EXCERPT

Published Monday, January 31, 2005
Case Study Excerpt: Muscogee Education Movement

In an occasional series featuring student work, HGSE student Deidra Suwanee Dees shares an excerpt from her work examining the educational development of a Depression-era Native American adolescent.

Neglected by federal officials and shutout by state and local educators, in the late 1920s to the 1940s, Native Americans of the Poarch Muscogee (Creek) Nation in Escambia County, Alabama began a political crusade demanding that their children be given equal access, without racial harassment, to public education like the other public school students within the county and state.  Over a 20-year period, the crusade, affecting 7,000 to 10,000 Muscogee citizens, became known as the Mvskoke mvhakv-coko-Tepyes, or the Muscogee Education Movement (Paredes, 1974; Bunny, 1998).  

The few Muscogee students who were fortunate enough to wedge their way into the white dominated public schools found themselves targets of racial discrimination from students, teachers, and parents.  Notwithstanding socio-economic disadvantages and cultural barriers, in 1949, Muscogee leaders finally pressured the Escambia County Board of Education to establish the first public elementary school for Muscogee students in Escambia County, called the Consolidated Indian School.  Although segregated, this school provided a safe anti-discriminatory environment for Muscogee students.  Despite the powerful activism and endured discrimination leading up to this event, prior research has not thoroughly documented the establishment of the Consolidated Indian School (Sturtevant, 1987).  For my qualifying paper, I examined the historical factors that shaped this Movement through a series of interviews with Muscogee elders who suffered from the discrimination and who became participants in the Movement for anti-discriminatory equal access to public education.  These activists possess significant firsthand knowledge that can be learned from no other source. 

I preserved the interviewees’ words in the manner they spoke—with a southern dialect, a Muscogee accent and poor English grammar—a commonality among our elders who were denied an equitable education.  I analyzed the interview data, as well as literature and document archives, to tell the story of the Movement in this historically marginalized and disadvantaged community.

This excerpt of ethnographic work from an interviewee gives readers informative descriptions of the inequality in the educational system in southern Alabama in the 1920s and 1930s.  It demonstrates the leaps and bounds we have made in our quest for equality in education today, a quest to which many Harvard Graduate School of Education students and faculty are currently contributing.  Parts of this excerpt were previously published in my new chapbook, Vision Lines: Native American Decolonizing Literature, addressing Native American issues in education.  Vision Lines was published by TA Publications, whose senior editor is Leon Knight, a graduate of the Harvard Graduate School of Education.[1]  

When school was over at the one-room schoolhouse, I grabbed Birdie's hand and we headed for home.  We ran and we ran and we ran, tryin’ to get past the white boys, ‘cause they all laugh at us and beat us up when they can catch us.  The white boys say were no good ‘cause we're Indians.

Robert Davis said he was gonna take me behind the schoolhouse tomorrow and scalp me.  I told the teacher when Billy Ray said the same thing last week, but she's white too… so she didn't do nothin’ about it of course.

As we ran past John Gusby's house, he yelled so everybody can hear, "Otis Dees is a poor Indian Redskin!"  I just told Birdie to try and keep up with me, and I ran faster than I thought I could.

When we got home, Birdie and me got a drink of cold water in a big giant dipper from the well.  Then we fed the chickens and the cow.  Mama told me to ring two chickens for supper, but Birdie had to cook ‘em, Birdie had to cook ‘em. Mama couldn't cook ‘cause she was too sickly to get out of bed.  I think she might be gonna have a baby or some kind of grown up stuff like that.

Daddy broke his hip last spring when the mule bucked the plow when he was tryin’ to plant cotton.  Now I gotta do most of the work on the farm.  I just wish I can get paid for it.  But I'm old enough to know that Muscogees ain't got no money.

Joey Cramer's mama said she was tired of all that politickin’ going on down there at the church house.  She come over last Sunday and picked me up by the arm and threw me up in the back of the wagon, and off we went to the whiteman’s[2] church.  Some of the men made me sit on the floor ‘cause they said Indians ain’t allowed to sit on the benches.  That made Mrs. Cramer as mad as a hornet.  But we sit on the floor all the time at home, so I didn’t pay them no never mind.

The preacher man told a story about a baby that was born in a far away land.  He said the baby was born so all the people can go up to heaven... even Indians.  He told all the people who wanted to go up to heaven to go to the front of the church.  I ran up to the front of the church house and I said, “Mr. Preacher Man, I wanna ask baby Jesus to save my soul.”  But it didn’t do me no good. You see, Mrs. Cramer caught that whoopin’ cough that was goin’ around and she died the next winter.  The whiteman said, “We ain’t never again letting no Indian desecrate our church house.”  I didn’t pay them no never mind.  I rather go huntin’ on Sundays anyhow.

