The Evolution of My Revolution
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
L. Ann Jackson is a writer, historian and Sensitivity Reader currently living in her hometown of San Francisco. She enjoys writing about the history of African Americans of the Second Great Migration and their sojourns from the southern United States to the shores of San Francisco Bay, inspired by her own family’s stories.
L. Ann is a recipient of the Muses & Melanin Black Women Creative Writers Fellowship and the San Francisco Arts Commission Emerging Writers award. She presents literary and historical workshops at the San Francisco Public Library. Selections from her short story collection, The Religion of Slaves, were presented at San Francisco’s LitQuake Literary Festival. Ms. Jackson is currently at work on her first novel, Her Good Name, a historical fiction set in post-WWII San Francisco’s African American community.
In addition to her literary endeavors, L. Ann is curator of the Steve Jackson, Jr. Photograph Collection. Spanning more than fifty years, the collection is an inspiration for her writing. A portion of the collection is currently on exhibit at the African American Museum of History & Culture in Washington, DC.
When L. Ann is not writing, she enjoys watercolor painting, walking, listening to true-crime podcasts, baking and preparing her signature Linda’s San Francisco West Coast Gumbo for friends and family.
The Evolution of My Revolution
BY L. ANN JACKSON
©2024. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
It was September 5, 1960 and my first day of school in the first grade at St. Teresa’s, the parish school in San Francisco’s Potrero Hill neighborhood. There I sat in the middle of the second row at my little desk, arms extended, hands clasped, my back as straight as a soldier’s. There were about thirty of us, predominantly white with a scant sprinkling of Black and Brown students.
Our desks were arranged in long rows with enough space between them to allow the teachers easy strolling up one aisle and down the other without looking up from their texts as the class read, sang or recited. This was before Vatican II and the nuns were still wearing the penguin suits—long black billowy habits with big white bibs that covered the chest and neck and hugged the chin like a vice. Their veils were made of stiff white front-pieces fashioned with the curvature of a nurse’s bonnet that hid their hairlines, covered half their foreheads and was draped with a black shawl that framed their faces and flowed halfway down their backs. The only accessory each wore was a long string of marble-sized rosary beads that hung from their waists like nun chucks, with a huge silver crucifix dangling from the end, inches away from their floor-length hemlines. They all wore silver rings on the third finger of their left hands to show that they were married to Jesus and identified themselves as brides of Christ.
Like the nuns, as future minions of the Church, we Catholic school kids also wore uniforms, distinguished by colors that made us easily identifiable all across the city. St. Teresa’s colors were navy blue and white. Girls wore white blouses neatly tucked into a wool navy-blue pleated skirt, hemmed one inch below the knee, topped with a long-sleeved navy-blue sweater. The boys’ uniforms were pretty much the same white shirt and sweater, but instead of navy-blue pants, they wore salt and pepper-colored slacks. They also got to wear dark socks with black leather loafers or saddle shoes while the girls were required to wear white socks and indestructibly ugly white oxfords, that had to be polished regularly. I hated those shoes and did everything I could to ruin them. I thought if I could prove that they were poorly made I might be able to get a different pair of shoes that I liked better. With destruction of my oxfords as my ultimate goal I traipsed over mounds of dirt and rocks, waded in muddy rain puddles, and even scuffed them against concrete and pavement as I walked, all to no avail. My parents just thought that I was as hard on shoes as a boy and bought me another pair. I learned the hard way that oxfords couldn’t be worn out, only outgrown.
There we sat at our desk in our crisp new uniforms on that first day, a classroom full of excited and anxious first graders. Our teacher, a pretty young nun named Sister Mary Sacred Heart asked each student to stand and tell the class their name. She stood between two more senior nuns, Sister Mary Bernard, the principal, and Sister Mary Andrea, a short, mean-looking woman who would eventually terrorize us when we became her third-grade students two years down the line. The class introductions were going along smoothly when Sister pointed to a beautiful, brown Mexican boy with shiny black hair. He stood up.
“My name is Jesus (pronounced ‘Hay-seus’) Martinez.”
