First Grade; First Lesson

Photo copyright Aji, 2015; all rights reserved.

Her name rhymed with that of a genocidal European dictator, but in 1929, the world hadn't yet heard of him; even his own people didn't know his name. He was still struggling to acquire a political audience, but within four short years he'd be well on his way to launching his campaign of extermination.

But in 1929 in the U.S., a different sort of extermination campaign had already been under way for well over 400 years. She was a willing, even eager cog in that campaign's machine, one who had honed and polished her hate so perfectly that it was a tangible thing, dipped in acid and glistening poisonously.

She was, of course, in the perfect position to execute her own role: a teacher of first graders, one responsible for shaping the minds and characters and spirits of the area's youngest generation when those minds and characters and spirits were at the most impressionable.

Like all good fanatics, she took her work seriously.




The little dark-haired boy showed up on that September morning, the first day of school He was small for his age, and odd-looking, too: tanned skin, brown hair, perfect baby teeth, and pale eyes. Despite the eyes, she knew what he was, and she wasn't having that in her class.

So she sent him back.

"What are you doing here?"

"I'm in first grade now."

"No, you're not. You're too small. How old are you?"

"I'm five."

"No, you're not. You can't possibly be five. You're too little."

She looked him up and down, turned on her heel dismissively.

"Go back to kindergarten. That's where you belong."

Little Vernon's lower lip trembled. He didn't know what to do. He knew he was supposed to start first grade today, and this was where he was supposed to come. So he stood there, waiting, wetting his lips nervously.

She turned around. "You're still here? I told you to leave. Now go."

"But I don't know where to go," Vernon said in a tiny voice. "They told me to come here."

"Well, you can't stay here." She came around from behind her desk, grabbed him roughly by arm, half-escorted, half-dragged him to the door. The other first graders were filing in in their new clothes, taking their seats, looking on curiously. His face burned; their white faces were smiling, laughing, jeering.

"Come along, now!" She shook him. Marched him to the door, put him outside. She glared at him, pointed with a skinny index finger, first at him, then to another door. "That's your class. That's where you go." She wheeled, headed back to the first-grade class, her short heels clacking on the hardwood floor, her hard, thin voice calling for silence among the hushed whispers and snickers of the other students.

Vernon stood alone outside the door, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. He couldn't go to that other room; he'd been there last year. They'd told him to come here. He'd get in trouble if he disobeyed. 

She came back to the doorway for a moment, and his heart leaped; maybe she had realized that it was all a mistake. But she looked at him as though seeing through him, as though he wasn't even there, invisible . . . and shut the door.

Vernon's eyes filled with tears. He stood a few more moments, knotting the tails of his threadbare shirt, a hand-me-down from both older brothers, in his little fists. He took one shuffling step toward the other door, stopped. He took another . . . and another, and another, and then he was in the doorway of the kindergarten classroom.

The teacher, already reading to the class, looked up in annoyance at the sound interrupting the flow of her words. "Vernon? Why aren't you in class?"

"She told me I had to come back here."

"Why would she do that?"

"She said I'm too little to be in first grade."

The kindergarten teacher sighed. "All right; come in. Go sit at the back. We'll straighten this out later."

Of course, it never did get straightened out. The woman flatly refused to allow Vernon in her classroom. The school board agreed that she knew best. Vernon was marked down as having failed kindergarten the first time, despite having passed it.

He repeated the year all over again.

And at five, Vernon learned something about what the white world thought of him.





[Note: This is the first in what will be an occasional series. History: my history, my family's, my people's, this country's. Names and other identifying markers are changed, largely to protect the guilty.] 


All content, including photos and text, are copyright Aji, 2015; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.