Seniors reflect on experiences of racism
While growing up in Reading, Robert S. Jefferson saw some subtle discrimination due to the color of his skin, but it was not until he joined the Army in 1957 and was stationed in the Jim Crow South that he faced racial prejudice at its ugliest.
“I was taken aback,” recalled Jefferson, former president of the Reading branch of the NAACP. “In Reading, there was racism, but it was not as overt.”
Jefferson, 81, of Spring Township; Kenneth Fisher, 58, of West Chester; and Linda Burns-Glover, 69, of Reading recently shared personal stories in celebration of Black History Month. Though their life experiences vary widely, all have lived in Reading and understand what it is to be Black in a society long dominated by a white majority.
Jefferson, a retired corrections officer and youth counselor, said his first encounter with prejudice came at the hands of his third-grade teacher. The teacher
seemed to have it out for the Black boys in class, picking on them, calling them names and disciplining them more harshly than she did white children. The experience left him with a distrust for white people in general, whom he learned to approach with reserve
and caution.
“Whenever I give speeches now,” he said, “I advise teachers not to make racial statements that can affect children the rest of their lives.”
The childhood wounds left scars, but the worst for Jefferson
came later. After leaving Reading High School, he enlisted in the Army and was flown to Fort Jackson in Columbia, S.C., for basic training. He got his first taste of the South’s segregation as soon as he exited the aircraft.
Thirsty and in need of a restroom after a flight of over three hours, he looked around and spied a men’s room. But as Jefferson went to open the door, he noticed a sign reading “Whites only.” He finally found another marked “Coloreds only” tucked away from the concourse. It was the same with the water fountains.
He considered returning home immediately and recalled thinking, “There is no way I am going to serve my country and risk my life when I can’t even get a drink of water.”
But he stuck out a two-year stint in the Army that included six months in the South and 18 months in Germany, where he was treated better than in the U.S.
A trip to his father’s hometown in Virginia also helped open Jefferson’s eyes to the poverty and degradation of Blacks in the Jim Crow South.
“We were living poorly in Reading,” he said, “but not as bad as people in the South. African Americans in the South were really living a horrific life in a place where there were no opportunities for housing or employment.”
After bouncing around the East for a few years, Jefferson moved at age 28 to Los Angeles and enrolled in a junior college.
“I thought I was running away from racism and segregation,” he said. “What I found was racism was even more overt in the large
city of Los Angeles.”
In college, he joined the Black Student Union and had his first experiences with the civil rights movement. He was invited to join the Black Panthers, but declined because he thought the organization was too violent. Instead, he got involved with the Nation of Islam, an African American political and religious movement, founded in 1930 by Wallace Fard Muhammad in Detroit, and began reading the Bible and Quran.
“That made me a better person,” he said. “God speaks to the heart. As the heart, so is the man.”
Events of the past year took him back to the days of his youth and his own involvement with the civil rights movement. The activism of today, he said, is a response to the systemic racism that has dogged the nation.
“Blacks were always looked down upon,” he said. “There is a history in this country of more than 400 years of racial disparity.”
Still, he has hope that meaningful change can take place if people learn to look into their hearts.
“No one has any part in their coming into existence,” he said. “The place of birth, color, function of the body are the choice of the creator. There are no grounds for superiority and inferiority when you look at it that way.”
Kenneth Fisher
Kenneth Fisher had more than just the usual openingnight jitters when the curtain rose for his lead performance in Savoy Company’s 1997 production of the Gilbert and Sullivan opera “Ruddigore.” For the first time since the Philadelphia opera company’s founding in 1901, a Black man was cast in the lead role. The pressure was on.
“It was really intimidating,” he said. “Leading roles in musical theater are not seen traditionally as roles
for Black men.”
Earlier, Fisher undertook some leading and supporting roles not usually played by a Black man, including Will Parker in “Oklahoma” and Jesus in “Godspell.” There had always been some modifications to the script to help make the casting more acceptable to white audiences. More often, even when he could sing, dance and act rings around the others auditioning, Fisher was turned down for the lead.
“I was told the audience would not accept a Black man as the romantic lead or be able to handle an interracial kiss,” he said.
Such obstacles and a love of classical music were the main reasons he gravitated toward opera.
“With opera,” he said, “if you can sing the part, you get the part.”
His struggles were not unexpected. A high school director had warned him, saying, “You are very good, but if you choose this as your career, it will be hard for you.”
Fisher was drawn toward the performing arts and academia in his school days, finding acceptance among white peers with similar interests, but alienating many of the Black students, who called him derogatory names and accused him of “being white on the inside.” It did not help when he came out as gay during a time when those of different
sexual orientations were less widely accepted.
