The Power Of Community

Six women from Avon Park spent several hours passing photographs back and forth a few days ago while they talked about friends and family.

"You don't know where you're going unless you know who you are," said Beauta Brown.

Brown, Beatrice Peterson, Earnestine Dudley, Arether Byrd, Catherine Moore and Wilma Conner talked about getting married, raising children, picking fruit and going to school. They are all black women from age 60 to 80 who have known one another for most of their lives. They gathered at Faith Pentecostal House of God Inc.

"You know what this reminds me of in the old days - people quilting," Brown said as she looked around the circle of women who were seated in a loose circle in the small room at the church. Brown was wearing a broad-brimmed hat. From time to time she smiled and reached her arms out broadly as if expanding her thoughts. When one woman smiled and laughed, all the others joined in.

All the women were born before the schools in the county were integrated, and they all attended all-black schools. Hopewell School for grades 1 through 8 in Avon Park was the all-black school for that community, said Charlotte Pressler, director of the honors program at South Florida Community College. Each community in the county had an all-black school for children in those grades, said Pat Landress, resource teacher for federal programs for the county school board. For grades 9 through 12, black children went to E.O. Douglas High School in Sebring, Pressler said.

In 1966 the "four best black students from each community" left E.O. Douglas High School and attended the various community high schools, said Landress.

"That was the first step in integration," Landress said.

The women included the topic of segregation along with everything else in their conversation.

"When you're born to a place, it's all you know," said Catherine Moore. Moore was wearing a bright yellow and white dress.

"We had to pick fruit, pick beans and pick tomatoes," she said. "That's the type of work (we did). We didn't have McDonald's. It was hard but we was happy. We was poor, but we didn't even know we was poor."

"We were told to not be downtown after dark," Brown said.

"We couldn't drink from their water fountain," Moore said.

"We couldn't go to the restaurant. They served us from the back door."

Relying upon the other families in their tightly-knit community to raise their children and help them out when times were tough was very important, they said.

"The neighborhood raised the children, the whole village," Brown said.

"We kept our houses open. Nobody would go in there and bother nothing. We grew up that way. We grew up close as a family. If we didn't have an egg, the neighbor had some chickens, so we ate together."

Many of the women who came from large families of up to 11 children said the attitudes of some children today frustrates them.

Moore said that children today sometimes refuse to listen to adults.

"But we knew to listen," Brown said.

"These kids are given too much," Moore said.

Children don't receive enough punishment, they all agreed.

"Our children respected us," Peterson said. Peterson was wearing a blue jean dress and her hear was braided tightly around her face.

There were other things that were important to the women, too.

As the women passed photographs back and forth in the small room, Byrd said her father, Leroy Nelson, was the first black photographer in the community. Nelson started taking pictures when he won a Kodak contest and a camera, she said.

"That was in the '30s," Byrd said.

"He did other little things to make a living. He was a gardener and kept a yard up. He was the chauffeur. And on weekends he did all his photography work."

Jobs in the community were important to the women.

Conner's husband, Fred, was the first black policeman and his beat was Avon Park, she said. Moore said her father worked at the air base. Peterson worked at the drug store and did domestic work. Byrd worked wrapping small orange trees. Brown got a degree as a minister.

"We also had a business in the '60s, it was a restaurant, barber shop and a grocery store," Brown said.

As they passed around the old photographs the women laughed and completed one another's thoughts.

"You remember that -," Peterson said.

"That dress!" Moore finished her friend's sentence, and laughed.

Byrd recorded the names of the people with a marker on the back of the photos.

"They loved to dress!" Brown said while pointing to the well-dressed black woman staring out from the decades-old photograph. The woman was wearing a dress and gloves, and was seated with her legs crossed.

As the women carefully handle the aging photographs, it's clear they take their history seriously - and still rely upon one another, to finish names, to finish thoughts and for emotional support.