by Katt Morris
I am very grateful that a last minute contribution to our blog came from Katt Morris. Katt’s story about her mom is very dear to me. It’s quite a few years since I’ve seen her but in the interim I have seen much evidence on Facebook that she has become an expert at ‘grandmaing’
I was born in South Texas, the youngest, my parents & 4 siblings were from a small town in Georgia, near Savannah. Racism was a part of life in my Mom’s family, I had older cousins that were proud holders of their KKK membership, the “N” word was as popular as the word hello.
Every Summer we went to GA to spend 2 weeks with my mom’s sisters & brothers. When I was around 8, my cousin asked me why I never said nigger & I told him that I wasn’t allowed to curse, he laughed his ass off & couldn’t wait to tell my cousins what I said. From that point on, I was called a “N” lover, all Summer long, it was the joke of the Summer. My Mother taught us, more like drilled it into our heads, that we were NOT better than anyone else. In a family of southern-born racists, she stepped out of the cycle & taught us that “we are all God’s children.” She told stories of how they would sneak down to the black church on Sundays & hide outside under the windows to listen to the singing. They were dirt poor growing up because my grandfather was an alcoholic who spent half his paycheck before he got home from the bar on Friday nights.
That & 7 kids to feed kept them in the poor-house. Everybody always said that my Mom was the most like her Mother, who I never knew. The first Liberal that I ever knew, LOL, now the family says I’m the most like my Mom. The house I grew up in was a few miles from the Mexican border & right down the street from the rail-road tracks.
One weekend a young couple with 2 small children came up to our back door wanting a drink of water from the hose out back. My mom went inside & made them sandwiches and jars of ice tea. The next weekend another family stopped by, Momma made sandwiches & gave their little girl some clothes that we had grown out of. During that summer, we could always count on several families stopping by, Momma would have several lunch bags packed.
We had a visitor from Immigration stop by one day to warn my Mom to stop feeding the “wet-backs.” She was so sad when she had to shut the back door & not answer it when they knocked. Soon they stopped coming. “But by the Grace of God, U aren’t one of those children” I can still hear her say.
When I asked her why my cousins hated black people she told me that some people were taught to hate & judge others to elevate their own worth. What a thing for her to say, after all, it was her own beloved family she was talking about. “They just don’t know no better” she would say as a lame excuse. It’s all so stupid, this judgement over the color of someone’s skin. There are good people & their are monsters out there, skin color has nothing to do with it, “Some people are just taught to hate,” and I think she was spot on.
