In my life, I have found myself as a colored, a negro, a Black, an African American, and a person of color. This is my reflection as a colored girl.
I was born on May 2, 1945, in the colored section of Arcadia General Hospital, in a Florida town established as all-white and Christian.
The tiny room where I was born, reserved for “coloreds,” was symbolic of the circumscribed life planned for me. I was born into a society that would not recognize my beauty, my intelligence, or my humanity. But I was welcomed with all the love my 21-year-old mother and 26-year-old father and extended family could give.
My grandmother named me "Mamma Sweet." An older cousin gave me the title of May Queen. Those messages of love, so sweetly and persistently given, built the spirit of this colored girl.
So, what did it mean to be born colored in 1945?
Life for a colored girl born during the Jim Crow era would not be that of royalty but of restriction. As a “colored,” I would be a victim of the “veil,” a term coined by W.E.B. Du Bois. The veil was based on a mythology of black intellectual, cultural, and moral inferiority.
Jim Crow laws would require me to experience segregated seating, eating, sleeping, restrooms, waiting rooms, ticket windows when I was traveling.
I would be denied entrance to public libraries, parks, swimming pools and playgrounds and the racial hierarchy would attempt to condemn me to a menial job that required my subservience.
Jim Crow customs and etiquette would expect my manners, my voice and my demeanor to reinforce the myth of white superiority. Most critically — that I would know and keep my place in the racial hierarchy.
Today, I do not see myself as a victim. I have a life that I love. But I am a realist. I understand that education, degrees, and a certain status separate me, only marginally, from the stereotypical and negative images of those less fortunate than myself. It is only when all my of people are free from the distorted images that continue to bind them that I, that we, will be totally free. Being born colored in America means a free and democratic society is still an elusive dream for me.
"In my life, I have found myself as a colored, a negro, a Black, an African American, and a person of color. This is my reflection as a colored girl." This phrase opens each essay in the series “Reflections of a Colored Girl” from Martha R. Bireda, Ph.D. being aired on WGCU FM. Dr. Bireda is a writer, lecturer, and living history performer with over 30 years' experience as a lecturer, consultant and trainer for issues related to race, class, and gender, working with educators, law enforcement, and business, and civic leaders. She also is director of the Blanchard House Museum of African American History and Culture of Charlotte County, in Punta Gorda, Florida. Bireda was born in Southwest Florida in 1945 but spent the first 10 years of her life in a small town in Western Virginia. Her family then moved back to Punta Gorda, where they have deep roots. This is one essay in her series.
