
Editor’s Note: In honor of Black History Month, West Side Rag offers an authentic account of what conditions were like in the 1950s Jim Crow South. Peggy Taylor, who has written extensively for the Rag, was a congregant at Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. Taylor recounts her journey from the northern high school she attended as one of the few Blacks, to her home in Montgomery, Alabama, and a church service given by Rev. King, to New York City, which she deemed “The Promised Land.”
By Peggy Taylor
In June of 1958, a 17-year old Black teenager from Montgomery, Alabama, piled into a sun-roofed VW micro bus with a family of white social activists from New Jersey, and rode with them back to her hometown in the Jim Crow South. I, the 17-old in question, was returning from spending my senior year with a Quaker family in New Jersey, as part of a Quaker project to help Black students from segregated schools attend integrated Northern high schools to better prepare them for Northern colleges. The family that hosted me were Kenneth and Esther Recknagel and, at the end of my stay, they asked Victor and Mildred Goertzel to drop me off in Montgomery as they traveled to Mexico on vacation.
Victor Goertzel was a psychologist and founding research director at the social service organization Fountain House. Mildred Goertzel was a school teacher and author. Â
The Goertzels met the Recknagels at the Quaker Meeting House in Ridgewood, New Jersey, where there was no pastor and where members sat in silence until someone felt the urge to speak. Such a service was quite different from the Baptist church I grew up in, but I accepted it readily, and when songs were sometimes sung, I accompanied the congregation on the piano.  Â
My family were members of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where my father was the treasurer, and which I had attended, ever since, as we used to say, I was “knee-high to a grasshopper.” The Quakers’ social service wing, The American Friends Service Committee, had approached Rev. King for names of teens whom the project might interest, and he had recommended me. We knew the Kings well, as I had babysat their eldest daughter, Yolanda, twice, although fortunately not on the night when the church parsonage was bombed. Â
When I heard that I had been chosen for the project, I was overjoyed. Ever since attending the 1955 World Series (Dodgers vs. Yankees) in New York City with my father and staying at Harlem’s Theresa Hotel, I had wanted to return to New York, as I considered it “The Promised Land.” Watching New York-produced shows on our Zenith combo radio/record player/TV made me always want to move North. This was my chance to get out of the Jim Crow South, and I was ready for it. Â
My year in New Jersey went very well. I encountered no racial discrimination, but since there were so few other Black students, I often felt like the proverbial “fly in the buttermilk.” I easily made new friends, was invited to their homes and parties, and in June of 1958, graduated from Demarest, New Jersey’s Northern Valley Regional High School. Â
Our trip South included not only the Goertzels but also a friend, Paul Senior, who was going to Mexico to work with Eric Fromm, the internationally known social psychologist and psychoanalyst. The trip began well enough from Montclair, New Jersey, but it took a sour turn when we reached Baltimore. Because we were a mixed group (I being responsible for the mix), we found no motel or hotel to lodge us. A Howard Johnson’s diner agreed to serve us, only if I ate in the kitchen. Say what?
We finally slept at a rest stop and continued the trip without comfortable lodgings until we reached Montgomery, where we showered and slept in my family’s comfortable, new, air-conditioned home. We had moved into our house only a year before and I remember seeing my father on his knees thanking God for answering his prayers. My father, a former mathematics professor and college administrator, was the bursar at the then all-Black Alabama State College. My mother taught first grade at the College’s Laboratory School.Â
The following day, I introduced the Kings to the Goertzels, but only to Victor, Mildred, and their son, Penn, age 6, as their two other sons, Ted and John, stayed at the house to play baseball with neighborhood kids. When Penn saw Rev. King, he said: “You’re the first famous person I’ve ever met.”
Mrs. King was deeply interested in Fountain House, which offered support for patients ending mental health hospitalization. The Kings showed us bullet holes in the porch floor and in the hall wall, frightening scars of shootings which had occurred before the bombing. That night we went for a mid-week service in a hot, unairconditioned church, where Rev. King, who usually preached about social justice, spoke mainly about the three branches of government. Â
The next day, having delivered me safely back home, the Goertzels and Paul left for Mexico. It had been a wonderful trip.
