Cuddled in God's Hands: A Mississippi Childhood Unveiled

Cuddled

In God’s Hands

A Mississippi Childhood Unveiled

Frances Purnell-Dampier

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© Copyright 2012 Frances Purnell-Dampier.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

Thanks to Shelley Capovilla for designing the cover!

Printed in the United States of America.

ISBN: 978-1-4669-1666-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4669-1668-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4669-1667-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012904842

Trafford rev. 03/15/2012

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Contents

Introduction

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

A memoir to my children, grandchildren,

and those indomitable spirits seeking truth

This memoir is written for my three wonderful sons—Charles II, Trevis, and Desmond—and my seven grandchildren—Jenee’, Tiana, Royale, TJ, Christion, Deion, Jasmine—and two grandchildren by marriage, Jonea and Monay. Thank you for the joy you have brought into my life from the day I first held each of you in my arms until this very day. You have made me so proud of the men and women you have become. Our times together have brought fun, laughter, and joy into my life. My thanks to my daughters-in-law, Minna and Maureen. Thank you for being devoted wives, mothers, and daughters-in-law. You are beautiful, intelligent role models for my grandchildren.

This memoir is also dedicated to my mother, Hazel Walker, though she is now in Heaven with God. Everything I am or ever hope to be is because of her guidance and unwavering love. She taught me about God’s unconditional love, which gave me the strength to endure and survive many life experiences.

I give much respect to the martyrs of the civil rights movement because of their unwavering courage and determination to be free. I and all African Americans were able to fulfill the American Dream as promised by the Constitution of the United States and the Declaration of Independence because they believed, We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

This memoir is dedicated as well to all the teachers, educators, students, and parents who touched my life. Hopefully, I reciprocated that love and genuine sincere gratitude for being in their presence.

Introduction

Storytelling is human; we learn through stories, and we use them to make sense of our lives.

—Dr. Thomas K. Huston

For generations, parents have wanted more for their children than what they had. My grandmother’s mother, who was a slave as a child, wanted more for my grandmother than what she had. My grandmother wanted more for my mother than what she had. My grandfather left my grandmother with six small children because he couldn’t provide for them. Back then, it was difficult for black men to support their families. He felt less than a man. My mother wanted more for her children than what she had. She married my father, who was killed in a car accident when I was a baby and my sister was five years old. When I was five, she married an ordained minister, who died ten years later. She was left again with my younger sister, me, and my older sister. Like my great-grandmother and grandmother, my mother worked tirelessly to support us, because she was determined to change destiny. When I married my college sweetheart and had three sons, I was determined that their lives would be better than mine. Although I divorced their father, I believe their lives were filled with love, and the few scrapes and bumps along the way made them more resilient and strong.

Lately, I look at my grandchildren, and they have no idea of the real struggle of those who came before them except for the bits and pieces they read in history books. History for them reads like a novel. How they got from point A to point B seems irrelevant—old school, they think! For many years, I have pondered about writing my story as a legacy for my grandchildren. The more they balked at learning about the past, the more my fingers ached to put the story of their heritage on paper in indelible ink as a lasting legacy. Finally, I could procrastinate no longer.

Although this memoir is written for my grandchildren, it is worth reading by anyone because it captures the innocence of childhood and a period in American history when life was evolving, emerging, and unraveling into something extraordinary. It exposes the horror of Jim Crow laws while simultaneously shedding light on how black children were sheltered from the laws menacing nature. It shows my grandchildren, and others, how I and others were able to rise up from the despair like a phoenix and triumph over that history. Strong parental guidance, friends, a sense of community, God’s grace, and a strong desire to excel and achieve shaped the essence of who I am today. They should know that positive thinking and the will to succeed in spite of hardships and obstacles is a part of their DNA. They need to know God’s relevance in their lives and remember they can do all things with God’s help.

No eye has seen,

No ear has heard,

And no mind has conceived

What God has prepared

For those who love him!

Corinthians 2:2 chapter.–9 verse

Chapter One

Early Childhood

Now I lay me down to sleep,

I pray the Lord my soul to keep,

If I should die before I wake,

I pray the Lord my soul to take.

