Americana & the U.S. • Racism and Civil Rights

In 1971, following a speech I had presented to Toledo Historical Group in Ohio, I was seated beside seventy-year-old woman who introduced herself as Celia. She took my hand and said “You’re a great storyteller Jim; perhaps you should tell my story?”

She then launched into a flood of bio detail about great grandfather in the Civil War; grandmother born in 1864; both parents born in 1884, which lead to Celia’s birth in Nebraska in 1902. She said she had graduated early from Nebraska high school and by 1925 had graduated from Nebraska college. “I followed the teaching profession, my early career spent teaching grade and high school in Mississippi from late 1920s, to mid 1930s…” This is where she suddenly stopped talking, quickly as he had started! “Now I’ll break the boredom of my story showing on your face Jim by telling you I ONCE DANCED WITH PRESIDENT HERBERT HOOVER.”

Celia was right the whole time she was relating her uneventful story, I was bored, seeing no reason for the retelling of undramatic details… until that last line! Celia stood up and said before leaving the table “I have your card Jim and I will be mailing you things and phoning you with their explanation which will make my story worth retelling.”

The first two things Celia would mail me and later phone me with details are Celia’s 1919 photo at age seventeen, and photo of her grandmother at age 7 in 1871 as stands with sister in front of their Civil War soldier father. The next thing I had received from Celia was a second larger format copy of the family tintype photo of her 7 year old grandmother and 10 year old sister beside their 8 year old brother, all standing in front of their father, Celia’s great grandfather in his Union uniform while serving with US “colored troops” in the Civil War! Celia revealed to me over the phone she was black who had spent her life passing as white, in which time she had graduated in a segregated high school and a segregated college in Nebraska passing as a white student! Also Celia had mailed to me a newspaper article about the political controversy caused when Celia had danced with President Hoover in 1931, as a 29 year old teacher in Mississippi!

Though Celia wished to remaim anonymous for obvious reasons, this was a story worth retelling in this frame!