He sat down and there was a pause. Sister didn’t ask the next student to introduce herself. Instead, the three nuns came together in a twittering confab. When they turned their attention back to the class, Sister Mary Bernard spoke directly to Jesus and said, “We don’t think that anybody should have the name of Jesus, so we’ve decided that it would be better to call you Jesse.”
“But my name is not Jesus, Sister, it is Jesus (‘Hay-seus’],” the boy said with an unsteady voice.
“But it’s spelled like the name of Jesus,” she said emphatically.
I have never forgotten the look of pure pain and confusion on Jesus’ face as he looked around the room. I was hurting right along with him and I was angry for him too, because he didn’t seem to be angry for himself. But along with my wrath came a creeping fear that I could be next. I thought about what I would do if the nuns found a reason to change my name. I liked my name and fumed inwardly, daring them to try and change it. My mind scrambled to come up with reasons that would support my resistance as I prepared to fight. I tried not to fidget but my face was getting hot and my stomach began to swirl.
I thought of telling the sisters that my Uncle W.A. had given me my name and he wouldn’t like it if anybody changed it, which was true. Uncle W.A. was married to Aunt Willie, my father’s older sister, and even though he was strong but slight in stature he was undeniably nothing less than formidable. He was a Native American of the Choctaw Nation from Oklahoma, and everybody called him “Red.” He was loud and funny and had a way of cussing that elevated profanity to an art form, and spoke in a voice made gravelly from years of smoking Camel cigarettes. Like my father and many men of his generation, Uncle W.A. always carried a pocketknife, which came in handy when a screwdriver or a gun wasn’t available. But unlike anybody else I’d ever known, Uncle W.A. was the only person I’d seen use his knife to peel an onion then bite into it like it was an apple, roaring with laughter while my sister and I squealed with disgust.
I never knew why my parents let Uncle W.A. choose my name, but the gesture bonded us from the day I was born and I knew he loved me. The thought of unleashing his fury on these rogue name-changers helped me to settle down a bit.
“We’ll call you Jesse from now on,” Sister Bernard said, staring Jesus down with steely Irish-blue eyes. The emphatic tone of her edict left no doubt that the discussion was over. Fortunately for me my own introduction was as uneventful as the rest of the class’, but from that day, and for the next eight years, we all called Jesus “Jesse.”
# # #
By the time I reached the third grade I was well-seasoned in the ways of St. Teresa’s system and intuitively sensitive to the frequent biases I’d experienced and observed through confounding oddities of preferences and slights, both subtle and overt. For instance, even though I was an excellent student, I noticed how my other high-achieving classmates basked in the rays of frequent praise and compliments for their schoolwork from the nuns. They could always get a smile or encouraging word from even the sourest sisters while I could not. I was neither favored nor recognized for the same, if not better achievements than my classmates, which I didn’t understand. In my mind there was no difference between us. That they were little White girls and I was a little Black girl didn’t register because my eight-year-old mind hadn’t learned to process the illogical and insidious pathology of racism although I inherently sensed that something was amiss. And as life would have it, I wouldn’t have to wait much longer to gain a better understanding of what that “something” was because a lesson was on the horizon. A lesson so profoundly stunning in its clarity, it would become the foundation on which my lifelong hyper-awareness of social injustice was founded.
It was Spring 1963 and the entire student body was preparing for May Day, honoring the Feast of St. Mary, who was also known as the Blessed Virgin Mary. From the first grade on up to the eighth grade, each class would do a theme-based presentation to commemorate the occasion. My third-grade class would be doing a musical vignette with one girl portraying St. Mary. That girl would get to wear a blue shawl, topped with a wreath of garden flowers. She would sing the first verse of the May Day song, Bring Flowers of the Rarest, and then the class would join in for the chorus and second verse.
When Sister Mary Andrea asked for volunteers interested in portraying the Virgin Mary, my hand shot up in a flash. My older sister and I had already distinguished ourselves with our singing, performing liturgies in both English and Latin, as well as everything from Christmas carols to showtunes in two-part harmony. But I wasn’t even given a chance to audition for the role and another girl was chosen. Her name was Cindy, a blonde haired, blue-eyed girl, who, from the first grade up to now, had never sung a solo note. I was disappointed, but had no choice but to accept the outcome.