Let’s kneel down, my mother whispered to me as she gently took both my hands and clasped them together. I am going to teach you a prayer you must say every night before you rest your head on your pillow. You need to make sure that your soul is right with God before the next day comes around. This prayer was taught to me as early as I can remember and provided me with my early relationship with God. Every night, I dropped to my knees and said this prayer. I would reach up to the Heavens, and as if by magic, I thought I could capture God in the palm of my hands and bring him into my very soul. I invited God into my very existence. I felt He was a part of my soul, a part of my genetic makeup from my earliest memory.

Because of my confidence in God’s magnificent grace, I thought life would be a breeze. Not so. My world got its first reality check at the age of four. My sister, Elizabeth, and I lived in a little small town of Winona, Mississippi, with our mother. Our mom, whom we called M’Dea, worked as a maid. She worked really hard to support us and often told us stories about the young white girls she babysat daily. From the stories she told, I think the little girls really liked my mother. I was somewhat jealous, because they spent more time with her than we did. Nevertheless, my mom gave us lots of love.

My mother was a single mother because my father had been killed in a car accident when I was eighteen months old. My mother told the story of my father’s accident all the time. She was downtown shopping with my sister and me when people started talking about a terrible accident right near downtown. Folks were saying that three black men had been in a car accident. The car had wrapped around a telephone pole, and the people were seriously hurt. Suddenly, an ambulance came barreling through town, and to my mom’s dismay, it was the one for which my father worked as a mortician. Her heart started beating faster and faster, as if it would tear from her chest. She ran frantically down the street, dragging my sister and me to the hospital. We watched in horror as they pulled the first stretcher out. Oh no, she cried, her hands covering her mouth, it’s James’s half-brother, James Otis. He was barely alive and covered with blood. As she continued to scream and watch in horror, my father was pulled out of the ambulance. His head was cracked wide open. He was bleeding, and his brain protruded from his skull. The hospital attendant said DOA to another one and looked at us with sadness. My sister and I didn’t know what that meant, but we knew it was bad, because my mother was sobbing uncontrollably and trying to get to my father. My sister, who was five at the time, remembers the hospital attendant pushing my mother out of the way. She was always angry about that. It was a very tragic scene.

Both my father and his brother died that day. Their funeral was held at Hays Creek Baptist Church in Winona, Mississippi. M’Dea said the church was overflowing with people because everyone loved my father and his brother. Sobbing and wailing were heard down the street from the church. My mother said she was overwhelmed with grief but tried to keep it together as best she could, considering she was being left with two small daughters to raise by herself. My mother always ended the story by telling us that the man who was driving the car, a friend of my father’s, escaped with not one scratch. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, it was probably the first time the presence of angels touched me.

Now to my second encounter with tragedy. I believe I was four years old and living in Winona. I’m sure I was minding my own business, sitting on a hill and watching the cars go by. My sister and I loved sitting on the hill, eating clay dirt, and marveling over the cars below. My dog, Snowball, always came along. He was a small, white, fluffy dog we loved very much. This particular day, as we sat watching the cars, I saw Snowball run down the hill. He never looked back as we screamed for him to come back. He headed straight into the traffic. Before I could reach him, my pretty puppy lay drenched in a huge pool of blood. That devastated and hurt me so much that I will not have a dog as a pet even now.

Memories of my life in Winona after that are vague and uneventful. Until one day, my mother told us she was getting married and that we were moving to Greenwood, Mississippi. I loved Greenwood. It was more like a city than Winona. Winona was filled with the red hills and dry dirt. Greenwood certainly had the right name. There was greenery everywhere. The grass was a luscious green, beautiful magnolia trees adorned people’s yards, and yellow and speckled sunflowers were wild everywhere. The whole town smelled fresh and flowery. We moved to a big, old house with a screen encasing the entire front of the house with my stepfather’s mother. A large porch extended the length of the front portion of the house. We would sit in rocking chairs and watch all the people walk by and admire the different kinds of cars. Our house was smack on Broad Street, the main street in Greenwood.

My stepfather was a minister, a man of God. He was very good to me and my sister. Not too long after moving there, my mom became pregnant with my little sister, Deloris. She was a fat baby with chubby cheeks. We called her roly-poly. I enjoyed playing with her and making her laugh. Right outside the house, my friends and I would make mud castles and play in the dirt. Because I was a girly girl, I made