Reflections on my mother: Patricia Stephens Due (1939-2012)

Photo credit: Tallahassee Demorat 

                                                           

         My mother, civil rights activist Patricia Stephens Due, died on Feb. 7, 2012 after a long struggle with cancer.  We also wrote a civil rights memoir together, Freedom in the Family: a Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights.  In 1960, she made history as a part of the first Jail-in in the student sit-in movement.  "History belongs to those who write it," she often told me.  These were my remarks at her memorial service in Tallahassee, Florida.  She was a student at Florida A&M University at the time of her landmark arrest.  

                                                                                   

                                                February 19, 2012

                                                Lee Hall

                                                Florida A&M University

            To me, Patricia Stephens Due was..is…and will always be Mom.  

            Mom was… 

            A fierce advocate.  

           Once, my junior high school science teacher confided to a colleague that Patricia Due was one of the most intimidating women he’d ever met.  Heck, she scared me too.  When I had bad news for Mom, instead of telling her in person, I preferred to write it in a note—a habit from childhood that persisted even after I was an adult.  In junior high school, I was so scared to tell her I’d broken one of her dinner plates that I went out back and threw away the evidence in the canal behind our house.

            But anyone who knew Mom understands that beneath her gruff exterior lay the best ally you could hope for.  When I sketched my first little book when I was four—stick figures and captions I called “Baby Bobby” –Mom Xeroxed it to give out to our church members and anyone else who would have one.  When I became a published author, Mom was my manager who toured with me and made sure my needs were protected.   She was cautious and watchful.     

            An unfaltering role model.  

            Mom refused to cut moral corners.  Her honesty pervaded every aspect of her life, from the way she taught her children to the way she conducted herself in her daily walk.  She did not believe in the gray area between right or wrong, and she taught us that we must find ourselves on the right side of any ethical line.  She lived what she preached.

            A leader.  

            How fitting that we’re meeting here on the campus of Florida A&M University, the institution where my mother truly found her voice.  Here on this campus, my mother came to know herself and her purpose.   As I tell my students, she didn’t set foot on this campus knowing she was extraordinary.  She came to get her education and play her trumpet, and she got in a little bit of trouble along the way.  But then came the CORE and the civil rights movement and my mother’s REALIZATION—not a decision, but a REALIZATION—that she could not be still, she could not be quiet…that she was a warrior.

            I was born at the FAMU hospital, but I did not know Mom during that time.  What’s amazing to me is that we could hear testimonial after testimonial about what she accomplished outside of our home—when my sisters and I know that to Mom, her family came FIRST.  She gave so much to us, and had still more to give to the world.

            Mom always said that she’d witnessed too many families suffer under the weight of the struggle, and she was determined that was not going to happen to her girls.  That was her staunch belief: you give to your family first, the world second. 

            She came to every meeting, every recital.  She stretched herself every day to give us the best upbringing she could.  Sometimes she was “Hello, darling” and sometimes she was “Bring me the belt.” But we always knew we came first.

            She was at my side when I first held my newborn son, Jason, in my arms.

            There is hardly a single meaningful moment in my life when my mother was not there.

             And oh, did I want to be like her.  When I was ashamed because I’d left a college anti-apartheid protest at Northwestern University to have dinner with a friend, which meant I’d missed my opportunity to get arrested with the other protesters, she told me, “Tananariva, I went to jail so you wouldn’t have to.”

            Perhaps that was her greatest gift to us:  She gave us the freedom to be ourselves. 

            She tried to pass along to us everything she learned.  To prepare us to be competitive without pressuring us beyond our abilities.  To teach us to love and cherish each other as sisters and as a family; a bond she knew would outlive her

            She told us we never had to be the best, as long as we did our best.

            She told us we would have to work twice as hard to get half as far.

            She taught us to love all people.

            She taught us to stand up for what we believe in.

            She taught us to love books.

            She taught us to love ourselves. She filled our house with black dolls so we would see our own faces reflected everywhere.  She read us books about Dr. King, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth. 

             She taught us “document, document, document.” History belongs to those who write it. 

            And she told us stories.  She didn’t tell a story once or twice.  She told a story ten times—twenty times.  She told a story so you would remember it.  She talked about her childhood in Gadsden County, and how she and her sister, Priscilla, dodged farm work in their grandfather Richard Allen Powell’s fields.  Or chased snakes.  She talked about her adolescence in Belle Glade, and how her stepfather, Marion Hamilton, taught students from the area known as “The Muck” how to play Count Basie and John Philip Sousa.