As rehearsals got under way, Cindy struggled with the part, softly singing through a petrified smile that made her look like she was grimacing. I struggled too, trying to understand why I had been overlooked for this coveted role that was given to a girl who couldn’t even sing. So, at the end of recess one afternoon I summoned up my courage, cautiously approached Sister Andrea, and asked her why I had not been given an opportunity to try out for the solo. She looked down her nose at me with an icy glare and in a voice saturated with disdain said, “Because the Virgin Mary wasn’t colored.”
The shock of her answer caused the muscles in my face to freeze. A breath got caught in my throat. I wasn’t equipped to confront the unbridled hatred I saw in her eyes so I looked away. She even seemed content to have wounded me so deeply. My feelings were hurt and I was angry, and although I wanted to cry, I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction. She turned and walked away, leaving me standing alone in the school yard, my head hanging down.
This was the first time anyone ever told me directly to my face that I was not acceptable because of the color of my skin. That it came from an insensitive, racist nun was especially devastating. She was supposed to be about the work of cultivating young minds and saving souls, but here she was schooling me on the limitations and restrictions of my Blackness. Worse yet, there was no place to turn for comfort and refuge, not even at home. My parents were from the Jim Crow south and my father would not entertain a matter as trivial as my verbal humiliation. He had witnessed and experienced unimaginable atrocities. To him, what I was facing would amount to nothing more than hurt feelings. He was inflexible in his conviction that he sent us to school to get the same education that the White kids were getting and he didn’t give a damn about the rest, often saying, “As long as they don’t put they hands on you, I don’t give a damn what they do.” Having had that made crystal clear to me early on, I knew that I was on my own and so, I said nothing.
# # #
After the last rehearsal before performance day when it was undeniably apparent that Cindy was in over her head, our teacher announced that instead of standing and singing the solo, Cindy would sit in front of the class, still draped in blue under a crown of flowers while the entire class sang the song to her! It was all I could do to keep from screaming. Of all the aggressions I had endured and witnessed as a little Black girl in the span of three short years, I now clearly understood that my Blackness was not just abhorrent to the people charged with educating me, but to them it was the also the benchmark denoting my worthlessness and inadequacies no matter my intellect or abilities. People like Jesus and me were the racial others, consigned to the fringes of circumscribed territories we would never be allowed to breach. This realization also incited my first, soft, left turn away from Catholicism. By the time I reached high school, I no longer identified myself as a member of the Catholic faith.
# # #
When the big day arrived, the entire student body was all groomed and polished like it was picture day. Several dignitaries from the archdiocese were in attendance, going from classroom to classroom, escorted by the principal and vice principal. When they entered our third-grade classroom we stood up at attention the way we always did whenever an adult entered the room. We were allowed to sit back down while several of the visitors commented on our good manners and enthusiasm. Then the performance began.
Cindy, decked out as the Virgin Mary, got up from her desk, walked to the front of the classroom and took her seat. Sister gave a signal to the rest of the class and we rose to our feet. I looked around the room at all of my smiling classmates and the expectant faces of our teachers and visitors, and when the pianist’s keyed the introduction (there was a piano in every classroom back then), I did the unthinkable. I stood there, folded my arms across my chest, defiantly poked out my bottom lip, and refused to sing. It was an unthinkable act because I hadn’t planned it or thought about the risk I was taking. My posturing was an innate response to the unfairness of my exclusion and it felt wonderfully natural and right, probably because I had moved beyond the hurt and had leaned into my rage.
As the class continued singing, I scanned the faces of my authority figures, all wearing a variety of expressions from indignation to consternation. Here I was, eight years old, committing my first act of subversion in front of my teachers and visitors from the archdiocese. I even made direct eye contact with Sister Mary Andrea, refusing to be intimidated by the murderous look on her blotchy red face. I glowered right back at her like a proud little hellion.
