{"id":27619,"date":"2013-01-16T17:13:23","date_gmt":"2013-01-16T17:13:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=27619"},"modified":"2016-06-13T00:24:56","modified_gmt":"2016-06-13T00:24:56","slug":"%e2%80%9cam-i-black-hell-yeah%e2%80%9d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=27619","title":{"rendered":"\u201cAm I Black? Hell Yeah!\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cAm I Black? Hell Yeah!\u201d<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

(1<\/span>)ne Drop Project<\/a>
\nJournal<\/a>
\n2013-01-16<\/p>\n

Billy Calloway<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cYou make sure to keep a bonnet on that boy\u2019s head. We don\u2019t need to tip off the sales agent that a Black family is moving in.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This was the first story I remember being told to me by my dad. My father grew up in Roanoke, Virginia<\/a> during 1930\u2019s. He was brown skinned. He graduated from high school at the age of 15 and was accepted at the University of Virginia. On the day that he was to register for class he was told the \u2018porter\u2019s quarters were down the hall.\u2019 When he produced his acceptance letter he was ushered off the Charlottesville<\/a> campus. He returned with an up and coming attorney, Thurgood Marshall<\/a>, who forcible told the school officials that his client would sue if he were not admitted. UVA, instead of fighting my dad, negotiated a deal with him that they would pay for him to go to any other school, just not theirs. My dad went to all Black Fisk University, graduating first in his class at the age of 19 and then went to Meharry Medical College where he graduated second in his class at the age of 23.<\/p>\n

My mom was born in New Orleans, Louisiana<\/a> in 1936. Her mom was a \u2018light skin\u2019 girl and her father was White. She\u2019s what you call a \u2018high yaller.\u2019 Both of her parents died when she was very young and she was sent to live with \u2018Nanna\u2019 in New York. She was discovered by a talent scout who worked for John Johnson<\/a> of Ebony<\/em> and Jet<\/em> magazine fame.\u00a0 When the Ebony Fashion Fair toured the south it would be my mom who got off the bus to get food for the rest of girls and crew. She \u2018passed<\/a>.\u2019\u00a0 For my mom being so fair was not an advantage. She was resented by her \u2018friends\u2019 who were darker because they thought she went around \u2018passing\u2019 as White when in fact she didn\u2019t and by Whites who called her \u2018nigger lover\u2019 because she lived in Harlem<\/a> and associated with Blacks.<\/p>\n

Am I Black? Hell yeah! I have light green eyes, when I had hair it was curly and blonde. My complexion is caf\u00e9 au lait…<\/strong><\/p>\n

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

\u201cAm I Black? Hell Yeah!\u201d (1)ne Drop Project Journal 2013-01-16 Billy Calloway \u201cYou make sure to keep a bonnet on that boy\u2019s head. We don\u2019t need to tip off the sales agent that a Black family is moving in.\u201d This was the first story I remember being told to me by my dad. My father […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,395,125,8,20],"tags":[9247,13392],"class_list":["post-27619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-autobiography","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-1ne-drop-project","tag-billy-calloway"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27619","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=27619"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27619\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47604,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27619\/revisions\/47604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}