jim Crow laws governing interstate transportation on interstate buses. By riding on Greyhound and Trailways buses through the Deep South, Freedom Riders protested Jim Crow laws that prevented African Americans from sitting in certain bus seats, waiting in certain areas of the station, and eating in bus station dining rooms. To learn more about the story of the Freedom Riders and the violence they faced, take a look at: Freedom Riders

Segregated Bus Station Waiting Room

By the time Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., had led the Montgomery Bus Boycott to victory in 1956, more than a year after it started, I had learned to read. My mother subscribed to an array of national publications to keep up with world and national affairs. These publications stayed in the house for years neatly folded and stacked in boxes under her bed. I looked at pictures of activists in these newspapers and magazines and tried to read the articles.

In 1954, when the Supreme Court ruled on Brown v the Board of Education, I had been unable to read any part of the articles, not having yet entered first grade. However, one year later after the Montgomery Bus Boycott, with my mother's assistance, I was picking my way through new articles about Rosa Parks and older coverage of Brown.

Since that time, I have read extensively from a scholarly perspective on the Civil Rights Movement and also examined resources available for young students.

My mother and father were very interested in the Brown decision because of its impact on my education--where, and under what circumstances, I would attend school when I started first grade. The issues of integration and school attendance were so pertinent in every community--black and white--that sides were being drawn for fear of harm coming to the children--black and white.

Racial lines were already being drawn in places where some members of our family lived in nearby towns. When my cousin died in Iola, Texas, a small town about 30 miles away, just one month after the Brown ruling, her school was closed when the town's political officials and school leaders invoked a statute to close its school for colored due to its small number of black students. So, my cousin's sisters and brothers were transferred to black schools in and around their county and commuted for the next ten years, until President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

In one of our many reference books my mother had purchased over the years, she found items about the Japanese event, The Way of Tea. She really loved The Way of Tea and bought a book similar to the one to the right, Chado the Way of Tea:A Japanese Tea Master's Almanac, which is a translation of the original Japanese classic Sado-saijiki, first published in 1960. Written by Sasaki Sanmi, born in 1893 in Kyoto, Sado-saijiki covers Japanese tea tradition throughout the calendar year with descriptions and poetry for tea ceremonies. My mother was fascinated by all of this tradition and ceremony, perhaps because so much of her African and Native American tradition was a mystery to her.

Admitting to me that she was probably not saying the words correctly, my mother still enjoyed trying to pronounce of the names and words describing the ceremonies. "I would love to learn to speak Japanese," she said. "That way, I would have a better understanding of these rules of the tea. If you ever get a chance to learn another language, learn it." My mother taught herself rudimentary Spanish when she began her supervisory career in food services. "Eastern languages are very different from English and Spanish," she said. "There is a lot to be learned from Eastern languages and customs."

Matcha Green Tea 30 servings
- 5.5 oz (Google Affiliate Ad)

Traditionally, powdered green tea is used in the Chanoyu, Japanese Tea Ceremony. My mother and I did not have the powdered green tea for our tea celebrations, but we read about the power of the tea when certain rituals were performed in conjunction with its consumption. This thinking was certainly parallel to my mother's thinking, in that, it led to control of one's behavior through control of one's own mind.

"Thinking about something is good," my mother told me. "But thinking deeply about something is better." She explained that thinking deeply means rolling it over again and again in my brain and examining thoroughly what I was thinking, not to come up with a better answer, but to come up with a better understanding of my answer. That was meditation, the same thing I had seen her doing so many times.

Matcha ceremonial-grade tea is different from other green and black teas brewed from dried flakes of loose tea leaves or tea leaves manufactured into tea bags. Loose tea leaves or those in tea bags are steeped in hot water and then discarded. The ceremonial tea is ground to a fine power that is made to dissolve in water, which preserves its essence, making its consumption more potent and effective than tea leaves. Although we didn't have the real Japanese tea, we used the tea my mother could afford and the tea she could find. Then, we substituted what we had and we pretended.

Butterfly Meadow®
Mini Tea Set by Lenox
(Google Affiliate Ad)

It is said that using the powdered green tea within the rules of the ceremony makes the five human senses most acute, encouraging high mental concentration, emotional calm and mental composure. In teaching me about tea, my mother substituted my little toy tea service for the traditional Japanese Ceremonial tea set like the Tea Set to the right.

Using my little tea set, my mother taught me about the world's fascination with tea, tea traditions, world economies built around tea and legitimate historical political movements named for the beverage, including the Boston Tea Party, one event leading to the American Revolution. My mother especially loved the Japanese ceremonies, but she taught me to respect all tea traditions and the people who created them.

