'We Are Not Moving!'
Ms.
Sylvia A.
Brookter,
Slidell,
Louisiana
I am 60 years old, and I still don't understand how the color of the skin can have such a negative impact.
I was 15 years old, and it was the year 1959 in Slidell, Louisiana. Sadly enough, my racial incident happened in church. I was of the Catholic faith, and being African American, we had to sit in the last two pews.
One Sunday, my brother (who was four years old) and I walked to church, and on that day I decided to sit farther up from the back. I took my brother by the hand and walked proudly up to the 10th pew from the back. Needless to say, an usher asked me to move and sit in the back. I told him, "No, we are not going to move." He left, only to return again and said, "You have to move to the back!" I told him, "We are not moving!" That man, that supposedly Christian usher, called me a "black ape." I was hurt and afraid, but I was also determined and stubborn. We stayed there, my brother and I, and the white folks stood up rather than sit with us.
An adult black man told me after church how proud he was of me. (My thought at that moment was, "Why didn't he get up and come sit with me and my brother?") After that Sunday, black folks slowly started moving to different pews in church. When I see Rosa Parks, I tell my children that could have been me because I would not have gotten up for a man to sit if I was tired from working all day. That incident years ago left a serious impact on me.
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