Those years were eye opening to Fisher, who was reared by parents who taught him all people were equal, yet sat him down for “the talk” most Black boys get when coming of age. They told him how dress to avoid suspicion, keep his eyes down and watch his tongue.
“Before you open your mouth, people already see your color,” they warned.
A graduate of West Chester University, Fisher has worked as a teacher, director and choreographer. He also interned overseas, teaching the German language in Australia and Wales, where he found race was less of an issue. With his theater career on hold due to the COVID-19 crisis, he now works as print resources specialist for Drexel University, Philadelphia.
A student’s recent Twitter post caught Fisher off guard.
“If you come across this tweet,” it read, “reply with the grade you were in when you had your first Black male teacher.”
Fisher, 58, said the tweet made him think. Looking back, he could not remember being taught by any Black men as a student through 12th grade or later in college.
A few Black women taught in the Reading schools he attended, and a much older cousin, Grace
Jones, now deceased, had been a principal at Lauer’s Park Elementary School. But Fisher said the only Black male educator he encountered was a librarian at a branch of the Reading Public Library.
As recently as 2006 while directing and choreographing a high school musical, Fisher had Black students comment that they had never had a Black director or teacher before.
“It is something to think about,” he said.
Linda Burns-Glover
Linda Burns-Glover was about 12 years old the first time she strayed alone outside her north Philadelphia neighborhood.
Most of the residents were Black in the Raymond Rosen Project Homes, where she lived, and she never noticed any difference in treatment due to her color or mixed African and Native American ancestry. So the racism she encountered on that first solo trip downtown hit her hard.
“I got thirsty and went into a convenience store for a drink,” she recalled. “I waited and waited for service before I asked for help.”
But instead of serving her, the clerk pointed to a sign hung on the wall behind the counter. Using a derogatory epithet, it indicated no Blacks were permitted in the store.
Her heart pounding in fear, Burn-Glover ran out the door.
“In my family we have all colors,” she said. “No one else’s race was ever downtrod at our table.”
Burns-Glover grew up in a loving home presided over by her South Carolina-born mother and native Philadelphian father. Her parents worked hard, often struggling to find steady employment and provide for their children. The color of their skin, she said, often made it harder to find and keep jobs. Things improved when both parents secured government jobs; her mother with the school district and her father with the city.
“I had to grow up fast because my neighborhood was tough,” she said. “But some wonderful things grow up out of the projects.”
With her parents’ encouragement, Burns-Glover excelled in Warren G. Harding Middle School and Simon Gratz High School, where Marcus Foster was principal.
Foster gained a national reputation for educational excellence while serving at Simon Gratz from 1966 to 1969, and later as associate superintendent of Philadelphia schools from 1969 to 1970. In 1973, while superintendent of the Oakland, Calif., schools, he was assassinated by members of the Symbionese Liberation Army, purportedly due to his plan for keeping drug dealers off the schools’ campuses.
“He was excellent,” Burns-Glover said. “They really taught Black history in the schools then.”
Foster’s assassination hit her almost as hard as that of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. five years earlier.
“Dr. King came to my school to speak to the students,” she said. “I also listened to him on the radio. I couldn’t understand why someone would kill a man who was promoting peace.”
As she prepared to start 10th grade, Burns-Glover was selected by Temple University for its Upward Bound program and participated through graduation.
The federally-funded program is designed to prepare first-generation, low-income or high-risk students for college.
“They were looking for students like me,” she said. “I was smart, Black and came from a two-parent home.”
But after 21 years of marriage, her parents separated. Her mother and siblings moved to Reading, and Burns-Glover stayed in Philadelphia with her father.
“When I visited them in Reading, I could not believe she moved onto a block with white people,” Burns-Glover said. “My life was lived with or in a Black community.”
Later, Burns-Glover moved to Reading, too, and enrolled in Reading Area Community College, where she earned an associate’s degree. She also found love with her husband of 41 years. The couple have six adult children.
For more than 30 years, Burns-Glover worked in the City of Reading’s codes department, administrating the department her last six years before retiring in 2006 and starting her own property management company.
During her years at City Hall, she often encountered racism and was subjected to racist and sexist remarks, sometimes by a supervisor, who grudgingly came to respect her. The two later became close friends.
The workplace can be tough on Black women, who experience both racism and sexism, she said. BurnsGlover suspects some are intimidated by her outspokenness and that of other strong or powerful Black women.
“We have more problems than anyone else,” she said.
The nation is more divided than ever, she said, and that saddens her.
She credits her husband, family and Christian faith for her serenity and success.