July 1959
THAT SUMMER, THE price of my older sister Flo being able to go downtown to meet her friends was that my mother made her take me. A fifteen-year-old girl could only get into so much trouble when saddled with a five-year-old. Flo took the bargain, but a smile was not part of the deal. My sister was determined to act as if I were not there.

It took work to miss me. The skirts our mama made us flared, mine more so since I twirled as I walked, which meant that I wasn't generally watching what was in front of me. When I tripped, which I always did, Flo kept right on walking. Her three friends seemed to worry more about me getting lost than she did, but about an hour into walking around downtown, I figured out Flo's trick. Instead of looking back and having to acknowledge her little sister acting the fool, she would briefly linger at one of the windows of the shops, take note of my safety in its reflection, and keep on.

If you haven't been yet, Galveston looked a lot like New Orleans, but with all that beautiful architecture laid out in a more orderly grid of numbered streets. "Downtown" was north of Broadway, going west up from 20th Street to 25th. The Black business district of Galveston was also north of Broadway, going west from 25th Street. Galveston had a history of moneymaking and was notable in the South for Black entrepreneurship—we owned and operated our own stores, as if For Us By Us were a city. We had our own grocery stores, restaurants, and theaters. When relatives came from out of town, certain things about Galveston would stick with them, and they would bring them up again and again. Things I took for granted shocked them, like having a Black-run filling station.

We had one movie theater we were allowed into, the white-owned George Washington Carver Theater, which was run-down, but it showed the movies that had us in them. They had recently premiered Imitation of Life and it's where I saw Porgy and Bess, which I was obsessed with. I loved musicals and the idea that you could take any troubles and make them beautiful by putting them to song. Every year the Carver theater made a big deal of rerunning Stormy Weather with Lena Horne and Carmen Jones with Dorothy Dandridge. I would walk out of the theater feeling taller, as if to accommodate the soul that had grown to fit the leading ladies' examples. I fantasized about them coming to Galveston on the entertainment circuit and saying, "Tenie, come with us."

I have never been naïve—I know people laugh when I call Galveston progressive, but I cannot overstate the importance of the city to our culture. The island had a long history as one of America's main natural ports and capitals of trade—on par with New York City—and was at one point the second- or third-richest city in all of the United States, depending on who you asked. Galveston was the most profitable cotton port on the Gulf, and all the cotton grown in Texas went through the city as it was sold to the world. And the shame of it is that Galveston was once one of the largest ports for the slave trafficking of human beings across the Atlantic. Cuba, only eight hundred miles away, was a major hub in the buying and selling of enslaved people kidnapped from Africa, and Galveston was their first stop in the United States before being trafficked to other cities in the South.

All that money in Galveston made it the Southern Wall Street. This was how much Texas prioritized Galveston: It was the first city in the state to have a bank, then a post office, and then the first in the state to get telephones and electricity in homes. For us, Galveston was home to Texas's first public high school for Black children, Central High, and the first Black public library in the entire nation. Black intellectuals—the talented tenth that W. E. B. Du Bois talked about—came from all over Texas and the rest of the country to Galveston to teach Black children at Central High. Galveston had money, but we also had all that pride, all that excellence centered in one place.

The storm of 1900—a hurricane that remains the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history—destroyed Galveston and killed at least eight thousand people. They built the seawall to stop the next flood, but the banks fled. Imagine New York City never recovering from 9/11. The mafia moved in, making it a bootlegging and gambling oasis for thousands of tourists—Las Vegas before Las Vegas. The city had lots of clubs and restaurants, and even as a kid I could see why so many people came here. This quaint beautiful place by the water with gorgeous architecture.

And then you went to the Black areas and there was so much poverty there. By design, Galveston contained the Black neighborhood on Northside, the area above Broadway. That's where the two housing projects were, meant to cluster us. When my family came from Louisiana, it was important to my father that we not live in that area. We lived in a poor, working-class neighborhood too, but my father believed the projects were created to continue cycles of poverty. Later, when I befriended kids who lived there, I would go and love being there. To my eyes, they had beautiful apartments, and we had holes in our floors.

I told my parents how fun it was there, and my dad cut me off. "I don't want you over there," he said, in the Creole accent that I now thought made him sound so country. "I don't want you over in the projects."

"Why?" I asked, exasperated. "They're living better than us. They got a nicer house than we do. You're around here thinking you're better than..."

"I got three boys," he said. "I got to protect my boys. I don't want them going over there, so you're not either." My father was buying into a sort of respectability politics, and he was also worried about his kids. But all I thought was that he was missing what was in front of his face: Oh, I thought, he thinks we're living better and we're not at all.

