"The Freedom of Summertime"
By: I’Maya Gibbs
Black children playing on a splashpad Source: Chicago Humanities
Hearing the word “summertime” evokes images of sunny days, melting ice cream, sandy beaches, warm weather, and campfires. However, for eight HistoryMakers, summertime encapsulates the joy, freedom, and essence of their childhoods. Mary C. Curtis, a newspaper editor, correspondent, and columnist, when asked of her earliest childhood memory, spoke of summertime, “...I remember the, during the summertime, because Baltimore [Maryland] was very hot. And we didn't have air conditioning in our house…. So you always, families would come out on the stoop, those white marble steps that they have in Baltimore, every night during the summer. And you would play jacks on the steps, and you would, you know, play those games like Hop-Scotch, and Red Light and all those. And then when the Freezee Palace truck would come, you would get soft ice cream. And you'd stay up, be allowed to stay up really, like eleven o'clock because you had to wait until the house cooled down, and you could get the breeze and the cross breeze. And I remember that. I remember the nightlife of the street……” Echoing Curtis, television news reporter and correspondent Deborah Roberts also recollects the summertime when asked about her childhood memories, “That's a very interesting question. Sunlight, bright, bright sunlight definitely takes me back to my childhood because Georgian-middle Georgia, you know, I think about the summertime and the hot weather.”
Three little girls eating icecream Source: Amazon
Summertime meant freedom for Black children, freedom to explore, freedom to play, and freedom to be an architect of their days. Television actor James Avery best known for his role in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air characterizes his childhood summertimes as one in which Black children were free from threat, “But sometimes in the summertime--this was a different time. In the summertime, it wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't a scary thing for your kids to be out in the street. I'm--you remember this time. We could, you know, we could play, you know, hide and seek and, and that whole situation.” Mirroring Avery, County Chief Executive of Prince Geroge’s County, Maryland Jack Johnson also speaks of freedom during his childhood, “And so, we would get up in the morning during the summertime, and then we would go swimming in the creek. And then, after we got through swimming, by the time we got through, the tide was low. Then we'd go back into the creek, and then go crabbing. And then, we'll get our crabs, and then we'll cook it, and we'd eat the crabs. And then, it's time to do something else. Many of my friends' fathers were deep sea fishermen, and by three o'clock or four o'clock, their ship will be coming in. So, we'd get on our bicycles and ride down to the dock, and wait 'til their fathers came in with their catch of the day. And so, that's what life was about, and so it--really exciting and free.”
Little boy holding a crab Source: Jamaica Gleaner
Similar to Johnson, Charles Brown, a basketball player and basketball official who was a part of the DuSable Panthers basketball team, also had the freedom to explore and imagine summertime in his own way as a child, “I guess summertime is my favorite time of the year. Because when school was out, you got up, you did your chores and you ran straight to the park. And you might be there until its dark or sometimes afterwards. Because the things we did in the park then are not allowed now because the park close at eleven. As long as you didn't have a disturbance oh the neighborhood would--and the hot weather, you might have a band, you might have a--you're gonna have a ballgame in the day time.”
Children playing at night time Source: Free-Range Kids
The beauty of Black childhood summertimes lies not just within its freedom of joy, pleasure, and exploration, but also in its liberty from the threat of racism and racial violence. Television actor James Avery best known for his role in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air characterizes his childhood summertimes as one in which Black children were free from threat, “But sometimes in the summertime--this was a different time. In the summertime, it wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't a scary thing for your kids to be out in the street. I'm--you remember this time.” Paralleling Avery, civil rights activist and history professor Angela Davis recalls her childhood summertime during segregation as one without threat, “ We had an enormous amount of fun playing games like hide and go seek, and the whole neighborhood would be--we played hide and go seek not in a particular spot, but we had sometimes a three-block radius. And I can remember in the summertime playing beyond the light of day, playing in the darkness, and that was fine. No one cared. There was no threat, even though there was this threat of racism that constantly reminded us of the power of the individuals who controlled the city, at least, [T. Eugene] Bull Connor [commissioner of public safety, Birmingham, Alabama].”
