History Shrouded in Mold - the years of struggle in making the Glenview District Historical.
Does the word struggle strike fear through you? Does the mere mention of it weigh you down? That heavy feeling? It is definitely a word that carries a weight to it and at one time I feared it, now, it just means that carrot of hope is a bit further down than I imagined it to be. It doesn't mean all hope is gone - I just need to keep reaching.
Life does that to a person. Today is Christmas Eve. I am still stuck in the upper level of the home we're renting. Downstairs is currently a renovation zone, the last part of the process of toxic mold remediation. It feels like just another typical day, typical that is for the last month or so of the revolving door of workers.
There are no decorations, no Christmas tree, nor any presents under one. The one thing I am blessed to have that so many cannot say this Covid holiday, is I have my children by my side. Our holiday will be spent together - that is my joy.
I can also say that I feel better this Christmas compared to last year's when I was so sick with a mysterious virus/illness. Then, I had just gotten over my back being out for three weeks to by two in the afternoon on Christmas day taking to my bed and not getting out of it for weeks.
Yes, I am okay, just normal aches and pains of autoimmune inflammatory arthritis. I am still not used to looking out in late December and not seeing the evidence of Midwest winter. My system doesn't know how to comprehend the blue skies, warmer temperatures and snowless landscape in the Midsouth.
It has been a hard year. And, as I have written just in the recent past, I am tired. So much so, that it was about a week ago that I had the first panic I've had in years. A full blown anxiety ridden encounter. There's just too much happening, converging, caving in - all at once. Thankfully, in a month I have my visit with the physician for my Social Security Disability claim. I hate the process and I hate that I am at a stage in my life where I need to even file a claim. I am still working on getting through all of that, it is a mind trip for a once very active person but maybe that will be the one thing to work out.
Struggle.
Struggle is a word that has played over and over in my head and while I look at these wavy glass windows. A word this Christmas Eve that is a very real event for many families and individuals. Covid has seen to that and the political divide in our country has highlighted the plight. We're all tired.
I'm thankful for those windows and the history they have captured. I'm also thankful for my need for truths and my research skills. Together all those elements have graced me with time being spent absorbed in other worlds, an escape from the present day - life caving in during Covid.
This home was built during a time of growth. Since then there has been a Depression and a handful of wars. The first family to have lived here, the Mooreheads, were solidly middle class and carried some standing in social circles. I'm sure they had struggles, every family does, but it would be the 2nd family I've discovered once called this Glenview Avenue home that would define and be an example of hope grown out of struggle. That family would be the one who called Harry S Haysbert the head of the house.
Here, in the what is known as the Glenview Historic District, conquering struggle is what literally placed this small community on the National Registry map. According to the Glenview Community Development Partners:
"The conflict over black property ownership in the Glenview Historic District reveals how the housing market for blacks was strained in the the post-war period. Spawned by several initiatives begun by a local civil rights lawyer, in the establishment of a integrated law firm, plus a Savings and Loan company that could provide mortgage loans to middle class blacks wanting to acquire better homes, opportunities were expanded for blacks to acquire homes.Thus, by 1956, the stage was set for initial attempts to integrate the Glenview Neighborhood. From 1956-58, several African American families acquired homes in the district. The resistance they met, however, indicates how deeply the racial divide ran in Memphis and how significantly it affected the housing market.
Glenview residents did not greet the arrival of the first black family with pleasure. The Rev. Charles H. Mason, Jr. (Church of God in Christ - Lauderdale and Georgia Sts.) the largest Pentecostal Congregation in Memphis, bought a Tudor Revival style house at 1755 Glenview Avenue in 1956 from white couple moving to Illinois. This was brought to the attention of the Glenview Civic Club (white) who wanted to seek a white buyer for Mason's house and to discourage other property owners from selling to blacks.
Newspaper reports chronicle the efforts of white Glenview residents to prevent blacks from buying homes in the area. Violence marked the first months after the Mason family moved into Glenview in February, 1958, after having waited over 18 months. A burning cross was placed in the front yard. Arson was the next tactic used by white opposition to the integration of Glenview. Mason's church burned down on February 14, 1958. The cross burning incident preceded this fire by only a week, and Mason's home was burned on the evening of March 3, 1958. None of the family was hurt, they had been staying elsewhere subsequent to the cross burning."
Growing up in the midwest in the 1970s I can remember hearing stories of cross burnings that once happened years prior, but it always seemed like something that happened so far away and so very long ago. Sitting in this house, looking out these windows while reading the stories, I realize just how little I knew, how little I understood. The house mentioned above and in the newspaper clipping was just down the street from where I sit, not even a full block away. I imagine the terror that took hold as the flames ignited the night. Bone chilling terror.
The Glenview Community Development Partners went on to write:"By the spring of 1958, the Glenview Plan's (white) efforts to buy out and discourage black property owners were clearly not working. The second black home buyer was another prominent minister, Rev. R. W. Norsworthy, (Mt. Moriah Baptist Church, Orange Mound) and an official with the NAACP. The white owner expressed regret about leaving his home at 1745 Glenview, which he had built in 1921, but felt impelled to leave "because of the encroachment of black residents on his block".
