There was another Bynum just up the hill on Highway 78 (now 202) going towards Anniston. Today, they call it “Spring Hill”, back then we gave it another name, less flattering name for the hill. There was a small school up there before you got to the top on the left side of the road. I never saw it up close, but it looked like it had 2 or 3 rooms, maybe enough for the kids to go to school. There were also a couple of churches up there at the top of the hill, I think that one was Baptist and the other was Methodist, but I never knew for sure. We guessed that they worshiped the same God, but we never knew if their Jesus was black or white. The hill was always a place that we drove by and where we never stopped. There were kids there, but we did not play with those kids.
The separation of the races was part of the culture in the 40s, 50s and early 60s. The now infamous N-word was a part of the language of the times. It even crept into children sayings like “Enny mini mighty mo, catch a N-word by the toe” and stories like Little Black Sambo. It was a common and accepted word in the South.
I also remember the colored and white only water fountains at the train station in Anniston. One time I drank from the colored water fountain to see if the water tasted different and my parents pulled me away quickly so no one else would see what I had done. The water tasted the same to me; I was just a kid and did not know that this was a forbidden act.
Many of the women from up on the hill worked as our maids and caretakers.
My maid, Jina Mae, lived in a house on the far side of the hill on the left side; you could see the house from the highway and it looked like it was ready to fall down and rejoin the Alabama forest. I do not remember much about her except that she was very efficient in her housework and always smelled like the starch she used in our clothes.
Another Bynum Kids remembers:
“My surrogate mother was Amanda. I loved her so much and would have gone home with her to live with her 4 children. I hate the "N" word but it is a fact of our history, a word that we need to erase.
The day of the bus burning on John Hardy Hill was the day my first husband and I ran away and got married. When we got back from Buchanan, Ga, everyone at church was talking about the bus burning.
Those poor women worked for $3.00 or so dollars a day. White people were suspicious of the paper grocery bag they always carried to and from work. People thought they were stealing things (I knew Amanda was not). I peeked in her bag one day and saw an apron, comfortable house shoes and another dress in case she got dirty cleaning my house, and a coin purse. They could not afford purses so they all carried brown grocery bags.”
Another Bynum Kids added:
“I loved ________ Mae, our maid, more than I did my mother (also named _______ which I thought ironic)! She took care of me, took up for me, and truly loved me - what could be better than that? I hated leaving her when we moved away. She deserved so much better than life afforded her. Do you remember the maid named "Neil" - at least that is what her name sounded like to me - who lived on the hill? Maybe she was the part-time maid for the family next door? One of the women had her to do ironing because I remember Mother saying to someone that Neil could stand at the ironing board doing ironing all day. She had a teenage son who did heavy yard work for us sometimes. Mother called him, "Pig". I remember asking her what his real name was, and she said Pig was all she knew. She always gave him hot dogs for lunch, and he would come to the back door to get the paper plate of food and sit on the steps, or on the ground under a shade tree, to eat every last crumb. He was really, really hungry. I remember seeing him come to the back door with his head bowed to ask if he could have more hot dogs, and Mother would give him two more. I think he got hot dogs because that was about the cheapest thing to feed him, and it was clear to me that the thinking was that hot dogs were good enough for a "colored" person. I am sure he wasn't paid more than a couple of dollars for a day's hard work, if that”
Another Bynum kid tells his story:
“My wife grew up in another Southern city. Her father was a well respected member of the community. One problem, he was a pedophile and her mother was an enabler. He molested my wife from a very young age and her older sisters also; she cannot remember when it stopped because the memories from the teen years are too difficult. Her mother knew on some level, but it was much more important to project the right image to the community so she turned away from obvious clues and even blamed her daughters from stealing too much of her husband’s attention.
Normally, this could cause a child to become mentally unstable, but my wife had Ina Mae Jones, her “Nursie” who was their daily housekeeper. Ina Mae was the only reality that my wife had that did not abuse her. Ina Mae rode the bus every day from northern part of the city, ate a simple single slice velvetta sandwich for lunch and had her own small bathroom; she was not allowed to use the regular bathroom. She had several children of her own, but had never been married; she said that the fathers were too worthless to marry. I think she knew about the molestation, but as a black woman in the South, she could not say anything to stop it. But, she did help my wife though the hard times by being kind, patient, understanding and caring. Interesting footnote, none of the daughters went to college; in my wife’s case, her mother would call her stupid even though she was bright and had good grades.
Ina Mae had to quit when my wife was a teen, and my wife felt that she had been abandoned. Later we found out that there was an illness in her family that would not let her continue working.
After we were married, we would visit Nursie at her house in a rough section of the city. Her parents tried to talk us out of going into the neighborhood, but we always felt safe because Nursie lived there. When we would visit, Nursie would call my wife her white baby. When Nursie died, she was buried in the simple dress she picked out in advance. When we go back to the city, we always go by Nursie’s grave out of respect and to my wife’s parents’ graves out of obligation.”
Another Bynum Kids adds:
I know we all have some prejudices. I have a black friend here at work who I feel is more prejudice toward whites than I am toward blacks, although she says I am an honorary sista. The first thing she said to me when I showed her the web site was didn't any blacks live there?
I have a white friend about 10 years younger than I am who I will not invite to go anywhere black friends will be. She thinks she can tell if a black or white person lives in a house by looking at it.
I remember the bus burning, I was working at the drug store and heard the explosion.
I believe it was the Adams boys who pulled Nat "King" Cole off the stage in Birmingham and beat him up. I don't think he ever played the South again.
I remember being on Quintard one night with Bobby Arnold and some others and we saw crosses burning in the median, this was going toward Oxford. We went to WDNG and told who ever was there that night but I think he thought we were making it up. The burning crosses were in the Anniston Star the next morning. What an eerie sight.
At the drug store we had to watch the blacks and the Gypsys one lived close to Lincoln. Face it anybody else Doc thought might want to steal from him.”
We all sang “Red and Yellow, Black and White, they are precious in his sight” in Sunday School and sent missionaries all over the world to help the needy. We just never seemed to see the needy just up the hill in The Other Bynum.