Madeline Ramsey could not have predicted the casual cruelty of her neighbor
on that day back in 1967 when an elderly white woman asked her to come
in to help retrieve an item perched high on a shelf. It had been a year
of endless hazing for Ramsey, who was the first black tenant to move
into an all-white apartment complex in Indianapolis. Neighbors routinely
put black ink in her wash when she used the building’s washing
machine and a three-year-old boy once greeted her with a racist epithet.
But surely this elderly neighbor was vulnerable just like herself. Ramsey
agreed to help her.
When she stepped into the closet the door slammed shut behind her. The
elderly neighbor ignored her cries for help and her pounding fists on the
door. It would be four and a half hours before she was released. When she
emerged, Ramsey received a strange rationale from her neighbor.
“I was trying to protect you,” the woman said. The Ku Klux
Klan had staged a march in the neighborhood that day, she explained, and
she feared Ramsey would be in danger if she had ventured outside. The woman’s
account was confirmed by the evening news. The Klan had indeed marched through
Irvington that afternoon. Dismayed by her neighbor’s tactics, but convinced
that she had not acted with malice, Ramsey knocked at the elderly woman’s
door the next day to thank her.
As I listened to her story I was filled with a deep sense of sadness. Ramsey’s
humanity had been violated-–and so too had mine. This elderly woman
had placed Ramsey in a cage and claimed to have set her free. If she was
truly trying to protect Ramsey, then why not invite her to sit with her over
a cup of tea until the storm had passed? As Ramsey pointed out to me, no
one had been harmed in the Klan’s march that day. And yet, Ramsey chose
to believe that though her neighbor may have been misguided, she had acted
with good intentions.
I found in this story echoes of Indiana’s history as it was told
to me by several storytellers on Saturday. The Klan, which was founded in
Indiana, infiltrated the local power structure in Indianapolis during the
1920s and ’30s. And though there were no Jim Crow laws relegating blacks
to separate restrooms and drinking fountains-–and race riots in town
were averted-–the social lines were very clearly drawn. African American
families could not purchase homes beyond 38th Street until the 1950s. And
the only jobs available to most were as chauffeurs, butlers, maids, janitors,
and elevator doormen. The town’s economic power base-–the automobile
industry, pharmaceutical companies, and banks-–managed to exclude blacks
from top-paying jobs with the help of recalcitrant unions.
Individuals helped make a difference. George Neal, who has directed educational
programs at the Urban League in Indianapolis for 30 years, recalled how when
a high school guidance counselor told him that he was not qualified to attend
college as an art major-–despite the fact that Neal had won a national
Hallmark art competition-–a banker whom his father worked for as a
chauffeur stepped in to help. “He said, ‘Oh no, we can’t
tolerate it.’ What he said to Mom and Dad was, ‘Don’t you
worry about the scholarship, he’s taken care of.’”
“There are stories of that nature out here,” Neal said. “We
often tell about the bad, but there are some good stories here. Where would
we be without wonderful understanding white people and the Jewish community
and others in the struggle? There are those kinds of stories.”
Ramsey--who was born in Mississippi and moved to Toledo, Ohio, at a young
age, where she attended integrated schools and went to college to obtain
a degree in education-–was also a pioneer. As a young graduate she
moved to Indianapolis, full of hope, with a singular goal: to rent the nicest
apartment that she could afford. She was confused when the real estate agent
would only show her dilapidated housing. She had never experienced discrimination
before. It only seemed natural to her to seek the help of housing advocates
to move into a clean and safe neighborhood.
Her calm and visionary spirit recalls the accomplishments of black entrepreneur
Madame C. J. Walker, who built an empire in Indianapolis with her line of
beauty care products, creating wealth, job training opportunities, and a
dance hall and movie theater where African Americans could come together
and enjoy life.
Ramsey, now 57, said her experiences have taught her not to be judgmental.
She said she tries to accept people “where they are because you can’t
change anyone...You can motivate them through what you do and hopefully that
will help promote change. If you don’t do that, then you will be filled
with hatred.”
As a training manager at the end of her 30-year career with General Motors,
she distilled her life philosophy in this way:
“You know what, if I had [dwelled on] every hurtful thing, every
mean thing, every bad thing that someone has said or done to me in my lifetime,
you wouldn’t be able to hardly stand me. But I chose not to do that.
I chose not to let other people dictate who I am. I chose not to let other
people take away my power.”
