May 2nd 1955
Hilly Holbrook aged 20 1955
“Never be caught without red lipstick, High heels are the proper attire when in ones company, to be respected you must be of high class and never trust a black women” are the rules my grandmother left me before she died and I have stuck by them until this day. It’s not hard in the small town of Jackson Mississippi, where black people are hardly respected and rightfully so, they are lazy, the whole lot of them and this town would be a much better place if they all disappeared, but I will elaborate more on that later. I grew up in a small but beautiful just on the outside of Jackson, My mother was never home, far too busy, so I was stuck with the maid. Let’s just say my child hood was not a happy one.
I remember one day I will never forget as I was walking through the Jackson markets I came across a black lady hand in hand with a little white girl, so it was obvious that she was their families maid, I remember the little one pointing ever so delicately at the sweets in the window and smiling up at the maid but the black maid tugged on the little girls arm pulling her away, red marks forming slowly up her small precious arm, the little girl stops abruptly with heartbreaking fear evident in her face, with her bright eyes shining at mine the image of my own childhood flashes through my mind of the days where bruises and welts were not an unknown occurrence.
March 1 1946, aged 11
I was sitting in the back yard, flipping through one of the new comic strip’s that had just been released after the war, every kid wanted one, and I was lucky enough to swipe momma’s one after she had had her morning coffee, Patricia Moyney came storming over to me may I had who is our horrible family maid, and ripped the comic strip straight out of my hands, I screamed in shock as the paper ripped through my skin, the blood flowing as I watched it with fearful eyes.
‘Hilly, where did you get this?’ she screamed at me, paper shaking in her arms.
I remember forcing myself to look up at her, the hate so evident in her eyes they were dead black, a cold stare planted on her face.
My breath shook as I tried to answer.
‘Hilly, I asked you a question’ she shouted, the hand coming out and landing straight on my cheek, I could feel the rush of blood to my cheek and the pulsation starting to form.
‘the table, the table’ I sobbed.
This was only one of many incidents that happened to me, however it wasn’t this bad at the start when Patricia started working for my momma. When I first met her I thought she was lovely and to be honest I was rather excited to have someone always there unlike my momma, but times started to change, it was like the black community were all getting angrier and angrier within their jobs working for white people, when I was young about 9 or 10 I remember Patricia one day saying to me,
“My child white people think they can control us and treat us like animals, how would they like it if the tables turned?”
I guess when I was young I didn’t really understand what was going on as such but now I think how dare she have said that when we give them jobs and a pay cheque each month, this is just the rule of society black people work for the white people it is that simple.
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