            She told us the stories of the foot-soldiers.  Of the teargas.  The protest marches.  She told us about the Rev. C.K. Steele and his wife Lois, and their sons Charles Jr., Henry, and Darryl.  She told us about Mrs. Mary Ola Gaines, the Tallahassee housekeeper who was arrested and lost her job because she dared to sit beside the students.  She told us about my godmother, Judy Benninger Brown, and Dan and Jim Harmeling. 

            Many of those stories we put in a book, Freedom in the Family: a Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights, which I’m so grateful we were able to write during her lifetime.

            She told me stories, but the woman I knew was Mom.  

            Our last major outing with Mom was in January of 2009, when my father, my sister Johnita and I went to Washington, D.C. to see the inauguration of President Barack Obama.  I probably don’t have to tell anyone in this room how excited Mom was about the election of the nation’s first black president; a young man who spoke about the contributions of foot-soldiers and how ordinary people did extraordinary things.  

            In the end, we watched from a downtown news monitor instead of venturing out in the cold, but we were on a rooftop along the parade route, so we saw the presidential motorcade.  

            But Mom was still Mom.  The next day, Dad and I went with Mom to the White House because she wanted to collect some soil to use to plant a tree for the foot-soldiers who hadn’t lived to see the day.  We came with a spoon and a small mason jar looking for soft soil outside of the White House gates.

            This is how we came to learn that the police don’t appreciate people squatting outside of the household gates, digging in the soil—perhaps especially the day after the inauguration of the first black president.   So the young police officer who said, “Hey!” when he saw us was not polite when he asked us to get up and move on.

            “Move—NOW,” he in his I’m-guarding-the-White House voice.

            Some of you in this room may know where this is going.

            Mom was kneeling when he said this, and she wasn’t in a hurry to stand back up.  She started trying to explain why she wanted the soil.

            The police officer cut her off.  “You stay on THIS side of the chain—that’s why it’s there.  Move NOW,” he said again.

            It was just then that I saw bad memories on my mother’s face, and a growing defiance on her face as her lips began to curl.  And in that instant, I imagined our perfect family trip ending in jail some kind of way.  We coaxed Mom away from the police officer just in time.

            Mom got her soil—from a nearby tree where the soil was softer and easier to scoop.   A kindly park ranger had pointed the way.  My mother’s pharmacist, who became a family friend and then a guardian angel, Dr. Lee Dunaway, helped my father plant a tree in her yard with that soil.   Mom got her wish.

            Just as she got her wish to move back to Gadsden County.  She’d felt a strong urge to go back home.  And now, in every way, she is.

             We all sang to her and stroked her when she left this plane, but she is here in our hearts, in our minds, in every atom of our being. 

            She is the voice I will always hear when I face an ethical dilemma.  She is the voice I will always hear when I ask myself if I’m doing enough as a parent. 

            Her voice is immortal.

            I love you, Mom.  I miss you.

            I will stand tall, just as you taught us—and I will walk.

            

Family: the most important story

    I am generally a private person, but I was moved to write publicly about my mother's battle with thyroid cancer with an essay for CNN.com:  "Behind Mom's dark glasses: A civil rights leader's biggest fight." 
    My mother, civil rights activist Patricia Stephens Due, is also the co-author of our 2003 civil rights memoir, Freedom in the Family: a Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights, which I have discussed previously on this blog.
    I often say that Freedom in the Family is the most important book I have ever written.
    While I was growing up, my mother spoke often of her dream to publish the stories of the unknown foot-soldiers she knew, black and white, who sacrificed their freedom, families, sanity--and, in some case, their lives--to try to win the rights we all enjoy today.  Mom never set out to write about herself, but we tried to capture all of their stories in the book.
    While we were interviewing my grandmother, my father (civil rights attorney John Due) and civil rights activists to write Freedom in the Family,  my mother and I often reminded others to sit down and interview family members whether or not a book project was in the works.
       Once those stories are gone, they're gone forever.
       (To hear an NPR "Fresh Air" interview with me and my mother from 2003, click HERE.)
      Never forget that your family is the most important story of all.

Martin Luther King's telegram to my mother at Leon County Jail

I just returned from a trip to help my mother, Patricia Stephens Due, organize the library-quality papers she has collected since my parents were involved in the 1960s civil rights struggle. (Much of which we used as research while co-authoring Freedom in the Family: A Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights.)

