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A Spinster Praises Segregation
by Allison Chestnut Before I graduated high school in 1975, my parents and I went college hunting. Many of my older female friends had attended Judson, the first tier women’s Baptist college in Alabama. I felt sure Judson would become my alma mater, too. We traveled to Marion, to make a perfunctory campus visit, thinking that finding the small town college would prove effortless. We were wrong. After driving nearly each squared road in Marion, my father stopped at a mom-and-pop convenience store and asked for directions. From somewhere between the car and the store, the proprietor’s dog circled behind our car. He introduced himself by sampling three inches of my father’s polyester covered thigh. The store owner, an older version of the unfortunate female in the American Gothic painting, told us that her dog was an excellent judge of character and advised my father to “git back in yor car and go ‘long.” Finding the health department proved an easier task. My mother joined my father in an examination room; the doctor provided requisite debriding, stitches, and antibiotic ointment to the wounded thigh. I waited alone in the outer area which resembled a typical small clinic. The waiting room offered molded Formica chairs in avocado and maize colors and a glassed-in receptionist’s enclosure which separated two halls. I decided to find the facilities, and approached the receptionist’s cubicle for directions. It was empty. I started down the hall on the right and saw a door marked “Girls.” Just as I reached out to push, a wide hand grabbed my wrist, gripping so hard as to put me to my knees. The hand whirled me around, and I faced a woman who could have handled a prison insurgency. “Where do you think you are going?” barked the matron, still holding my wrist. My hand was turning blue. Speechless through pain or surprise, I pointed to the sign on the door. “Humph,” she snorted. “Only nigger girls and white trash use the ‘Girls’ room. You should know better.” She pushed me backwards and let go of my wrist. “You use the ‘Ladies’ room on the other hall.” She shook her head and stood watch as I headed to the correct designation. “Your water fountain’s on that side, too, if you need it.” I bit my lower lip to keep from speaking, as I trekked to the appropriate stall. Never, from nursery school to senior high school, had I experienced racial or cultural segregation. I attended public school in Pensacola, a city housing three military bases. My schools were close to the Naval Air Station and housed students from every major ethnic category. (In fact, the only other personal encounter occurred much later in 1988. The junior college where I worked in Mississippi was located in a town which still had “colored” and “white” engraved marble water fountains at city hall.) After our introduction to the community, my parents and I abandoned our visit to Judson. We traveled as far as pain would allow. That distance, ironically, landed us in Columbus, Mississippi, a bastion of a different sort of segregation. Columbus is home to Mississippi University for Women, known regionally as the W. There, I met Miss Louise Terry, a seasoned admissions counselor, who knew an easy mark when she saw one. She offered my parents a cold Coca-Cola and a brochure, took me on a tour of the campus, and arranged a quickly assembled voice audition. By the time we returned to her office, I was hooked and signed the paperwork. That fall, with scholarships in hand, I would enter as a music major. When my cousins learned I would attend the W, they laughed. The W had a stellar reputation as a finishing school for girls. My reputation fell short, they reminded me. They had only to reference my participation in the Escambia County Junior Miss Pageant to prove their point. Everything leading up to that performance enhanced their position. When I was a little girl, I had wished my life a fairy tale, filled with ball-gowned girls in silver heels, like dolls with wardrobes fit for far-off princesses. I enthralled myself with stories of damsels, maidens (who looked like me), who could ride horses and visit far off lands. Each Christmas, from the age of three, I asked Santa for an evening gown, somehow knowing even then that the wardrobe made the maid, that clothes trumped family name and social standing. In 1963, my wish arrived in a Sears-Roebuck embossed box, a dress with full-length pink tulle waves and tiny rosebuds tacked taut upon the bodice. I tugged and scratched and scratched and tugged, fighting rough seams where, like needles, the netting and stiff fabric joined to poke and pierce my skin. Ensuing perspiration stung already irritated flesh. Miserable, I banished fairy tale and dress to a back