Except that…
I don’t remember a moment of it.
So how do I know that it took place? Â
Victor’s middle son, John, recently reread his father’s account of the trip and decided to try and find me on the Web. Success! He found articles I had written for the Rag, including one recounting my days as a member of Rev. King’s church. (“How Martin Luther King Started My Journey to the Upper West Side” January 17, 2022.) He then contacted the Rag, the Rag contacted me, I contacted him, and he sent me a copy of his father’s memories plus a photo of us in front of the sun-roofed VW cruiser.
How could I have forgotten? Was I, at 17, just an average, superficial teen interested only in fashion, parties, and albums of 78 rpm records by Johnny Mathis, which I carried all the way to New Jersey? l kept no diary, wasn’t a keen observer, and just let events happen without analyzing or prioritizing them. Or, do I not remember because, at 84, my brain is simply aging?Â
Despite my memory lapse, I now have an important piece of my youth returned to me, and for that I am deeply grateful. Thank you, John, and thank you, West Side Rag!
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Wow, great story (past and present)!
beautiful
This is a really lovely meditation and memory, thank you for sharing!
The big irony is that the supposedly liberal Northeast was – and still is – arguably far more segregated than the Deep South.
Many of these “white social activists” traveled down south and chastised everyone about race relations and then returned home to their all-white neighbourhoods.
Maybe they had the right message but they were the wrong messengers.
“Maybe”?????
Maybe???????????
Perhaps some of those Northern activists did live in all-white neighborhoods, but clearly they didn’t live very *comfortably* there (in terms of conscience) or else they wouldn’t have risked life & limb to go protest in the Deep South, where racism was overt, ubiquitous, institutional, and often deadly. Better to have flawed “social justice warriors” (as the kids say nowadays) than none at all, in my humble opinion. Maybe it will be different this time.
We had come so far since those days….
In many ways for those brave activists, that was a more dangerous time. We can still mourn so many lost and wounded bullets and other violence. But this also, compared to so much since, reads of innocence and kindness and idealism and good faith and hope: a young person seeking opportunity, adults wanting to help and support her, people to welcome her, to look out for her. Good to remember those stories also happen, and help young people make their way, and sometimes help make a better world. To read the papers today, it feels impossible. But for families, church groups, people and schools willing to open doors, build houses….these good changes and opportunities can still go on. They may not solve white racism, greed, anti-immigrant hatred, gutting of good government. But the story reminds us that there are still ills we can try to address with personal actions and good faith and the help of communities that care. Thank you, Peggy and WSR.
Such a poignant story! Thank you for sharing such powerful memories of growing up Black in America.
Your connection to the King family is fascinating and how wonderful that you reconnected with John through the WSR…and to this hidden memory.
So much happens in a lifetime..it’s natural that we need others to help us find those memories and bring them to the surface. Would love to hear more of your stories!
This is a poignant reminder of how Jim Crow laws caused so much difficulty – and segregation still cripples society. Great reporting and follow-up!
So sad, Thank God my parents kept me away from “BIGOT,” Racist, Sexist, Homophobic, Antiblack, Discriminatory, Intolerant, Xenophobic, Chauvinist and Partisan world and Thank you mom and dad for keeping my innocence though the age of 17 years old.
A wonderfully crafted story about the times and conditions that are important history, but experienced by so few still with us.
This vibrant piece is a treasure and reminds us how we are all connected to each other.
Thank you.
What a wonderful story!
Growing up Black in any state is not for the weak. I remember traveling sometimes challenging. Hearing my parents whispering in hush tones so as to not let their 6 children know of their concerns when traveling at night from Ohio to Georgia that the car was almost out of gas and packed rations were almost depleted… but stopping was taking a risk.
Good job! Thank you for researching and posting this.