“Are you sure you want to invite them?”
My mother pulled me into the kitchen and sat me down at the table. She wanted to talk to me about the party my brother John and I were planning for December 13, 1969.“
You know, some people are going to be upset that you’re inviting Bettie and Jean, William, Mike and Silas, and Marjorie” —running down a list of some of my Black friends.
“Are you sure you want to invite them?”
It was late afternoon, and I was just home from school. Outside, the October sun was sinking into a puddle of pale yellow behind the woods. Across the road from the parsonage, the trees darkened, and their bare branches scratched thick black lines across the sky as the light faded. The parsonage had only been completed a month before, and we were just beginning to get settled into our new home.
Ever since my freshman year in high school, I had thrown a party for my friends. But, since the schools in Wake Forest were still mostly segregated, all my friends had been White. Then, in fall of 1969, several Black students transferred to the mostly White high school. Many were juniors, 16 years old, like me. We became friends. Naturally, when I planned another party, they were on the guest list.
My mother’s question rankled me. Both my parents had come to believe that segregation was morally wrong. They taught me and my brothers that all God’s children were equal in God’s eyes, regardless of race or color.
What is she saying? Why is there even a question?!
“Mom! If I can’t have a party with all my friends, I don’t want to have a party at all!”
“Yes,” she said quickly, “that’s what your father and I thought you would say, and we agree with you. We just want it to be your decision.”
By the time December arrived, my dad had been the pastor of Ridgecrest Baptist Church for nine months.
Church and parsonage sat out in the country, six miles west of town, surrounded by an area known for stills and segregationists. People in that neck of the woods were none too pleased that Mom and Dad were allowing my brother and me to invite Black friends as well as White friends into our home. There were angry rumblings in the church. The deacons were anxious about possible damage to the parsonage, about loss of influence and respect in the White community. But most of all, they were outraged by the thought of Black and White teenagers socializing together—“mixin’”, as they called it.
Three nights before the party, the deacons of my father’s church called a special business meeting. There was one item on the agenda: to convince my father to cancel it.
The party was not the problem. The problem was the guest list.
Dad pointed out that the party was in our home—the parsonage—not in the church. He was not trying to force integration down their throats. He was not insisting that church members invite Black people into their own homes.
“But Shirley and I have been teaching our children to judge people on the content of their character, not the color of their skin,” he said, quoting Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. “How do you suggest I tell them now that their friends are not welcome in our home because they are Black?”
My father’s memory was that the discussion went round and round for two or three hours. But Mom insisted, “It was four hours before your father got home.”
One of the deacons piped up, “Well! If you allow this party to go on as planned, one thing’s for darn sure: we will ask for your resignation.”
“Well, I’m gonna do what I have to do,” Dad said, “and I guess y’all are just gonna do what you have to do.”
With that, the meeting ended.
Months later, we were told that two deacons had left the meeting and gone door to door in the community over the next few days, spreading word about the party. “Making sure” my dad said, “that everybody was properly riled up.”