Now That's a Christmas Carol!

Dear Boo and Bubble,

As I mentioned before, when I was a little girl, the interaction between the races was confined to individual relationships, most of which centered around Negroes, as they were routinely called,  performing some service to whites – maids, waiters, chauffeurs, yardmen, or janitors.  The larger communities operated in separate orbits whose paths rarely crossed.  However, there was one time every year when the two came together and we were allowed a rare glimpse into the Negro world.  It was the Christmas parade in early December.

My father’s best friend, Sweetie Sterling, worked at The Greenville News.  He always invited us to come watch the parade from his office which was on the second floor of the News building facing Main Street. A window ran the entire length of the office which gave us an unfettered view of the parade route as we were higher than the people on the street. I vividly remember waiting for the two things that made the parade special – Santa Claus and the Sterling (no relation to Sweetie) High School Band.  Santa is, of course, self-explanatory.  The band needs some clarification.

Sterling High School was the only “Negro” secondary school in Greenville.  As such, it was allowed to enter its band and a float in the parade but neither could vie for the prizes in the two categories.  Those distinctions were reserved for either Greenville or Parker High School, the two white schools that existed then.  It was particularly fortunate for those bands that Sterling couldn’t compete because if they could have, they would have won every time.

Ironically, in order to show no prejudice towards either Greenville or Parker, their position in the parade lineup would alternate every year.  Whoever went first one year would go last the next.  Sterling was always somewhere in the middle and you knew they were coming long before you could see them.  The first sign was the drumbeat.  Unlike the predictable, steady drone of the white bands, it resonated with a deep syncopation that literally sent a vibration up the street, block by block.  There was a discernable buzz in the crowd on the street.  Children sitting on the shoulders of their fathers strained their eyes for a glimpse of the second sign – the two-foot tall fluffy white shako of the drum major bobbing and weaving above the heads of the crowd in time with the throb of the base drums.  As he came into full view, his choreographic gyrations and struts left you thinking that he didn’t have a bone in his body. 

For at least five minutes, we would watch the Sterling band weave its magic in complicated patterns to and froe, leaning up and back, shifting from quick to high step along the Main Street pavement.  The drum corps pounded out the beat while the horns blew jazzed-up versions of Joy to the World or Silent Night or We Three Kings. It was an amazing sight, a purely ethnic interpretation of storied carols that I knew as more muted with occasional crescendos that strained my young vocal chords.  There was a rudimentary layer of life to this interpretation, something primal in the celebration.  Why wouldn’t the birth of Christ generate such powerful happiness in the soul that the beat of the music would demand a corresponding and irresistible desire to dance?  For a few minutes, once a year, I was mesmerized.

Once the maneuvers ran their course, the band settled back into its rhythmic strut and marched on up the street out of sight and out of my life until the next year.    

So much has changed, of course, since then. Sterling High doesn’t exist anymore, nor the policy of segregation that sustained it. The forces at work to deny full participation in the life of the community have vanished.  Today, if you stroll down the beautifully restored Main Street area of Greenville, there are bronze statues strategically placed along the sidewalk commemorating the strong influences on the history of the city.  One is of two students at Sterling High School, immortalized in the youthful appearance of Negroes of that time.  They appear to be naively chatting with each other, eternally unaware of the fact that once a year, at Christmas time, they had brightened and broadened my life.