I dreaded the bus ride every single school day for two long years.  As a little girl of six and seven, I didn’t come equipped with the right ammunition to fight the daily battle.  I was also too young to fully understand the level of deep-seeded bitterness that I was subjected to.  All I did know was that the hour and a half that I spent each day to and from school was nothing short of terrorizing and I always rode in fear. 

My parents were activists from as far back as I can remember.  They believed that everyone should enjoy equality regardless of their skin color.  After completing their final tour as missionaries, we moved back to the states, and settled in a small town in the south.  Racial tensions were still alive and well.  My father took on the assignment of ministering at a small church with about 500 members.  To supplement his income, he worked as a teacher at an all black high school.  Mom took a job as a librarian at the all black junior high.  Each of them was the only white faculty members at their individual schools. 

I was bused twenty miles round trip to school in the next town.  Back then, high school students not only rode the bus with elementary and junior high students, but we were driven by high school students themselves.  Imagine a zoo on wheels because that’s the only thing I can accurately compare it to.   

It was well known, very well known, how my parents felt about race relations.  Not everyone in the small community were big fans of ours either.  Over the years, we had bricks thrown in our windows, hate-words spray-painted on a car, and once someone even fired a gun into my parent’s bedroom window.  Both mom and dad were causing some irritation in the town by organizing protests over the hand-me down, discarded and out-of-date books that were leftovers from the white schools.  Keep in mind, that bad publicity was not as highly regarded as it is today. 

 I guess you could say that I wasn’t the most admired kid on my bus, as a result of my family’s beliefs.   There was a handful of high school aged boys that sort of “ran” the bus, if you will.  They would curse, drink alcohol, smoke pot (although it was years later before I was to learn what that smell was) and bully students…young, tiny little girls like me.  They had a nickname for me….it was “nigger-lover”. I was reminded of my name each day that I got on or off the bus.  I knew that name well and I felt ashamed to be called that for ten months out of the year.  Because I was the subject of this daily bullying, nobody ever wanted me to sit on their seat for fear of being called that infamous name as well.  I was ridiculed and I felt all alone. 

At one point, I asked my dad for clarification on exactly what a nigger-lover was.  He asked if I had heard that term at school and I told him I had heard it on my bus.  He explained that it was a hateful word taught out of ignorance.  I didn’t tell him that it was my new identity.  I was embarrassed on one level, and on another, I don’t think I wanted to give my dad one more thing to have to handle.  He was a busy man, full of compassion and dedication to his causes:  God and Civil Rights.  I witnessed first-hand some of the verbal abuse that he endured as a man of principles and yet he stood tough.  He was a highly educated man of the cloth, but he was no coward.  Looking back I think I really wanted to be brave like my dad, so I never told him about the daily taunting.  I endured it in silence.

 Between the summer of second grade and third, my dad took on a new assignment with a church that had other problems, so we moved.  After a going away party the night before the moving trucks were scheduled to arrive, my dad came into my room to tuck me into bed.  He had a serious look on his face as he said he wanted to ask me something.  He asked if I had ever been teased on my bus rides.  I began crying and admitted the truth.  His question immediately brought back the painful memories.  Apparently one of his parishioners had just learned about it from her recently graduated daughter and felt my dad should know.  I saw tears form in his eyes, though not enough to make their way down his cheek.  He hugged me tightly while telling me he was sorry for not protecting me.  I never rode another school bus for the rest of my life.