This past weekend, Mom reflected on Dr. King's assassination in April of 1968, recalling how her phone started ringing and didn't stop. How she had to swallow her own agony to try to comfort other activists, who were half-mad with grief while cities burned with hopelessness. My mother was especially upset that she was unable to attend the funeral—she’d recently had a Caesarian section to give birth to my new baby sister, Johnita. My father, civil rights attorney John Due, represented our family for Dr. King’s funeral in Atlanta.

My mother knew Dr. King. She had his private telephone number.

Dr. King was the unassuming young pastor she first met when he made a presentation at a CORE workshop (Congress of Racial Equality) she and her sister attended as college students in the summer of 1960. Before CORE, my mother had been a typical college student practicing her music, discovering her social life.

A year earlier, a family friend had bribed Mom and her sister, Priscilla, into attending the CORE meeting at the tail end of their summer vacation in Miami. (He promised them a steak dinner at Wolfie's! Wolfie's, at the time, was the only restaurant in Miami Beach that served blacks.)

But they never got to dinner.

Dr. King and Rosa Parks had gained national notice during the Montgomery Bus Boycott from 1955-1956. Blacks had also launched a bus boycott in Tallahassee, Florida, in 1956, although it happened right before my mother and aunt arrived at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee, where they attended college.

In the fall of 1959, still students at FAMU, Patricia and Priscilla Stephens organized a CORE chapter in Tallahassee. By 1960, six months later, she and her sister were in jail. They had been arrested after ordering food at a Woolworth lunch counter in Tallahassee during a sit-in. My mother, aunt and three other FAMU students were the first Jail-In in the nation during the student sit-in movement, choosing jail rather than paying a fine. Next year is the 50th anniversary of the Jail-In.

My mother and aunt ultimately spent 49 days in Leon County Jail, garnering international attention. At the time, my mother was 20 years old.

As my mother and I filed papers in her library these past few days, I ran my fingers across the yellowing stacks of typed and hand-written letters the jailed students received from all over the world--people of all races who were bewildered and outraged that black students could be sent to jail for trying to order food in a public restaurant.

On March 19, 1960, the five jailed FAMU students received a telegram from Dr. King. He knew a thing or two about being thrown in jail, and he offered these words:

"I have just learned of your courageous willingness to go to jail instead of paying fines for your righteous protest against segregated eating facilities. Through your decision you have again proven that there is nothing more majestic and sublime than the determined courage of individuals willing to suffer and sacrifice for the cause of freedom. You have discovered anew the meaning of the cross, and as Christ died to make men holy, you are suffering to make men free.

"As you suffer the inconvenience of remaining in jail, please remember that unearned suffering is redemptive. Going to jail for a righteous cause is a badge of honor and a symbol of dignity.

"I assure you that your valiant witness is one of the glowing epics of our time and you are bringing all of America nearer [to] the threshold of the world's bright tomorrows."

The world's bright tomorrows.

Brightness hasn't reached everyone, especially in this flailing world economy, but in 2009 we are all waking in one of the tomorrows Dr. King wrote about.

This past weekend, I sat with my mother while she remembered Dr. King's assassination. How she had to tend to that ringing phone. How concerned she was that people she cared about would be hurt in the night's riots. Wondering what the future held.

On April 4, 1968, these bright tomorrows must have seemed oh so far away.

A simple appeal: Inauguration tickets for my parents

CAPTION: John Due and Dr. Patricia Stephens Due with infant Tananarive


I am looking for Inauguration tickets for my parents, who are longtime civil rights activists in Florida named John Due and Dr. Patricia Stephens Due. Beyond my campaign calls and carefully-budgeted contributions, I am a political outsider…so I am making a simple appeal.

My parent celebrated their 46th wedding anniversary on Jan. 5, and the first lesson they passed to their three daughters was the most profound lesson there is: Individuals can change the world for the better.

My parents were foot-soldiers in the civil rights struggle. Like thousands of other activists of all races, they never got a holiday or a stamp—but without their sacrifices in the 1960s and beyond, we would not be inaugurating Barack Obama on Jan. 20.

As the late novelist Octavia E. Butler told us, “The only lasting truth is Change.”

But change always comes with a price.

To this day, my mother wears dark glasses even indoors because her eyes were injured by a teargas bomb thrown in her face by a police officer during a nonviolent march in Tallahassee in 1960. She was also shot at while trying to register Florida voters in 1963 and 1964. My father, who once represented Dr. King after an arrest in St. Augustine, got a call from the FBI warning him that he might be the target of a racist’s bomb—and that was in the late-1980s. U.S. bombings were in the news; home-grown, just like in Birmingham. I remember that call well.