Of course, my mother and I did not have Japanese, Chinese, English or any other exotic tea. We used Lipton Tea because it was cheap and available at the corner store. We emptied the tea leaves into the little tea pot. of my Blue Willow Tea Service. My mother said the loose leaves made a stronger brew. I didn't really like the taste of hot tea, but I sipped it with my mother--our pinkies pointed toward the sky--because she said I should know about such things. Then, I hosted pretend tea parties for my young cousins and friends. But I didn't bore them with what my mother and I had read about tea, since my friends and I were only drinking pretend tea, not even Lipton, just tap water.

"What does all of this tea talk have to do with me," I asked, watching my mother prepare my lesson. "Japanese tea ceremonies have nothing to do with us."

Littie saw differently, though. "You're wrong," my mother said. In spite of Jim Crow laws, segregated education and biased racial designations, my mother always said black people comprise all people, whether here in the United States or other parts of the world. "To learn about black people, you must learn about all people. If you leave someone out of your study, you will leave out part of yourself."

Curious about the Japanese Way of Tea or other customs?

~~~~~~~~ My Mother ~~~~~~~~

Littie Nash

Littie Nash, did not waste compliments on me or anyone else. She reserved accolades to celebrate real accomplishments, not just because I dragged myself out of bed before noon on Saturday or because I made an 'A' on my report card. "Some things you have to do," she said. "And those things pass, not without notice, but without an all-day hullabaloo."

To support me, Littie sponsored my piano, ballet, tennis and swimming lessons, dance performances, recitals, literary and classical music club memberships, summer camps, school trips and science fair exhibits, still managing to squeeze out of our tight budget money for the dentist to install braces on my teeth.

It took a great deal of courage and imagination during the era of Jim Crow laws for my mother and other parents like her to give me what she thought I needed. Jobs for African Americans were scarce and good jobs were mostly nonexistent for them members of our community. Black men were economically and politically marginalized and black women were publicly disrespected on a routine basis.

Read more about my mother in my blog post,: Great Mothering in Jim Crow's World. Also check out another of my blog posts about the significance my mother placed on a college education. She believed that ignorance was an illness that could only be cured by learning. "People can learn on their own if they know how to read," she said often. "You do not have to go to college to learn and be educated. But education may help you get a better job." Read: College Education Was my Mothers Plan.

Bigmama Didn't Shop
At Woolworth's
by Sunny Nash

I write about my mother in my book, Bigmama Didn't Shop at Woolworth's, began in the 1990s when I was writing a column for Hearst and Knight-Ridder newspapers, stories from my childhood in the era of Jim Crow laws. Robin Fruble of Southern California said, "Every white person in America should read this book! Sunny Nash writes the story of her childhood without preaching or ranting but she made me realize for the first time just how much skin color changes how one experiences the world. But if your skin color is brown, it matters a great deal to a great number of people. I needed to learn that. Sunny Nash is a great teacher," Fruble said.

A managing editor at Texas A&M University Press, Mary Lenn Dixon, saw the merit in compiling these stories into a book and approached me about creating a manuscript of selected articles for review and eventual publication. What a break! I agreed. And the book was born. I am now completing a second book for this Press.

Bigmama Didn't Shop at Woolworth's is recognized by the American Association of University Presses for its value to the understanding of U.S. race relations. The book is also listed in the Bibliographic Guide to Black Studies by the Schomburg in New York and recommended for Native American collections by the Miami-Dade Public Library System in Florida. Nash has work in the African American National Biography by Harvard and Oxford; African American West, Century of Short Stories; Reflections in Black, History of Black Photographers 1840 - Present; Ancestry; Companion to Southern Literature; Texas Through Women's Eyes; Southwestern American Literature Journal; The Source: guidebook to American genealogy; Interdisciplinary Journal for Germanic Linguistics; and others.

ORDER BELOW

Book Shelf for this Blog Post

Kindle Fire
Full Color 7"
Multi-touch Display
Wi-Fi

Many of these books above are now available on Kindle and the new Kindle Fire, Full Color 7" Multi-touch Display, Wi-Fi, which also offers more than a million digital books, movies, TV shows, songs, magazines, news, apps, games, and more. Enjoy the Kindle Fire's vibrant color, touch-screen with extra-wide viewing angle, ultra-fast web browsing, powerful dual-core processor, free cloud storage for your content and an array of useful and attractive accessories like the Kindle Fire Leather Cover by Marware.

Product Shelf for this Blog Post

http://www.sunnynash.blogspot.com/ is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.