That was later for me, though I know that when I was five, teenage Flo was having those same conversations with my parents. She was a sophomore at Central High, and to a teenager like Flo, Downtown was the big deal. She loved fashion, and everyone in the family knew the story about her running away from home as a little girl because she didn't like the clothes our mama put her in. She'd made it four doors down to a neighbor's house, leaning on the door and saying, "Don't let Agnes in! Don't let Agnes in!" Even then, so little but conspiratorial with adults in referring to our mother by her name. Mama would have had a fit if she heard one of us call her Agnes, but choosing outfits was serious stuff to Flo. Now, I was starting to like fashion too, and Downtown was where all the stores were. The three big ones were McCrory's, Woolworth's, and Kress. They were dime stores—and they were popping.

The stores had lunch counters, the best burgers and shakes in town. You couldn't eat inside, only white people could, but there would be a window, usually at the rear, where we could order. Then we'd take the food and bring it to a bench and eat there. I didn't know yet that was our only choice—I was still learning the boundaries and walls set on me by segregation. I thought it was only natural to eat outside. But Flo knew. Students her age in 1959 would do personal acts of rebellion. Like one time drinking from the Whites Only fountain instead of the one marked Colored. A friend of Flo's had used the white bathroom at one of the department stores, just to see it. After lunch, Flo and I went to the fancier shops with her friends, getting an eye on the trends and thinking about what we could ask our mom to make. We were watched by the shopkeepers, but I didn't notice then. Flo and I waited on a corner for a bus to go back to our neighborhood. Her friends simply walked home to where they lived in Northside.

The bus was still new for me, and I admired how Flo knew all the nuances of waiting for one like a grown-up: the expectant looks down the street; the smoothing of the skirt. She was practicing to be an adult, and I tried mirroring her until, to her embarrassment, the excitement of seeing the bus coming made me bounce and shout. She muttered something at me but took my hand as we got on. The front of the bus was empty, save for one white woman sitting with her purse in her lap, a slash of purple lipstick on her mouth. I watched her watch Flo.

When I slowed to sit in one of the many open seats up front, Flo gripped my hand harder to lead me to the crowded back of the bus. There were so many people crammed there that it was standing room only. It was only when she and I made it to the back that the driver started moving the bus again. He was white, and I didn't know then that only white men were allowed to be bus drivers.

The bus lurched forward. I didn't get why we were standing crammed in with all these people. When we tilted a little on a turn, Flo let go of my hand to steady herself. I was free.

I walked to the front of the bus. Marched with all the sense of a five year-old who knew everything. "Tenie," ordered Flo, but I didn't look back. I took a seat and looked out the window.

I heard a chorus behind me. Tuts and sighs, murmured half-sentences. This wasn't only annoying Flo, this was upsetting people. Just me sitting in a seat. I didn't know why they were tripping. This was the life, watching Galveston go by. And if they didn't know better, well, let Flo and everyone else stand in the back like a fool.

Flo was suddenly standing beside me. "Tenie. Come."

I didn't even look at her. Instead, I knelt on the seat to get a better view out the window. Now my window. Flo grabbed my arm and pulled me hard, the way only a big sister knows how. "Ow!" I said, exaggerating as only a little sister knows how.

A voice boomed sharp: "You had better not do that to her." It was the white woman. There was spittle on the purple of her lip, clashing with the reddening of her face. "Her mother would fire you if she knew that you were doing this."

She thought Flo was my babysitter. My sister had rich brown skin and green eyes. I, on the other hand, had blond-looking hair in candy curls. The woman mistook me for white. Worthy of her protection. "Her mama is my mama," Flo said, quickly and with an exasperated defiance that would echo through our lives.

The woman's face twisted, confused, and then she looked at me as if I'd reneged on some deal. Sold her something I did not own. That face, the snarl of it, froze me.

Flo grabbed me by my hair. "Tenie. Move." She dragged me to the back of the bus and the choir of tutting people shaking their heads, grimacing in judgment. I had upset things, but they were also annoyed with Flo for allowing me to.

I said something mean to her, about her hurting me. This girl of fifteen left to watch a naïve five-year-old sister. Flo looked at me, and there was a flash of something on her face. Her eyes were wide open, and I wasn't sure if she was going to cry or hit me. But she looked away.

The white woman kept turning back and then craning her neck forward to get the driver's attention. He didn't look back, keeping on his route the whole time. I don't even know if he noticed.

This was the status quo, and it was exactly what Galveston's politicians hoped would remain. When local officials had to stand up and be asked by some reporter about the protests around the South, they would say some variation of, "Oh, we don't have that kind of racial tension in Galveston. Our Negroes are happy. They've got good jobs, and they like it as it is. Peaceful."