When the performance was over the guests moved on to the next classroom, and we went on with our school day. I expected to be verbally assailed by the waddle of penguins still looking at me and shaking their heads, but nobody said a word. We simply finished our day and I went home, knowing that my parents would sooner or later be getting a telephone call, and I would die by my father’s hands. I’d resigned myself to my fate and was surprisingly calm as I waited for the telephone call that would lead to the end of my life. But the call never came. Confounded at first, it later dawned on me that the nuns couldn’t tell on me without telling on themselves—a conclusion they must have come to long before I did. I then reveled in my small victory with a smugness I still relish to this day.
During the remainder of the school year and on into the fourth grade, I was asked by one teacher or another to sing a solo or duet on several occasions, but I always declined. In my first three years of Catholic school, I had learned one of life’s most valuable lessons—that neither my father, nor the nuns, nor anybody, for that matter had cornered the market on power. I’d discovered that even as a young girl I not only had power but agency in its utilization. Once I discovered my own intrinsic sovereignty, I made the conscious decision to strengthen and refine it so that I would be better equipped to defend myself and others.
As I matured, the realization of how not only race, but gender affected my movement and progress in the world led to my intense studies of womanist and feminist theories of activism and subversion. That awareness had a significant impact on my growth and development, coincidentally positing me at the epicenter of every social, cultural and political movement of the day.
I participated in Vietnam anti-war demonstrations and meetings, demanded that my Catholic university divest from all business ties with South Africa in the fight against apartheid, and I was on the frontline fighting for reproductive rights that resulted in Roe vs. Wade, which I continue to this day. I’ve stood in solidarity with Native Americans against the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and with Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta in their efforts to unionize migrant farm workers. I’ve spent decades doing voter registration in California, Texas= and Georgia, which included supporting convicted felons, by and large marginalized Black and Brown men, through the process of expungement so that they might resume lives of full citizenship. I’ve taught Conversational English to new Americans throughout the state of California, and I continue to be an active participant in the Black Power and Black Arts movements as a teacher, writer and historian. I suppose I should be thankful to the sisters of St. Teresa’s for that, if nothing else, as they are responsible for igniting a fire in my belly that has yet to be extinguished.
Sometimes I wonder if the nuns ever repented for their abuses against their students of color. As times changed, did any of them live long enough to perhaps rethink their biases and inequities, possibly seeing the error of their un-Christlike ways? Or did they stand ten toes down in their adherence to White supremacy, unwilling to ask for forgiveness and do penance for their abject transgressions? It’s not likely that I will ever know.
The old school building that stood on the southeast corner of 19th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue is long gone now, a victim of expensive earthquake retrograding that the archdiocese couldn’t afford. In its place stands a small pricey apartment building boasting a spectacular view of the San Francisco Bay Bridge, Oakland, the TransAmerica Pyramid, downtown San Francisco and the South Bay. But St. Teresa’s Church is still standing on the corner of 19th and Connecticut Streets. I recently did an internet search and found the church’s website. The homepage was captioned St. Teresa of Avila Church: A Warm, Welcoming, Inclusive Faith Community. The website proudly touts the parish’s commitment to “Confront Racism, Oppression and Injustice.” Oh, if I could turn back time.
This is the same place where I and other children of color endured virulent racism and exclusion when we were the most vulnerable and unprotected. It is also the place where I was baptized, received my First Holy Communion, took my Confirmation name in honor of my patron saint, Anthony of Padua and graduated after eight years of education with most of the same kids I started out with in the first grade.
Back then I felt none of the warmth, welcome or inclusion the parish now offers. Yet, surprisingly, I feel no ill will towards the nuns or the Church. Without them and those experiences I would not have become the warrior woman I take so much pride in being today. Because of the part they played in my life during my formative years, I became a womanist, feminist, activist and radical subversive. That day in the third grade was just the beginning of my hell-raising days, and believe me, I’ve raised a lot of hell, and I’ve gotten into some Good Trouble too, so there’s no reason for me to be resentful about the role the sisters played in my evolution. On the contrary, I heartily thank them. And wherever they might reside beyond the ethers, be it floating on heavenly clouds or eternally roasting in hell, I send them all a resounding “God Bless.”