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Reviews
The Time and Place That Gave Me Life
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By Janet Cheatham Bell
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(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007. Pp. 247. Illustrations, notes, index. $22.95.)
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| With wit, aplomb, and a candor born of bitter experience, Janet Cheatham Bell has crafted a compelling memoir about growing up in Indiana. She does so "in the hope that I can better understand my birthplace" (p.14). But her book is so much more: It is a riveting account of black Americans' historical struggles to succeed in a city, state, and society defined largely by race and racial discrimination. |
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Cast against the backdrop of major events such as the Great Migration and the civil rights movement, Bell's account begins with her birth, shortly before World War II, to parents who had migrated to Indianapolis in the 1920s. Searching for economic, political, and social freedom, Bell's largely uneducated parents eked out a modest existence for their family in a city where black employment opportunities were scarce, often restricted to menial, dead-end jobs. No stranger to work herself, Bell toiled in a series of summer and afterschool jobs. In 1952 the fifteen-year-old Bell became a civil rights pioneer as the first black high school student page at the Indiana State Library. |
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Bell's memoir is mostly devoted to her student years and to the impact of race on her schooling. She contended not only with white students at Manual High School who wanted to touch her skin or hair, but also with teachers who saw no future beyond domestic service for a young black woman. Her story might have ended there, had not Bell's love of books, and a supportive guidance counselor, helped her to realize her ambition to attend college. Indiana University at Bloomington was no more welcoming. Besides the sheer size of the campus, where she felt isolated and alone, the racial climate also seemed more threatening than it had been in Indianapolis. After three semesters of dismal grades, she was asked to leave. It would take persistence and determination, her first-born infant son's death, a crumbling marriage, and a grant from the Indiana State Library to drive her finally to complete her studies at IU in June 1964. |
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Bell interweaves within her story examples of the crippling effects of racism on blacks' self-image, self-esteem, and group unity; the racial prejudice and hostility of white employers and their staffs; the struggles of black students for acceptance at IU; the Crispus Attucks basketball teams' battles to win the state championship; intraracial obsessions with skin color and so-called "good" hair; and African students' refusals at IU to associate with American-born blacks. |
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A subtext of this memoir is its discussion of the traditional gender roles and Victorian-style morality that shaped the lives of males and females alike in the 1950s; here Bell contrasts the ideal of marriage with the fear of spinsterhood, as well as the ideal of motherhood versus the ever-present fear of pregnancy and illegitimacy—a fear made all the more palpable because "nobody talked about sex of any kind" (p. 226). |
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Bell recounts memories of an economically and socially vibrant black Indianapolis community as well. Here, she provides vignettes on the bustling stores, restaurants, and nightclubs of Indiana Avenue, of all-black summer resorts and social clubs, and of the Senate Avenue YMCA, legendary for its "Monster Meetings" featuring speakers ranging from W. E. B. DuBois and Eleanor Roosevelt to Thurgood Marshall and Martin Luther King Jr. |
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Bell believes that "although racism is alive, well and here to stay" (p. 15), it has been more an obstacle than a deterrent in her own life. Her willingness to learn from experience actually fertilized her growth. Bell's memoir is a telling reminder that freedom is—in the words of the 1960s civil rights song—a constant struggle. |
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Monroe Little, Indiana University, Indianapolis, is currently completing a biography of Joseph T. Taylor, the first Dean of Liberal Arts at Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis.
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