room closet. As my blond hair turned to darker brown, and my blue eyes required glasses to remove perpetual squint, I gained adolescent height while still a child. Then in junior high I learned that imaginary/fairy tale beauty required real life financing, or at least a real-time fairy godmother. I had neither. As a senior in high school, I tried a different venue. The Junior Miss Pageant valued average looks and average clothes, but emphasized grade point averages and talent in a perfect contestant. Gone were my childhood dreams of “Little Miss,” “Little Miss Petite,” “Little Miss Little,” “Little Miss Teensy-Tiny.” I could enter the Escambia High School Junior Miss Pageant. I could salvage some portion of the fairy tale and eradicate childhood disappointment. At the appointed hour, I joined 12 other hopefuls from our class of 675 seniors. To my parents’ surprise, the judges included me among the three who would represent EHS in the Pensacola Junior Miss Pageant. My Welsh senior English teacher spoke for family and friends alike, “What in bloody hell do you think you are doing?” I had no idea. My first revelation occurred in wardrobe. Before Junior Miss I had worn jeans and t-shirts, sneakers or flip flops to class, but not any more. I yielded to a change of wardrobe- skirts, dresses, makeup, contacts. The Junior Something Auxiliary, sponsors of the pageant, treated us like Olympians. We had receptions at the Executive Club and at Meat Packers Gallery. We were the stars of photo-op sessions at Fort Pickens and The Driftwood Restaurant. Print and television reporters interviewed us and followed us as we participated in parades in our honor. Local aestheticians gave us fashion and cosmetic makeovers. I enjoyed the newfound attention. We practiced waving, walking, turning, smiling. Outwardly, I encouraged and befriended the other contestants: secretly, I hoped for their defeat. At the end of the week, rehearsals gave way to true competition. The pageant began as the contestants entered the auditorium and walked to a microphone planted center stage. We introduced ourselves to the 2200 spectators and the judges. I wore a simple navy dress, with navy stockings and navy shoes: navy was my lucky color. As soon as each girl finished her introduction, she rushed backstage and changed into her gown for eveningwear competition. I chose a white gown with a sailor collar trimmed with navy grosgrain ribbon. The pageant world has a saying, “The girl in white wins.” As usual, every rule has exceptions. Until that night, however, I had not known the dangers of wearing white on stage. As the emcee announced my name and I walked onto the runway, the audience collectively snickered. One of the pageant workers on the front row frantically waved to me. “How nice!” I thought as I matched her enthusiasm and waved back. She shook her head and pointed. As I struggled to understand, I lost the rhythm of the pageant walk and fell off my three-inch high heels. Only then, as I looked down to regain my footing, did I see two lacy blue haloes bleeding through the white bodice and waistline of my dress. Talent competition found me singing a mashup of “I’m Late,” from Alice in Wonderland and “When You Wish upon a Star,” from Pinocchio. Shelley, a contestant from Washington High School, played a Chopin piece before me. In rehearsal, I lost a contact, and not wanting to wear glasses in the actual performance, I had counted the number of steps from the piano to the edge of the stage. After rehearsal, however, the tech crew decided to move the piano to better accommodate the spotlight as Shelley performed. That night I dutifully counted: 44, 45, 46. There was, however, no 47: just emptiness. I dangled like a gymnast on the balance beam. The audience gasped their sympathy. According to old wives’ tales, things happen in threes. Our final competition, a physical fitness routine based on tennis, only remained between me and going home. I had never played tennis. Only after much effort and prayer did the choreographer feel confident enough to let me take the stage. I managed to finish without inflicting major injuries, although I did whack one girl over the head with my racquet. She, by the way, won. I like to think in some small way I helped. The emcee asked us to form a lineup across the stage, which placed me dead center. As he asked us to turn clockwise, I wondered why all the other girls were facing me, but a quick about face fixed that. I struggled to keep my composure, even though every word over the audio sounded like gibberish. When the audience laughed, I decided to laugh with them, so no one would know I couldn’t hear. I turned to the girl on my right, but she wasn’t there. Immediately I turned to the girl on my left, but she wasn’t there, either. The stage held