{"id":24529,"date":"2012-07-27T15:14:37","date_gmt":"2012-07-27T15:14:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=24529"},"modified":"2013-07-12T00:50:31","modified_gmt":"2013-07-12T00:50:31","slug":"lives-a-final-message-from-my-mother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=24529","title":{"rendered":"Lives: A Final Message From My Mother"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lives: A Final Message From My Mother<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a>
\n2012-07-20<\/p>\n

Josiah Howard<\/strong><\/p>\n

The first note I ever wrote for my mother wasn\u2019t very special, but she seemed to think it was. It said: \u201cHi Mom! Have a nice day! Love Skip!\u201d (her nickname for me). My message was scribbled on a scrap of paper and tucked discreetly into her change purse. At the time I wrote it, I was 12. My mother worked as a key-punch operator \u2014 a profession now obsolete \u2014 at the Piscataway, N.J.<\/a>, offices of Phillips Van Heusen, the clothing company.<\/p>\n

When my mom was working, she ate her lunch while smoking her unfiltered Pall Malls in the Van Heusen cafeteria. I knew that when she purchased her meal, she would have to rifle through her purse for change, so that\u2019s where I placed my note. I didn\u2019t know that she would keep that note, laminate it and always carry it with her…<\/p>\n

…My mom\u2019s name was Gail Ann Blackmer. She was an unwed mother. I am her only child. The challenges we faced together, first in New York City<\/a> and then in New Jersey<\/a>, were, as it turned out, largely a result of the difference in our skin colors, a fact that meant little to me. My mother told me that once when I was very young, she asked if I noticed that she and I were different colors. My response was delivered with flat, round-eyed authority: \u201cMothers don\u2019t come in colors.\u201d <\/strong><\/p>\n

But they do. And my mother\u2019s being white and my being black presented many challenges.<\/strong> She didn\u2019t often speak about our early years together (or her experience of them), but whatever she revealed was indelibly stamped in my mind. The indignities stand out: once while entering a bus, a white man spied us and snarled, \u201cWhat\u2019s the matter, couldn\u2019t you get a white one?\u201d On another occasion she rented an apartment and then, when she showed up with a black child, was turned away. I often wonder about my mom\u2019s unconventional (pre-Civil Rights) life choices, and I wonder how she came to make them. It was a topic that she never discussed…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lives: A Final Message From My Mother The New York Times 2012-07-20 Josiah Howard The first note I ever wrote for my mother wasn\u2019t very special, but she seemed to think it was. It said: \u201cHi Mom! Have a nice day! Love Skip!\u201d (her nickname for me). My message was scribbled on a scrap of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[395,1245,8,20,25],"tags":[11418,11417,2640,2327],"class_list":["post-24529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-autobiography","category-biography","category-media-archive","category-usa","category-women","tag-gail-ann-blackmer","tag-josiah-howard","tag-new-york-times","tag-the-new-york-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24529\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}