My family left me with a sea of white girls and headed back to Baltimore. I walked along the slowly rising road past the wishing well, past the castle, past the lacrosse field, past the art studio and the theater that had once been servants’ quarters, to the chapel that had once been a stable, and climbed the stairs for the convocation.
Like any self-respecting Negro, as I took my seat I counted every single person with color in their skin. Beaver College recruiters had found seven “nice Negro girls,” including myself. There was no Black Students’ Union. We were not even “Black” yet. We made eye contact and nodded toward each other.
The seven of us occupied different places within the Negro community’s distinct class system. We had different relationships to hairdressers, different slangs, different high-school experiences, different ways of worshipping (if we worshipped), different family arrangements. Race may have looked like it overrode those differences, but in 1967 it did not. Three of the girls had gone to the same high school, so they hung tight.
One of us, Karen McKie, lived in Philadelphia, and had been recruited in person from Simon Gratz High School, which had a low graduation rate, an abysmal college-attendance rate, and a reputation for being a violent, dangerous place. I caught up with Karen a few weeks ago.
Anna Deavere Smith: When we arrived, we didn’t have afros.
Karen McKie: Absolutely not. The idea was to blend in.
Smith: We, being these obedient girls—what was the frame of reference for our behavior? Were there any movies or novels about nice Negro girls like us?
McKie: No.
Smith: Right?
McKie: Being “Black and proud” was already a lyric to songs—James Brown. But we were walking that fine line, because we weren’t following anyone onto the Beaver campus. I didn’t know that anybody who looked like me went to Beaver.
We were an experience. They were giving us an opportunity to be the experience for these white girls. So that then they could be more comfortable going out into the world where people were talking about being Black and proud. Something needed to be done so that they would be prepared.
Smith: That’s hilarious. I thought it was coming from a white-savior thing on their part, to give us an opportunity.