So, yes—I want my parents to see the official ceremony up close; far more than I want to actually witness the Inauguration myself…although I surely do. My parents wouldn’t only be attending for themselves: They would be there on behalf of the countless other activists who did not, or could not, make it to witness this day.

In 2003, my mother and I published a memoir we co-authored: Freedom in the Family: A Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights. Researching that book about ordinary people doing extraordinary things, I learned first-hand how many of the 1960s activists did not make it to 2009 in body, mind or spirit. The war against them took a toll that is still vibrating through the next generations, and time is stealing them away day by day.

But some of them, like my parents, made it to Election Night. And Inauguration Day.

My mother talks about bringing back soil from Washington, D.C., to mix with the red clay of her birthplace in Gadsden County, Florida. Then she wants to plant a tree in honor of all of the foot-soldiers whose shoulders President-elect Obama is standing on.

Neither of my parents expected to get caught up in a political movement when they went to college. But in 1960, as a junior, my mother was arrested at a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth lunch counter in Tallahassee. When she refused to pay her fine, my mother, aunt and three other Florida A&M students spent 49 days in jail, becoming the nation’s first Jail-In.

They received a telegram of support from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and baseball great Jackie Robinson published a letter my mother wrote from jail in his New York Post column.

My father, then in college in Indiana, read about my mother in Jet magazine and applied to Florida A&M’s law school so he, too, could join the movement sweeping the South.

The rest is history. A lifelong match was born. This weekend, my father wrote my mother a heartfelt note explaining why he wouldn’t dream of attending the Inauguration without her if they couldn't both arrange to go: “To go without you—when we are life partners—would have been like going to the 1963 March on Washington without you. It would have been impossible.”

Most children think their parents are special, but my sisters and I had constant confirmation. We saw their names cited in books. The phone rang constantly; people and organizations in need of guidance or support. One day, my mother put in a call to the governor’s office, and then-Gov. Bob Graham called back within an hour.

Although I attended public schools, my parents practically home-schooled me and my sisters with children’s books about Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez, black cowboys and other oft-overlooked figures in American history. Mom, in particular, didn’t just haul it out in February: We heard about our history all year long.

While my parents often reminded us that Martin Luther King Jr. was just a man like anyone else, we always took the day off from school for his birthday, long before there was a national holiday. We drove to Miami’s Torch of Friendship and stood in a circle to say what Dr. King had meant to us. Then we would have pancakes and go home, where often my parents opened up the house to guests—activists and politicians and students—and played speeches and watched footage. Dr. King’s vibrato delivery always brought tears to my eyes.

Knowing that history—and the pride and perspective it gave me—meant the world to me. That’s why history is so firmly fixed in nearly everything I write. History has great power.

When Roots swept the nation in 1976 and I wanted to learn my family tree, my father told me story about freed slaves who built their own community in Indiana called Lyles Station—and fought off an attack by jealous whites. He even drew me pictures of a rousing battle in a round-house barn, with women handing their men rifles as the men stood firing from the rafters.
I had never heard a story like that in any of my history books.

I didn’t follow the path of the activist, and my parents supported my passion to spread ideas using my writing rather than a picket signs or a megaphone. (Although, trust me, I’ve had plenty of experiences with picket signs, and even a megaphone…)

When I left the anti-apartheid takeover of the administration building at Northwestern University in the late-1980s to go out to dinner with a departing friend—rather than face arrest like my more courageous mates—I was embarrassed to tell my mother that I’d sold out.

But when I called Mom to relate the shameful tale, she said, “Darling, I’m glad you didn’t get arrested. I went to jail so you wouldn’t have to.”

I went to jail so you wouldn’t have to.

Those are powerful words for a child to hear from her mother.

Instead of celebrating Thanksgiving or Christmas as a family last year, my sisters and I brought our families, including five grandchildren, to visit my parents in Quincy, Florida so we could all watch the election returns together. It was a night I’ll never forget.

But I can only imagine what it meant to my parents. And because of their sacrifices as students, I was permitted the luxury of an extended childhood throughout my college years. I had time to develop my craft by day and fill my nights with laughter.

My parents are in fairly good health, but they are 69 and 74. The trip to Washington, D.C. won’t be easy on them. But they want to go.

And since they’re going…I wish they had Inauguration tickets.

All I can offer is gratitude, but if you know of available tickets, please contact me at TheLivingBlood@gmail.com.