Daddy looks more sickly than I ever saw him.  He told me Mama had two babies last night, but Dr. Reeves had to come back and get ‘em ‘cause they both died.  Daddy said it was kindly strange that while he was sleepin’ in front of the fireplace, a ghost that looked like a fireball woke him up and shot up from between his toes and went up the chimney.  And that was the same time that the babies died. 

Mama's still kindly sickly, but she's goin’ visitin’ Aunt Queenie in the big city down in Mobile.  I earned twenty-five cents last week pickin’ cotton for old man Gladshaw.  I was savin’ it up to get a second-hand football.  But mama asked if she can borrow it for her trip, so...I gave it to her.   

I wanna learn some schoolin’ but I just can't catch up to the fifth graders.  I wish I can read as fast as them.  My oldest sister Ruby always says I should be thankful for getting’ to go to the whiteman's school.  Sometimes I get tired of hearin’ her say it and I don't pay her no never mind.  The government didn't pass the law so Muscogees can go to school until Ruby was eleven.  She must of caught up to the white kids ‘cause she's in ninth grade now.

When I came in from school today, Daddy told me Mama died... in Atmore… coming back from Aunt Queenie's.  The man at the train station told Daddy he wanted to take Mama to the hospital but Indians ain't allowed in the hospital.  He said Mama died right there in the train car.  …I'm scared.  I'm glad I lent her my twenty‑five cents.  I don't mind now that I'll never get it back. 

Jack Kindle who lives behind us said one of the boys down the road got a indoor outhouse.  I don't figure I'd want one of those due to the bad smell.  Ain't nothin' wrong with our outhouse.  Only thing is, it's a long ways to walk at night when it's cold and I don't like usin’ no slop jar.

There's some colored boys that live across Dees Creek behind us, and they came across the creek today.  I hid in the bushes so as I can get a good look at ‘em.  The teacher told us not to get near ‘em ‘cause she says if they touch you, your skin will turn black as soot!  I took a good close look at them boys and there weren't a one of ‘em black--they was all kinda brownish color.

A white man from the county seat rode up to the house with saddlebags full of papers.  He told us we gotta get new birth certificates on account of the fire that burned the courthouse down in September.  He said all the papers inside burnt clean up.  But daddy said birth papers ain't important to Indians.  That's something the whiteman made up just to find out how many of us there is.  So we didn't pay him no never mind.

Johnny Blacksher’s mama cooked some fish and said I can come over and eat with ‘em last Sunday.  I wondered why ‘cause they ain't Muscogees.  They had the best fish and everything--mashed potatoes, sliced tomatoes, and fried okra--kinda like mama used to make.  Johnny's mama even gave us a Coca‑Cola.  We can't afford ‘em.  Daddy says they ain't no good for you no way.

Daddy asked if the fish was from the ocean, the saltwater kind.  One time daddy went to town and saw a white peddler who had some saltwater fish on sale.  It was all the fish you can eat for ten cents.  Daddy said it would of been a good deal, but he couldn't eat none of that fish on account of it being too salty.

When I came in from huntin’ today at almost dark, there was two horses hitched to two wagons in the front yard and one automobile.  We ain't never had no automobile in our yard before.  One of the wagons was like the covered wagons, like the wild, wild west kind.  Like the kind the cowboys says the Indians shot up with arrows for no blame reason.  They're just ignorant and they don't know anything.  But the cowboys stealing our land and taking our food and changin’ us to poor Indian trash sounds like a good enough reason to me to shoot ‘em all slap up.

When I went inside to see what all was going on, Ruby met me at the door and told me Daddy had died.  I know Daddy was very sickly for a long time, just like Mama.  Birdie was in a awful way.  Dr. Reeves was there to get him ready for the funeral.  Daddy was laying on his and Mama's bed.  I'm fourteen now and I'm suppose to be a man about it.  But I swear, I had to get away from the house and go in the woods and just let loose.  I especially didn't wanna let Birdie see me cryin’.  Indians ain't allowed to cry.

They built a new schoolhouse ‘cause the old one burned down last summer.  The new one's got lots of rooms and it's built out of red bricks.  It's even two stories high. 

Now that I'm in high school, the white boys don't pick on me half as bad.  I think it's ‘cause I grew bigger than all of ‘em.  They quit fightin’ me ‘cause I started winning! 

I'm playing high school football for the Blacksher Bulldogs.  I got my first football letter at the end of last season.  All the white boys call me Square Dees ‘cause they say I can knock a square hole in the line of defense.

Me and Birdie really miss Daddy.  I wish he could of been there so he could of seen me play football with all the skinny white boys.  The one what used to call me names and make fun of me for no reason, no reason at all except ‘cause I was born a poor Indian boy.