Page 244 of The Sun Sister
‘Jackson...of course! I hadn’t connected the surnames before. Your Rosalind sounds like she was one hell of a woman.’
‘Oh, she was, and a huge influence on me throughout my life. It’s difficult for you to imagine what it was like growing up as a young black woman in the fifties, which, if you know anything about American history, you’ll recognise was the most incredible time for change for black people across America.’
‘Stella, I gotta be honest here, I know jackshit about any kind of American history. I went to school in Europe, where they just taught us our own.’
‘I understand, but even you must have heard of Martin Luther King Junior?’
‘Yeah, I know of him, of course.’
‘Well, by the time I won a scholarship to Vassar in 1959 for my undergrad, just as Cecily and Rosalind had planned, the world here in the States was in turmoil. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights had been passed by the UN in 1948, which was the first step to stopping segregation. I went to college at a moment in time when the protests against it were at their height in the South. And of course, growing up with Rosalind and Beatrix as my mentors, I threw myself into the cause wholeheartedly. I still remember how they and Cecily celebrated in 1954, when the US Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. This meant that segregation...You know what that word means, don’t you, Electra?’ Stella turned to me suddenly.
‘Yes, separating the blacks from the whites.’
‘Exactly. Well, the Board of Education ruling technically only applied to schools, but it opened the floodgates on protests that argued segregation in any other place should become illegal too. That was when Dr King began his rise to fame. He organised a boycott in the South, after a young activist called Rosa Parks had refused to give up her seat on a public bus to a white passenger. The boycott meant that no black person would get on one until segregation was removed, and it brought the bus companies in the South to their knees.’
‘Wow,’ I said, as I tried to take in what she was telling me.
‘Even though this was all happening down South, the students here in the North organised protests to support them. Oh Electra,’ Stella sighed, ‘it’s so difficult to explain to a young person such as yourself who takes your rights for granted, but back then, we were all driven by a cause greater than any single one of us.’
As Stella paused and her gaze flew across the garden, I could see a light in it that told me she was remembering those glory days.
‘Did you ever get arrested when you were protesting?’ I asked.
‘A couple times, yes, and I’m proud to tell you that your grandmother has a criminal record. I was charged with affray along with six of my college classmates – the police brutality was something else. But I didn’t care, and nor did my friends, because what we were fighting for – a whole nation’s freedom and the right to be treated equally to our fellow white Americans – mattered more. When all this activity culminated in the spring of 1963, I was in my last year at Vassar. The atmosphere at that time was amazing; two hundred and fifty thousand of us joined the march on Washington, and we all gathered peacefully to listen to Dr King make his iconic speech.’
‘“I have a dream,”’ I muttered. Even I had heard of that.
‘Yes, that’s the one. A quarter of a million of us, and not one of us there showed any violence towards another. It was...’ – Stella swallowed hard – ‘a seminal moment in my life, in all sorts of ways.’
‘I’ll bet,’ I nodded, selfishly eager for the history lesson to be over. ‘So what did you do then?’
Stella chuckled. ‘I took the obvious path, and applied to law school at Columbia, right here in New York, with only one thought in my head: I was going to become the greatest civil rights lawyer and activist that ever lived. I felt that God had sent me to America and given me all these opportunities with only one purpose in mind – to help others like me who hadn’t been so fortunate. However, nothing in life ever goes according to plan, does it?’
‘What do you mean?’
Stella looked at me for a moment. ‘You know, I think it’s time for that cup of tea I promised you. I also bought some scones, do you like scones?’
‘Uh, are they a bit like a muffin with raisins? I think our housekeeper made them sometimes ’cos Pa liked them.’
‘Kind of. Cecily and her friend Katherine just adored them. Sit here and I’ll set everything out.’
So I sat waiting for my grandmother to serve me afternoon tea, with a distinct feeling that she was taking time to gather herself to tell me something. The afternoon sun was quite strong now and the smell of some exotic pink flower that hung from a trellis in a tangled mass was letting off a soporific scent. I closed my eyes and tried to process what Stella had told me, feeling guilty because I didn’t know anything about what women like Stella and Rosalind had done to give me the equality and freedom I enjoyed today.
‘History’ was something I associated with knights jousting on horses and effigies of ladies lying on top of tombs in the crypts of churches that Pa had made us visit if we stopped off in some medieval town during our summer vacations. The history that Stella was talking about was that of recent times, timesshehad lived through. She and her friends had put their lives at risk so that I could have the liberty to be myself...
The thought made me feel very small and very selfish for ever thinking thatIhad problems.
‘Here we go,’ said Stella, bringing out a tray that was fully loaded with a beautiful china teapot, two cups with saucers and a milk jug.
‘Are you okay to pour while I go and get the scones?’
‘Yeah, of course.’
Even though I wasn’t a fan of tea, I picked up what looked like a mini sieve and finally worked out it was to catch the leaves from the pot. Then I added milk.
‘This is Darjeeling,’ Stella said when she returned, ‘my favourite tea on the planet.’
‘How come you picked up so many English habits when Cecily was actually American?’ I asked, taking a tentative sip of the tea. For the first time, I actually enjoyed the taste.
