CHAPTER 5
LIVED DOCUMENTS

I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquid -- and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.... I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass.
(Ralph Ellison 1989:3)

A life history is a contextual view of transactional processes that involve biological, social, and psychological dimensions. It characterizes the dialectical relation between the individual and social change (Elder 1981:78). Hence, individuals are both products and producers of their history (Elder 1981:78).

In St. Petersburg, as elsewhere, each individual constructs a life in relation to the political economy in which they find themselves. Within this framework, they define collectively what it means to be human and African American, and in former decades to be Negro, Colored and black. Yet individually they interpret these ethnic prescriptions to fit their personal needs. Each person pursues a separate path. Hence their roles, status, occupations, family and community lives, and spirituality represent who they are individually as much as they portray the opportunities which the social structure has afforded them.

The goal of this chapter is to profile the lives of five of the thirty-two people who were interviewed. The task of choosing which five lives to highlight was difficult. However, I chose to tell the stories of a laborer, a businessman, a retail clerk, a bus driver, and a nurse because their lives represent achievements despite the social conditions. Mr. Shannon's life reveals how sharecropping, his rural upbringing and a limited education provided him few economic options. Yet he demonstrates how pride can be instilled in labor and ensure a sense of worth. Mrs. Louise Macon shows how a definitive sense of self and intelligence opened doors to her that were closed to other Negroes. Her determination to lead a life unrestricted by race allowed her also to challenge the city's encroachment on her property. Mr John Clayton's narrative confirms that his resourcefulness as a businessman gave him access to a comfortable living although he had limited schooling. His life also reveals how the Seventh Day Adventist church became an anchor for him and his family. Deacon Clinton Falana, the first black bus driver in St. Petersburg and at one time a single parent, discloses his ability to diminish the power of race in his environment. Graduating from high school and going to nursing school during the 1930s is a feat for an African American woman. However receiving a graduate nursing degree from Columbia University and becoming a supervisor of white nurses in the St. Petersburg Health department during the 1950s are even more remarkable. The power of these accomplishments is exemplified in the life of Mrs. Marie Yopp. Together their life histories provide substance and texture to a social history that is dialectically constructed but individually lived.

Mr. Arthur Shannon

Mr. Arthur Shannon is an eighty-two year old retiree who looks a decade younger. He is a separated father of fifteen children and a very Christian Baptist who was born in Wilk County, Georgia. His parents died when he was very young. His oldest sister reared him. He has lived, worked, and worshiped in St. Petersburg for 58 years.

A visit with his brother initially brought him to St. Petersburg right after the Depression. However, he did not settle in St. Petersburg until 1952. After sharecropping a ninety-acre farm in Georgia, he decided to stay here like his brother, John did decades before. He too, hoped to find better opportunities.

His rural background and Christian spirituality are standards by which he measures his current existence. Therefore, work and the church figure prominently in his life. These dimensions have allowed Mr. Shannon to find a sense of purpose and place in a black and white world.

I first encountered Mr. Shannon at a community center. I went there to recruit some of the senior citizens for my research. Few of these elders seemed interested in divulging their lives to me. Mr. Shannon overheard my request while he helped prepare meals for the seniors who had lunch at the center. Later, when his chores were completed he approached me. He respectfully and gingerly said, "Honey I'll help you. . . Take my phone number and give me a call." He explained that he lived in a retirement center and I could interview him there. Subsequently, I visited him three different afternoons at his high rise apartment which he shares with two caged parakeets. However, I would see him many other times since each of us worked at the Enoch Davis community center.

Migrating To St. Petersburg

Mr. Shannon migrated to St. Petersburg from Georgia. He joined the many cohorts who had made the same trip since the late 1880s. For seventeen years, he was a seasonal visitor. Between 1935 and 1952, he made seasonal sojourns to St. Petersburg. He describes his trips in this manner: I had a brother that lived here. I used to be a farmer up in Georgia. So I just came down every year when I got through harvesting to visit them. After so long . . . I got a job at Webb City as porter. I think it was eighteen dollars a week. Well that was good money for someone coming off the farm. Then I would go back to Georgia and start farming. Another time, when I came here I got a job with Benson Manson shell company unloading shells out of a box car . . . I was working for sixty cents an hour. I didn't make much money.... So I would stay for three or four months at a time. Then I would go back home to turn the land and get ready to plant 'cause I was a guy that had a family. And I had to make 'nough money to satisfy my family.

Trying to support a family as a sharecropper and seasonal worker was difficult. Mr. Shannon explains that after selling his crops, he would pay the landlord rent for use of the land each year. Growing crops would also incur other debts-fertilizer, credits and loans he had received during the year. They also had to be paid before Mr. Shannon could determine how much he had profited. Mr. Shannon recounts, "Time you got through sometimes, you didn't have nothing for yourself."

