Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 2, 1995 TAG: 9503310106
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: G-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ARLEEN OLLIE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
I'm the grown-up version of the little girl who was pictured standing in front of the bicycle on the first page of the aforementioned section. I want to tell you what Northeast meant to me and the effect its destruction had on my life.
For the first six years of my life, I did not know that the color of my skin determined my value as a human being and how I would be treated by the larger society. Before the destruction of my neighborhood, I received praise for good behavior and was chastised for bad behavior by family, friends and neighbors alike.
My early years were filled with such a deep sense of love, security and acceptance that I truly believed that all was right with the world.
Although I did not realize it at the time, my first three years of formal education would set the standards for the rest of my life. Ms. Howard, Ms. Green and Ms. Nellie Wise Reid not only reinforced my love of learning, but they taught me that if I wanted to succeed I would have to learn twice as much and work twice as hard as whites. They stressed that I could do anything and become anything that I wanted to.
I had to believe in myself, and once I learned something it belonged to me - that no one could take it away. This strength became my salvation sooner than anyone thought, because in September 1956, I entered my first integrated school.
It was in this desegregated atmosphere that I was first exposed to the idea that my skin color supposedly made me less human and less intelligent. The constant bombardment of having my work marked down because that particular teacher wanted to do so or being held up as "a special Negro" made me stop trying to earn good grades, but I continued to educate and to challenge myself.
Sometimes when I am reminiscing, I wonder what my life would have been like if my old neighborhood had not been destroyed. The dubious wisdom of "eminent domain" exerted pressures that forced my parents to seek work in Connecticut and myself and my brother to seek temporary refuge with our older sister in Fort Bragg, N.C.
Life has given me some hard punches. Some were of my own choosing and some were because of our racist society. But you know what? I still believe in myself.
When I walk across the stage at Hollins College in May to receive my degree at the age of 48, I can say that I have learned some valuable lessons from the mistakes of the past. But why haven't you, the public policymakers?
If today's youngsters were the products of the ideology that "it takes a village to raise a child," which is what Northeast was, perhaps there would be fewer gangs, drug dealers, drug addicts and juveniles who commit murders.
by CNB