only me and two halves of a slowly closing curtain. Dear God, I thought, please let this night be over. My parents went home without me. On the following Monday, the principal berated me for deliberately embarrassing our fine school, as no one could have been that klutzy. He was wrong. In 1975, I banned myself from further pageant experiences. “Now,” my cousins asked, “you really want to attend a finishing school?” “Obviously, I need help. At the very least I’ll graduate unraveled, but I’ll graduate. It can only help.” That pretty much ended their teasing. By the summer, Miss Terry had evaluated the incoming freshmen and made room assignments according to areas of interest, both academic and extracurricular. I shared a room with Bridget Smith, of Louisville. She liked music and English and had been in the Mississippi Junior Miss Pageant. As an only child, however, I knew only two types of ownership: what’s mine is mine and what’s yours in mine. Sharing became a new word to my vocabulary, and the room sharing went well that first year. Bridget went home every weekend, so each week I had almost three whole days of guaranteed privacy. Only rehearsals for and performances of Camelot and Chapel Choir changed the arrangement. The W lived up to its reputation as a finishing school. In order to graduate, students had to pass swimming. It offered an elective course in such basic and ladylike social necessities as getting in and out of a vehicle, crossing one’s legs while sitting, standing and sitting with good posture, setting tables with appropriate silverware, making public introductions, writing thank- you letters, and choosing appropriate seasonal wardrobe. I, of course, did not enroll, although I now wish that I had. Not until I taught at Louisiana State University did the benefits of attending an all-girls university become blatantly evident. The first freshman composition course I taught in 1980 at LSU had a boyfriend/girlfriend enrolled. The girl had a 4.0 in the class; the boy, a baseball player, barely a 2.5. When finals approached, the girl asked me what she needed to do to make a C in the class. I hoped I had misheard her. “Why would you want to make a C?” “Because my boyfriend is making a C, and it makes him mad that my grades are better than his. I’m afraid he will break up with me.” “The only thing I can think of is to miss the final exam. But I hope you won’t.” She missed the final and took the C. Their courtship did not survive through the baseball playoffs; the C lasted forever. In the spring semester of the same year, I taught Henry Thomas, Jr. Henry, a true freshman student athlete who later played for the Minnesota Vikings, needed help with a paper. I met him on the benches outside in the quad. As we talked a young woman walked by and dropped a key in Henry’s direction. He ignored it, but I, thinking the drop accidental, picked it up and called after the girl. She, in turn, ignored me. I sat back on the bench. The hotel key had a room number, date, and time written with a Sharpie on the fob. “What is this about?” I asked Henry. “Girls know we are on the football team. So some of them, when they see us, throw us hotel keys. The date and time are when we are supposed to meet them. They want us to be their babies’ daddies.” “Do you want this?” I shrugged. “Nah. Just leave it.” The true benefit of attending an all woman’s college had nothing to do with catalog options. For the first time in my academic career, deferring to the male classmates was impossible. And we were allowed to take positions without being labeled as unfeminine or as dykes, without teachers inadvertently or otherwise being prejudiced toward males, without the pressure to secure a husband or to defer to a male. Sometimes male professors dated students; occasionally a male would make sexist comments. The W is part of the real world, after all. Attending the W, however, gave each female student a back-up plan should other events interrupt the stereotypic Cinderella path of wife, mother, family. One day, when I was in my late 20s, my cousin Andy, my father and I went shopping. As I walked behind them, I overheard Andy. “Uncle Wayne, aren’t you worried Allison will end up an old maid? That she won’t have anyone to take care of her?” I had never considered my marital status to be something for which I should be ashamed, but his question bit my self-confidence. I stopped and held my breath waiting for my father’s answer. “No, Andy. It’s not like it was when your parents and I were growing up and women were expected to get married. She doesn’t need a husband. She can take care of herself.” As I exhaled, I don’t think they knew I had heard the conversation. They didn’t mention it and I didn’t bring it up. |
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