Civil Rights Movement: 10 Questions to my Mom

This year is the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington. Today my mom said 'oh yeah, I did some protesting.' I had no idea.

In 1963, my mom -Yvonne Boston- was a college student in Daytona Beach, Florida. She went to the historically Black college, Bethune Cookman. I wanted to record these details from 1963.

Name: Yvonne Boston Squire

Hometown: Columbia, South Carolina

Current Town: Miami Gardens, FL. 


Q: What did you do?

A: We held protests at Morrison Cafeteria when we were in college. Marching around with signs to get them desegregate the entire restaurant. Back then, Morrison had a big chain in Daytona and Miami. I never ate there before because it was too far from campus.


Q: Why didn't you tell me this before?

A: I don't know. Everyone was doing it back then. I was in college and I think the NAACP came to our campus and asked us students to be a part of the movement. We signed up. Our non-violence training was pretty simple. They just told us 'this isn't Malcolm X. We're not trying to punch people. Don't respond to their comments. Just walk and hold the signs.'


Q: Were you able to stay completely non-violent?

A: Sort of. We were marching back and forth in front of the cafeteria. There was this middle-aged White woman who kept breaking our line. And she would bump me. And then she would come back through and bump me again. So the third time I put my elbow out. (laughs) It was very subtle but I just nudged her and kept marching. It was little...just some people are bullies, you know that. And they just need a little encouragement...(laughs) to stop. She didn't come back through our line again.


Q: How many of you showed up?

A: 20-30 depending on the day. Bethune was a small college. A lot of people were on Malcolm X's side. They wanted violence. I really didn't know what I wanted. I just floated through. I remember coming back from protest and having to go to German class (laughs). "Machen sie das buch zu!"


Q. How long did you march?

A: A few hours each day. We marched maybe a few weeks or a month or so, don't quite remember. It was around November. And then Kennedy was killed.


Q: How were people back then?

A: Daytona isn't a place people were born. People come from other places. So we had catcalls from people in cars and on the sidewalks.


Q: What would they say?

A: Go home...and 'other things.'


Q: Did you march on the day when Kennedy was killed?

A: Yes. And a car drove by and someone yelled out, 'your president got killed.' Your president. As if they are from another country. 'How do you feel now, your president has been shot! Go home!'


Q: How did students react to Kennedy being assassinated?

A: People were shocked and sad. They were crying. It was unbelievable. Someone heard it on the radio and it spread around the campus. But we still got out there that day and the next.


Q: And what ended up happening?

A: They desegregated. Very soon after that. But I ate at Morrison's years later in Miami...after they had desegregated. The food was actually good.

My Mom is HOT.

The last time I visited my family I wasn't pissed off, which is generally a good sign. I felt something in between cautious (that I wasn't pissed the fuck off) and  feeling alright; I felt like I went to do something there and it got accomplished without a hitch, without a fight. I think that meant I had a good time. Or something like that.
As my 14-year old brother rolled my suitcase from the airport's garage to the ticketing booth, I felt... neutral. My mom walked behind my brother, dressed in a tight, long, black skirt and a blouse that hugged her torso. I looked back just to make sure I wasn't walking too fast for her. Not because she's not an agile woman but because I still remember the times she slapped me across the face, as a teenager, when I lied or did something wrong. I guess I'm always watching over my shoulder when I'm around my mom. I'm always trying to make sure I'm not fucking up. That's probably not healthy and probably a sign that I still need therapy.
She had no make up on and her hair was freshly washed.
Before coming to airport I helped her color her hair. My mom has long, curly, jet black hair that is constantly threatened by grays daring to spread from the roots to the ends. But she's not letting age win: "Fuck no," or whatever her war cry against aging is. She exercises almost every day and eats healthy, so at 50-something years old, she actually weighs the same as me (120) and has less cellulite. But that's not what I saw when I looked back.
Well, first of all, when I looked back, the first take I did was to make sure she wasn't too far behing.
The second take I did was because her siren-like figure caught my eye.
In an 8-second span, I saw her marvelously (is that a word?), sinewy black hair drape over her shoulder and her hips move in perfect cadence with her torso. I checked her face out and she didn't look 50-something, she looked 40. And hot. Like really, really hot, beautiful.  God-beautiful.
I looked away because I felt shame, not because I thought my mom was marvelously beautiful but because I used to think she was ugly.
Yah, back when I was kid, someone called my mom "ugly," and I let them because I thought so, too.
My eyes watered and I had to exhale really slowly to fight those guilty tears.
I didn't have time to process right then at there because before I knew it I was standing at the American Airlines line waiting to check in my bag and she and my brother were right there.
And then I had to go through security and take off my shoes and be padded for bombs or whatever the fuck they think someone leaving Nashville, Tennessee would carry.
It wasn't until I was almost in New York when I thought again about my dumbass ideas of beauty. How, when, what gave me the right to ever think of my mom as ugly? JESUS, did I ever really look at her?
I'm a stupid person.
And this is not about some silly feelings of guilt... I mean, my mom has had a pretty challenging life. Somewhere in her early-30s she had a motorcycle accident (because she used to ride a motorcycle/A.K.A. being "fierce") and the doctor told her she'd probably never walk again. But she did, just fine. In her late 30s she moved from South America to the US, had no one here, and then got her masters in education and is a teacher here, the same profession she had in our other country.
No one can say she's not one hell of a fighter.
No one can say she's not self-made.
No one can say that she's not heart-breakingly beautiful.
God, it's taken me so long to realize that. Why does it take, some of us dumb creatures, so long to see beauty in the people who are closest to us?
We admire the beauty "out there," but what about the beautiful people who raised us?
Who slapped us in the face when we lied?
Who taught us that honesty is more important than not looking like an asshole? (I mean, if you're worried about not looking like an asshole, maybe you are behaving like one.)

Those people who teach us the most important lessons in life don't always look beautiful to us.
Is this because they make us see the truth in our actions?
Because they put a mirror to us and say "Look! Really look."

I finally looked mom, really looked.

 -Tatiana
(Guest blogging while Aurin is away at Silent Camp).