Summertime could, at times, be both a childhood dream and nightmare. Dr. James Gavin III, the president of the Morehouse University Medical School describes one of his childhood trips to his grandmother’s house, “We called her "Momma Maggie" and she had a lot of fig trees in her yard and one of the things that we both looked forward to and dreaded in the summertime was the annual fig picking trip that we had to take. We took a big bucket around to Momma Maggie's house and we had to go into those fig trees and pick figs so that my mother [Bessie Smoke Gavin] could--could can them, then she would cook these figs and put them in these mason jars and in the wintertime those things would come out of the pantry and we'd have figs and biscuits and sausage patties as one of the things I remember for breakfast as a--as a kid growing up…. Now you had to be careful when you were picking the figs in the summertime not to eat more figs than you put in the bucket and they were pretty savvy about that. If you came back with a real light load, looking all satisfied, they knew that you had done more eating figs than you did picking figs and there were dreadful consequences.”
Image of Figs Source: Gurney’s Seed
The “dreadful consequences” Dr. Gavin III experienced from eating too many figs were nothing in comparison to those experienced by The Honorable Hazel O’Leary, the first African American United States Secretary of Energy and a president of Fisk University, during the summertime, “....The freedom of summertime. And also the fear of summertime, with polio. At our house we took a bath three times a day in the summertime. Weren't allowed to get overheated. Because no one knew then the what and the how of polio. And so the summer was a very frightening time. You could feel it in the house. That these kids, these little girls would be safe through the summer. And then I take that recollection directly to March of Dimes [National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis; March of Dimes Foundation], iron lung, and the movie theaters. You know they'd show the public service thing with the little kids in the iron lung or people clomping around in braces and then they'd turn the lights on and collect the money. This was a very serious thing in my growing up time.”
Child inside of an iron lung being taken care of by a nurse Source: World Health Organization
Summertime is significant within the memory of HistoryMakers’ childhoods and is emblematic of a time of innocence, excitement, play, and freedom. Unlike their experiences later in life as Black Americans, their summertime as children were formative experiences in which they experienced a paradise of leisure.
References:
Mary C. Curtis (The HistoryMakers A2013.156), interviewed by Larry Crowe, May 8, 2013, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 2, story 2, Mary C. Curtis recalls her earliest childhood memory
James Avery (The HistoryMakers A2003.138), interviewed by Julieanna L. Richardson, June 24, 2003, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 1, story 6, James Avery describes the smells and sounds of his childhood
Dr. James Gavin, III (The HistoryMakers A2003.102), interviewed by Larry Crowe, May 8, 2003, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 1, story 4, Dr. James Gavin describes his paternal grandmother, Maggie Gavin
Charles Brown (The HistoryMakers A2004.154), interviewed by Larry Crowe, August 31, 2004, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 1, story 7, Charles Brown describes his earliest childhood memories of playing in Washington Park in Chicago, Illinois, pt. 1
Jack Johnson (The HistoryMakers A2007.163), interviewed by Denise Gines, April 26, 2007, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 2, story 8, Jack Johnson describes the sights and sounds of his childhood
The Honorable Hazel O'Leary (The HistoryMakers A2007.090), interviewed by Larry Crowe, March 15, 2007, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 2, story 3, The Honorable Hazel O'Leary describes the sights, sounds and smells of her childhood
Angela Davis (The HistoryMakers A2003.124), interviewed by Julieanna L. Richardson, June 7, 2003, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 2, story 2, Angela Davis remembers the joys of her youth
Deborah Roberts (The HistoryMakers A2007.213), interviewed by Julieanna L. Richardson, July 26, 2007, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 1, story 9, Deborah Roberts describes the sights and smells of her childhood
Search Terms:
Summertime