Sharecropping not only impoverished Mr. Shannon, it undermined the education of his children. He says that, in addition to paying off his debts, he had to raise enough food to feed two families -- his and the landowner's. Mr. Shannon reasons his situation as, "White people would tell you, . . . 'you got to take that boy or that girl out of school to help you work. You can't do this work by yourself.' Mr. Shannon suggests, "You just had to let them work to satisfy him and to get the supplies he was going to furnish you that month." Retrospectively, Mr. Shannon assesses the adverse impact of sharecropping on his children's education and concludes, "Now I understand that the landowners did not want to see my children educated."

These conditions motivated Mr. Shannon to finally settle in St. Petersburg in 1952, the year that his brother died. However, his wife was not convinced that St. Petersburg was a better place. He explains, "My wife came down and she didn't like it." She had to work when she came here because times were hard for Black families. "She didn't like what she had to do." She had to scrub on her knees and wash windows and walls.... And that was a fact. " Mr. Shannon reveals, "According to my wife, we lived better than this on the farm. She wanted to live in Georgia and I didn't. So that is why we separated. That is what happened." Therefore, she returned home. The pain likely associated with this separation is seen in Mr. Shannon's account of his romance with his wife. He recounts that when he dated Louise, he was so overwhelmed by his love for her that he stopped eating. Mr. Shannon reminiscences, "She would write letters and I would lay out on the porch reading them. I used to plow all day and wouldn't even a word leave my mouth." His brother signed for him to marry her because Mr. Shannon was only 17 and a half years old. On a third Sunday, the 18th of August, 1929, he married his school sweetheart. However, approximately twenty-three years later they would be parted by his migration to St. Petersburg.

Conditions Encountered In St. Petersburg

St. Petersburg was booming when Mr. Shannon arrived. He describes the city as follows: "Honey, it used to be so many tourists here, you could hardly walk down Central Avenue without butting into people. During that time the city was building." "They were not tearing everything down."

Despite the bustling character of St. Petersburg when Mr. Shannon arrived, it was clearly a town of two tales, one black and one white. Perhaps, it would be more appropriate to says one was Negro and the other was white. Therefore in the same breath that he talks about the tourists, he recalls "the Green benches" that Negroes were not permitted to sit on, separate drinking water fountains and a mob of "Whites" dragging a Colored man behind their car.

In fact, he recounts a racial incident that occurred while he was here in 1937. He suggests that a policeman patrolling a carnival at Bartlett Park encountered a J. C. "Honeybabe" Moses standing at ropes. The police asked the young man to move back but he would not. A fight began and the police officer was killed as he tried to arrest "Honeybabe." The suspect hid for a few days before one of his friends, who was allegedly bought out told the police of his hideout. Mr. Shannon sums the story in this manner: "They took him out and drugged (dragged) him down a street." He says, "'rectly after that happened I left. I did not want to live here, I moved back to Georgia. . . My brother told me to go back home and wait until all this settle before I come back."

Although, these apartheid-like conditions existed, Mr. Shannon suggests that people assessed the situation in relation to their future and past -- what people were accustomed, what they were willing to endure and what they hoped to gain were major considerations in their decisions to live here or elsewhere. Therefore, he concludes that many African Americans born in St. Petersburg migrated to the Northern cities. He deduces that many followed the tourist season but did not return. "They did not want to come back to the kind of life they were raised in," Mr. Shannon justifies. Most of the people from Georgia, Alabama, and Carolina came from the farm and saw St. Petersburg as offering a better future, he concludes.

People find ways to survive and maintain a sense of self and preserve their lives in hostile environments. Mr. Shannon suggests that despite the injustice of racism, he found security in obeying the laws. He explains, "as long as those signs (colored and white signs) were there, I know it was violating the law if I went against them." He reminds me of the conditions that helped to "protect" the Colored from whites. "Now back in my days, when I was growing up, Mr. Shannon articulates, you really couldn't talk to white folks anyway." He says when circumstances changed, he told his children, "Now you can talk to them (whites) but give them respect Anybody you respect, they will respect you back." He also admonished his children to stay in school and take advantage of the opportunities school offered. He considered learning was a strong weapon against the hard times of racism. Significant attitudes toward race did not change in St. Petersburg until the 1970s Mr. Shannon remembers. This social change gave him a greater sense of security. He relates the situation as follows:

It has been really nice. What I mean is that I have more peace of mind. Before, I was scared that I was going to make a mistake and get in jail or get Iynched or beat up or something. I have more freedom in my life. Freedom of thinking. I can think better without being fearful.

