Page 89 of You've Got a Place Here, Too
Name: Don’t Worry About It
Subject: I Been Known You’re a Cheater
Instructor: Dionne’s Boyfriend
Section: in his lies
Date: Today
Grade: (F)u(c)ke(d)
I’m looking at the blue book, absolutely confused.
He starts talking about this woman, Mama Rose. According to O.F., Mama Rose went to JSU way back in the day. She ended up doing all this work on something called fugitive pedagogy. After college, Mama Rose got more radicalized.
Erline Rose was a schoolteacher in Clarksdale, Mississippi, during the days and at night, she worked in the house of the Hills, the wealthiest white family in town. Samantha Hill, the baby of the family, got accepted to Vassar College, in New York. Her family did not want her to go so far for an education and said she could only attend Vassar if Erline came with her. Back then, it was not common, but it was possible for Black-women-help to accompany monied white girls to schools.
They often stayed in the slave quarters of the dormitories.
At Vassar, Erline caught the eye of Danielle Baker, the person credited with being the first Black woman to attend Vassar. At the time, no one knew Danielle was Black except Erline.
When Danielle was a student, she lived in Kendrick, the same dorm where Erline and Anne Scott lived. Initially, allthe young women in the dorm were extremely kind to Erline. At night, from the hours of six to nine, Erline’s quarters became a little store where young women would buy sweets, pickles, chips, candy. They’d eventually start to call her “the Candy Lady.”
The white girls had no idea that Erline was the Candy Lady when she attended Jackson State, too.
Danielle Baker and Erline bonded over candy, then conversations about science. One night when everyone was asleep, Danielle and Erline went to the lab where Danielle had started doing all these experiments. Before long, Danielle and Erline spent every night in the lab.
The white women loved Erline. One day after eating their nighttime treats from the Candy Lady, all of the women get brutally sick.
They blame their illness on the Candy Lady.
The college’s president demanded that Danielle and Erline tell them everything. They said they had enough evidence to throw them in jail.
C:Evidence of what?
K:Right. Right. That’s the question.
They burst into the lab and tell them they have evidence that they intentionally poisoned the girls in the dorm. Danielle is given the option of either withdrawing or getting kicked out and going to jail.
Erline watches Danielle walk in the hallway with the administrators.
Erline doesn’t wait for what she knows is inevitable. Danielle will blame all of what happened to the white women on Erline. She bolts out of that lab and sprints back to the dormto get her damn bag and pocketbook. One by one, the doors on her floor open and fatigued white women come out of those rooms with scissors, pencils, pens, fabric.
Anne Scott is one of the women.
According to our friend, that was the last any white person saw the Candy Lady. But you know white folks. They erased what actually happened and then turned around and named the dorm after Erline and Danielle. That’s why it’s called the Rose Baker.
C:Wait. Why did he tell you that story? It’s super important. But why tell it?
K:Okay, so our friend and I walked back across that quad. We stood outside of his apartment. Our friend explained to me that there is no way to honor the dead if you neglect the folkways that kept them alive. He contends that storytelling and science are how they lived, and why they died.
Therefore, he asserts, we have to use storytelling and science not to bring the dead back but to feed pleasure to the dead. The Black Dead want to feel good. And they rely on the Black living for pleasure. They want us to feel so good, responsibly. They, in turn, bless us. So we’re really in a romance with the Black Dead. Sounds simple. I mean, simple if you believe in such shit.
When I asked him how we feed pleasure to the dead, that’s when I realized I needed to get the fuck out of there. Our friend said that every dead Black person in this country died prematurely from white folks. I asked him if he meant white supremacy when he says white folks.
He said they don’t use words that dull the terror that white folks in this country have brought to us.
So no “microaggression.” No “white supremacy.” No “white privilege.” Terrible white shit is done to Black folks by terrible white folks.
