When I was growing up in the South, there were basically two types of neighborhoods: White and Black. There wasn’t much mixing it up unless you were black and employed by whites. Those were the days of segregation…separate but unequal restaurants, motels, drinking fountains, schools.
Pretty early in life, I understood intrinsically this was wrong. When you’re a child and being inundated with Christian and American values, how does segregation hold up? For me, it was impossible to rationalize the obvious discrepancies. I knew I had to leave the South. I wanted to embark on an adventure that would open other worlds for me.
At age 16, I took a train by myself to visit friends on Long Island. This was my first trip to the Northeast and I was enthralled with the accents, dress, hairstyles. New York City! Museums, Broadway, taxis, Macy’s elegant holiday windows. But, what I really remembered was Greenwich Village. This was 1963. I saw my first interracial couple.
After graduating from Florida State University in 1969, my new husband and I moved to Massachusetts. What an education for me! First, I was shocked that people upon hearing my accent assumed I was racist! Second, I learned the Northeast was pretty much as segregated as the South….without the overt Jim Crow laws.
There, the neighborhoods were even more segregated due to immigrant status. There were Italian neighborhoods, Irish…French…Lithuanian…Romanian…German. You name it, it had a neighborhood. I remember when I was in grad school, living in New Britain, Connecticut, walking into any grocery store and never hearing a word of English. I didn’t even recognize what language it was….not Spanish, French, German. Later, I learned the area was an Eastern European enclave.
I eventually became one of those urban pioneers…white people moving into black neighborhoods, hoping to integrate schools through housing. We wanted to help create a more diverse culture for our children to grow up in. As long as groups and races are separate, a culture of fear of the unknown exists, persists, and thrives.
Unfortunately, it didn’t work where I lived. There was too much crime, too much intimidation. Neighborhood associations tried to accommodate the different groups and promote harmony but just couldn’t.
During this time, I learned about Jim Rouse’s experiment: Columbia. A planned community founded in 1967 where all races and socioeconomic groups were welcomed and accepted. A community built on the village concept. Each village contained a shopping area and schools, surrounded by apartments, condos, townhouses and single family houses where anyone regardless of income could live. Coventry, Connecticut was trying to clone it but never did.
After my divorce in 1973, I eventually found Kevin, my best friend and confidant, who I married in 1982. I had a 12 year old daughter, who I did not want to send to any city public high school and private school was financially out of the question for me. I was also sick to death of New England winters and the fact is, we knew only one other couple in a biracial relationship.
When we had our son, we made the decision to leave. Kevin was from Silver Spring, Maryland, so Columbia seemed like a place we should visit. Before meeting our realtor, we walked around the Mall to get an idea of what the atmosphere and culture were like there. As trite as this sounds, we were blown away by the diversity that already existed there….black families, white families, Asian families and interracial families galore.
This was an obvious choice for us. We both wanted our children to grow up in a town that was inclusive, welcoming and academically challenging. We hit the jackpot! Howard County schools still rank as one of the top school systems in the country.
Our youngest was born in Columbia seven months after we moved. Our kids grew up on a street with 40 kids around their ages. Every afternoon, they were playing street hockey or basketball or soccer. The place was a regular United Nations with Vietnamese, Indian, French, Middle Eastern, African American and several biracial children.
The Columbia Mall was our Main Street, our town center. It’s where we went for lunch after soccer games. It’s where the kids rode the merry-go-round on Saturdays. It’s where we bought their first pair of shoes. it’s where we went for brunch after their baptisms. It’s where my oldest worked at Le Baguette for years…where my son worked at Panera and my youngest worked at The Lang Store.
It’s where we called home….our refuge. I cannot tell you how grateful I am for Jim Rouse and the little bit of heaven he created for interracial families and for all families in his great experiment, Columbia.
I grieve that we have had our dream shattered.
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