Vivid memories of segregated America important part of history, Lawton man says

Walter Harkless has vivid memories of the everyday life Rosa Parks upended with her simple refusal to surrender her bus seat to a white man.

Harkless and his friend Mildred Duff share a common thread with the civil rights icon: all three lived in Alabama and all three ended up in Detroit: While Harkless traveled back and forth between his aunt’s home in Alabama and his father’s home in Detroit, Duff and Parks made Detroit their home as adults. It’s because Harkless was a black traveler that he understands exactly what Rosa Parks did when she refused to give up her seat on a Birmingham bus, even though he was only a child at the time.

Harkless said it was practice in the south to designate seating for blacks and whites, with the front reserved for whites. The sign delineating separate seating typically was far in the back, giving few seats to black riders even when there was only a handful of white riders in the front. He said it wasn’t uncommon for black riders to quietly move the sign forward to provide a few more seats for women or elderly riders, who otherwise had to stand once all the designated seating was full. That changed with the boycott prompted by Rosa Parks.

Harkless said part of the success was due to the efforts the black community made as they boycotted Birmingham buses for more than a year. For example, there were men with drivers licenses and vehicles who drove people to places they needed to go.

“They did that a long time,” he said.

A variation of that seating rule existed for cross-country travel. In the north, bus drivers didn’t care where you sat, Harkless said. But once that bus crossed into the south, drivers pulled over and wouldn’t start again until black riders moved.

“They all got up and moved to the back of the bus,” Harkless said of an issue that became more complicated for black riders on longer trips. Take stops for food: Because black riders had to use restaurant windows, it took them longer to get their food and bus drivers warned they wouldn’t wait.

Harkless also remembers an uncle who had lived in Detroit for years. The uncle went to Alabama for a visit and when it was time to leave, he boarded the bus and chose a seat in the front, as he would have in Detroit.

“He didn’t understand he had to move to the back,” Harkless said, adding the issue deteriorated into a standoff between the driver, who refused to move until his uncle moved, and his uncle, who wouldn’t move even when police were called.

The bus lines ultimately settled the issue by pulling in another driver, who didn’t care where his uncle sat, Harkless said with a chuckle, adding because the incident delayed the bus’ departure for two hours, the bigger problem was speeding to make up for lost time.

It wasn’t just buses.

Harkless said his aunt used to pack their food in shoeboxes for their train trips because blacks were not allowed to eat in the dining car. He remembers being 10 or 11 and traveling with his aunt. She was asleep. He was awake and hungry, so he got up and followed other passengers.

“I went on the dining car,” he said, explaining he crawled onto a seat at the counter and ordered breakfast.

The cook, a black man, was horrified and explained to the young boy he couldn’t eat, prompting Harkless to respond, “I’m hungry. I want to eat.” A white man sitting at the next stool entered the conversation, directing the cook to make a meal so the boy could eat. When the cook presented the meal and told Harkless he had to eat somewhere else, the man intervened again: “Feed him. Let him set next to me.” After eating, the boy returned to his car, where his worried aunt asked where he had been and was horrified when he told her. About then, the man came walking by, commented to his aunt and tipped his hat.

It was a little thing, but a sign of an era that many people today only know through history books.

Duff, a product of segregated Alabama, said she was expecting something radically different when she moved to Detroit as a young adult because the north had a reputation for being less racist. That wasn’t true, she said, explaining things still were different because she wasn’t white. She said it was a different era, where black diners had to go through the back door at restaurants to order food and couldn’t stay inside to eat. When black women went into clothing stores, there were limits.

“We couldn’t try on certain clothes,” she said.

Duff remembers an interview in her early years in Detroit that would have meant good pay. The interview was going well and Duff was comfortable she had the job, until she responded to the woman’s question of where she was from with “Birmingham.”

“She looked at me and said, ‘Oh’,” Duff said, adding she knew immediately she had just lost the job but didn’t know why until someone explained there was a Birmingham, Michigan, an all-white enclave, and the woman assumed Duff was lying when she said she was from Birmingham.

“So many incidents,” she said, of the importance of understanding history.

Harkless remembers segregated water fountains, where the water for whites was refrigerated (he also remembers as a youth taking advantage of that cool water after a white drinker had activated it, and white people thereafter refusing to drink from the fountain). He remembers stores wouldn’t take $50 bills from black shoppers and when change was due, it was thrown, not handed back to black shoppers.

Harkless also remembers activities that would have been dangerous had he been caught. He remembers running away from a police officer after one incident, sprinting through neighborhood yards he was familiar with. So, Harkless knew when he entered one yard to duck under the clothesline. The officer didn’t know.

“He got clotheslined,” Harkless said with a laugh, adding he could hear the officer yelling derogatory words at him as he sprinted to safety.