Mr. Shannon believes that this truce in race relations is superficial and staged. He suggests that fear of lawsuits led whites to stop harming colored people. He implies that institutional racism is more subtle and deceptive. He gives two examples. "McCrory's still is not willing to serve Coloreds .... They act funny downtown now -- as if they do not want you there. I used to go there to eat. Last year, I went there and they (waiters) took their own time about waiting on me. Plus, they tried to overcharge me. They (McCrory's) have another way of keeping you from going there," Mr. Shannon realizes. He also emphasizes the shift in division of labor in this dialectical environment. Mr. Shannon stresses that prior to desegregation, "White men would not do the jobs that Black men did. You couldn't catch a white man with a shovel, .... now they have grabbed all the jobs."

Although Mr. Shannon acknowledges that institutional racism still exists in St. Petersburg, he reports that a niece and one of his sons have crossed barriers which he had been socialized not to breach. He explains that his niece is married to a white man and his son dates a white woman. He reasons, "if you are going to send black and white children to school together, you can't keep them from being in love or associating with one another."

Alexander Leighton (1959:136) says that humans strive to become their true selves and attempt to find ways that will affirm themselves despite a sociocultural environment. Mr. Shannon finds his sense of place in work and his Christian faith.

Limited schooling and his skin color would significantly restrict Mr. Shannon's occupational opportunities. Few financial rewards would accompany the many jobs he held. Whether discussing his work as a farmer, garbage truck driver, construction worker or a handy man, a sense of pride is always evident. For example, he proudly recalls, "I hop'd build the Hilton. We poured it in 8 days. The forms would just slip up as we poured. We had a crew that worked at night and a crew worked in the day time." He also recalls that he helped construct the Bayfront Center, an entertainment complex that the city owns. Later, he showed me his chauffeur's license that he received when he first came to St. Petersburg. He boasts, "I stood the test.... I never lost them. I was recommended as a safe driver. Mr. Shannon really perks up when he discusses his craft as a farmer. He paints a scenario of his achievement on a Georgia farm with ninety acres and four mules, "I made good farms. I grew cotton, corn, peanuts, tobacco and pimento peppers. I growed anything that mother earth would let me plant. We cured our own meat, raised 200-300 heads of chickens, and made our own syrup, meal, and sausages." He reminds me, "We were independent and I took care of my wife and children."

It appears that for Mr. Shannon, work is a form of worship and art. He boasts that he never took "soft jobs like working in hotels." Until this day he works and scoffs at others who admonish that he should truly quit. His retirement marks a bureaucratic rite of passage for social security, rather than altering his role as a workman. Work nurtures an essential core of his being. He points out that he does not have to work, his car is paid. He asserts, "I do it because I love it".

Although work brings status and pride to Mr. Shannon, religion lifts his spirits and directs his life. "I get joy when I go to church." He is a Baptist but he suggests that "if you get your heart right, any religion suits you alright." However, he warns that going to church every time the doors open means that "you are gonna keep the pressure on you and your religion. Just like He (God) said, there is time for all things."

Mr. Shannon is concerned about some of the contemporary practices in the church. He laments that his church members focus on appearances and have forgotten the "old time religious songs." Mournfully, he explains that the days are gone when he could wear a pair of starched and ironed overalls and jumper to church. "Now they tell you how to dress. If you don't dress like they want, they (church members) don't recognize you and may tell you to go home and put on some clothes." He is also concerned that his church does not help the homeless and poor. He suggests that although he gives fifty dollars for the Pastor's Aid fund, he can not depend on his church to assist him if he is sick and needs medicine or to pay his light bill. Also he complains that the choirs only sing contemporary music. He wonders if the church should allow rap in its services like it did one Sunday. He emphatically expresses that women should not be allowed in the pulpit and found it shameful when the pastor allowed a woman to preach from this all-male domain once. Mr. Shannon argues, "a lady don't 'spose to speak in the church unless she has a veil on her face. The Bible told me." The evolution of the church services causes grave concern for Mr. Shannon, but he acknowledges that "God is looking for a righteous heart."

Although he determines that "the members have too much pride and they ain't going to reach glory," he is not dogmatic in his spirituality. For example, he explains that he never liked blues and dances because that wasn't the way he was raised. He reminds me that he was reared in a Christian family. But he says his wife enjoyed dancing. Therefore he cared for the children while she went to dances.

He considers religion as a way to ensure a better life. He recounts a conversation he had with his son about him drinking whiskey. "I tell him, 'Don't you know the Lord will bless you better and you'll have a happy heart. I said go and get your spiritual food. You can feel better. If you ain't got nothing but a quarter, you're still happy. Why worry and go on when you can pray to God and he'll take care of you."'

Although, Mr. Shannon has lived in St. Petersburg for three decades, he talks about Georgia as if he left the farm last year. He laments that he now has to eat out a paper sack rather than from the land and wishes he could go back to Georgia to live. St. Petersburg seems to be just another sojourn.