By 1959, a third black family had moved into another Glenview block, at 1711 Glenview. Dr. and Mrs. Joseph W. Westbrook were educators. He later became an area assistant superintendent of Memphis City Schools, while Mrs. Westbrook became a project director with Memphis City Schools. "
It was in 1961 when the house I am currently living in transferred from the White original owners to a Black buyer. I hope in my heart the transition was peaceful and no ill intent was at hand from seller to buyer, but I doubt if I will ever know what truly occurred. I only have archived records mapping out the story, the rest is left to assumptions from facts of the time and a bored but vivid imagination. An imagination that now wonders about Harry S. and Viola Haysbert
According to clippings in newspaper archives Harry was a man of many talents, especially in carrying a message and recruiting others to follow. A Lutheran who attended seminary he dedicated his life to the mission of the Boy Scouts of America. He would rise within in the organization and become an assistant director of community outreach. Quite the achievement for any person, but especially so for a Black man who begun with the organization as lynchings were occuring and crosses being burned.
The clipping to the left speaks about Rev. Haysbert and appeared in a Mississippi paper around the same time in 1958 when Rev. Charles H. Mason, Jr's front lawn was vandalized with a burning cross and his church set ablaze. Three years before Haysbert would become a neighbor. There's no doubt in my mind that Haysbert was aware of the tensions building in the Glenview area, he had to be - believing in that I feel as if he walked purposely into the flames because struggle gave him the strength to move forward in life in a way with a drive for better tomorrows. A life's mission.
There are many clippings to be found on Rev. Haysbert and the work he did throughout the country for the Boy Scouts of America. I can envision him as seeing that work as a way to help the youth break free from chains of the past. A way to teach the boys self discipline and pride - dignity - while at the same time allowing them to see their own worth from investing time and energy into their skills.
The work he managed to do did not go unnoticed - in 1990 a scholarship fund at Valparaiso was set up in his name.
By that time he had moved away from Memphis and settled in New Jersey, at least that is where newspaper clippings guided me. Viola, his wife, there is really not much out there to tell me about her, that is often the case of the women in a once prominent male's life. They were the silent strength that often went unnoticed in the public's eye.
Viola passed some years before her husband. She left this Earth in 1982 and he in 2000.
Interestingly enough Rev. Harry Haysbert's obituary guided me to learn about his brother, Raymond Haysbert. The name, when I read it, sounded familiar to me, as if I once had heard it before - I would soon learn that I did.
According to the History Makers -
"Prominent Baltimore businessman Raymond Haysbert was born in a slum in Cincinnati on January 19, 1920. Haysbert was the fourth of eight children, and three of his younger siblings died while he was still a child. His father moved away when he was eight years old, and with the Depression following soon after, Haysbert and his three brothers went to work. He continued with school, and after graduating he enlisted in an ROTC program at Wilberforce University in Ohio. Haysbert was forced to drop out of school his third year to make money, and when World War II broke out, he joined up with the Tuskegee Airmen in Italy.
After returning from the war, Haysbert married his college sweetheart, Carol Roberts, to whom he had been introduced by Henry Parks in 1952. Parks had opened up his Baltimore sausage factory only a year before, and was struggling to make a go of it in an environment filled with bigotry. Haysbert and Parks partnered and began selling Parks Sausage throughout Baltimore, delivering fresh sausages daily to stores. The strategy was a success, and by 1955 Parks Sausage was a sponsor of the World Series. The company, which had reported losses in its first two years in existence, was reporting gross annual profits of $6 million by 1966 and $9 million in 1968. Parks Sausage became the first black-owned company to go public in 1969."
He also became very active in Civil Rights. I can also imagine him visiting his older brother, Harry - the reverend, here in this house on Glenview Ave in Memphis, TN - the heart of the Civil Rights movement. The place where a hero was murdered, Martin Luther King Jr. - a tragedy that when it happened the National Guard was called in and stationed right here, in the Glenview District, a place where so much tension had already occured.
Perhaps they got to together and celebrated the holidays - perhaps some Christmas Eve, almost six decades ago, both men stood together looking out the very window I do now. Men who knew struggle but never gave up when the world wouldn't have blamed them. No, they held true to their calling - becoming examples of strength and hope in better tomorrows.
Struggle doesn't have to be a bad word. It is not the end of a story, it happens somewhere in the middle - where all the juicy details take shape. All the who, what, where, whens and whys start to come together to build a better chapter off of.
I need to believe in that - it is what keeps me moving during the trying times of my life, and yes, right now is one of those times.
As for all of that, my personal struggle right now I will cover in my next post on History Shrouded in Mold. Needless to say, two years living in Memphis has been interesting.
But, for this post rather than a video of some music, I will leave you with the words of Raymond Haysbert describing their childhood in Ohio and various aspects of his incredible life:
Any gifts received during the
History Shrouded in Mold series
Will go towards my family's legal fund and healthcare - test and detoxing from mold.
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