To All The Kids (Now Adults) At 102nd Street School in Watts

This morning I am listening to Barak Obamas acceptance speech and I am thinking about, Veronica, Ronald Clark, the young children at 102^nd Street School and my mom.

My mom raised me by herself in a middle class neighborhood in Los Angeles called Beverlywood. There were only a handful of African Americans in my elementary school, and in my 4^th grade class there was just Veronica. 

One day she got sick in school. She threw up. I came home and said, “All black people throw up in school.” Shortly there after, when the first self standing magnet school in Los Angeles was created to respond to mandatory integration with voluntary integration, my mom put me on the bus. (It should be known, that at the time I felt like I as being sent to Siberia)

There was no way on this earth that her daughter would grow up with a narrow mind. My mother would not stand for that. This was a school that integrated kids from all over Los Angeles; we were bused us from all of our neighborhoods to the corner of Pico and Arlington. It was the state of California's effort to respond to mandatory busing with voluntary busing. And so I went. My eyes were open. My heart grew tolerant. My life changed.

In my mom's effort to raise me well she went back to school when I was 6 years old and became a child psychologist for the Los Angeles Unified School District. She opted to do her work in what was called at the time, South Central Los Angeles, or historically, Watts. She worked at  102^nd Street School. A school where they had "shoe day." This was a day when she and the social worker went to Payless to buy shoes for those children who came to school barefoot. This was a school with children who, when they saw images of scales on the IQ test and were asked what they were for, they said, "for weighing drugs." This answer was not found in the back of the WISC-R manual. These were kids who lived in the projects, 8 families in two rooms. These were families with children who my mom would bring home now and then. They were “her kids.”

Ronald Clark was one of "her" kids. He was this thin, beautifully dark skinned child with a wild Afro. He lived in a home that I will never know, with alcoholism and drug abuse. I remember asking him what he wanted to do when he grew up and he always said the same thing, “I want to get out of Watts.” We had this sense he would.  You see, he was the most brilliant artist, in particular he designed clothing. His pictures were as professional as any I had seen on TV. He was a true talent. My mom used to tell me that these young boys had no one to look up too. Many had strong mothers, but more had absent fathers and they turned to gangs to belong to a group of boys and men who would take care of them.

My mom took me to her school once. On the way there she said “Elissa, we do not visit poverty, unless you plan on staying. This is not something to gawk at, this is something to fix.”

When we got to the school we had an experience that has forever remained planted in my heart.

Black children from 6 years old to 6^th grade were running up to my mom yelling her name, “Ms. Schiffer, Ms. Schiffer!” And it was such a stark contrast. My blond haired, blue eyed 5”11 mother and these small African American children, literally running after her. Why were they running? They wanted to meet her daughter. They heard she was coming and that she was close to their age. 

I was standing right there. 

Could they not see me?

So they asked, “Ms. Schiffer, where is she?!” My mom stood in amazement.

So I said, “Its me, I am her daughter.” 

 They stared in complete silence. 

They came up to me and touched my long brown hair and looked into my green eyes. They looked back at my mom and looked at me with complete bewilderment. Later I learned why, as one by one they came to her office.

My mother was kind and loving to these children. She took care of them. She was like a good mother; their mother, and remember they were small children.

When they saw me, another small child, close to their age, they saw the opposite of who they were. 

I was a "white girl." 

If I was a white girl then that must make Ms. Schiffer...White.  

How could that be, they wondered? 

White people were not kind, they thought. 

White people were not loving, they pondered. How could this be? 

She stood in stark contrast to all they knew to be true about white people in a world when there was no one they could look up to who was African American. She had a crisis on her hands. I never knew how she dealt with it, but years later when I heard from numerous children, who were going to college, I figured she didn’t do to badly.

Children, who became young adults, would look her name up to find her. They would thank her for her help, her guidance, and often...the shoes. 

Ronald Clark called years after she died and wanted to tell her he "got out." He was going to the Fashion Institute. He was going to make it and he wanted to thank her. I had to tell him she had died, a few years earlier. "Well then," he said, "I want to thank you for letting me be one of 'her kids.' She changed my life."

So when I was watching Barack Obama I hoped Ronald Clark was watching and Veronica and all the small children (now adults) at 102^nd Street School who looked up to my mom as someone they thought was black till they met me.

You have someone now. He is president and history was made yesterday. 

But it was also made 30 years ago, when my mom taught small children to not see color and when she reminded Ronald Clark he could get out of Watts. Lets pay attention to all ways, big and small, that we make history, and together maybe we really can change the world.