IMITATION OF LIFE

When I was a young boy, my brother Mann and I would go to Booker T. Washington colored theater in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. On one particular outing we saw an incredible movie called "Imitation of Life". We gained admission by giving the attendant six tops from a coca-cola bottle. I had no idea at the time how realistic the movie we were about to see was in relation to events that had occurred within the confines of my own family.

In 1947, Lora Meredith and her young daughter Susie hired a black maid Annie Jackson and her white looking daughter Sarah Jane. Annie in desperate need of a place to live offers her service for food and shelter. At the time Lora could not afford to pay Annie so she found the arrangement to be in her best interest.

Lora would later become a big star. She allowed Annie and Sarah Jane to continue to live with her family. Sarah Jane does not want to be black. At school Sarah is able to pass for white until her dark skinned mother shows up and let the cat out of the bag. Sarah is so embarrassed about being found out that she never returns to the school.

When Sarah grows up she becomes involved with Frankie her first boyfriend. Frankie is white and unaware that Sarah is black. Frankie later finds out that Sarah is black and all hell breaks loose. He beats Sarah and leaves her lying in a ditch. Annie finds out and tells her daughter that it is wrong to pretend to be something one is not. Sarah begins to hate and despise her black mother for telling everyone that she is her mother.

Sarah secretly gets a job as a "white"singer and dancer in a nightclub. When her mother Annie shows up and tells the owner that she is Sarah's mother, he fires Sarah. Sarah has had it with her mother letting the cat out of the bag. She leaves home without telling anyone where she is going. She wants to live as a white woman. Annie becomes very ill and a close friend finds out that Sarah is working at the Moulin Rouge in Hollywood. Annie catches a flight there to see her daughter for what turns out to be the last time. In exchange for one last hug Annie promises to never bother Sarah again and allow her to live as a "white" woman.

Annie dies as a result of a broken heart. On her dying bed she ask a friend to find Sarah and let her know that she was sorry for letting the cat out of the bag that Sarah was black. Annie had a magnificent funeral with Gospel singer, Mahalia Jackson, a brass band and the carriage for her coffin drawn by four white horses. As the funeral procession begins Sarah fights her way through the crowd and throws herself over her mother's coffin. She begs her mother's forgiveness. She is convinced that she killed her mother by denying her and attempting to pass as white.

At the end of the movie everyone was crying. I turned to Mann and vowed never to attempt to pass for white. He said, "You don't have to worry about that. Unless you are planning on convincing people that you have on a wig and your body is covered by one hell of a freckle." We both laughed, but I still could not understand at that time why anyone would want to pass as white.

I later learned that many black people who could pass as white did so because it garnered more opportunity for themselves and others. Ultimately, passing as white offered the poor and destitute a chance to earn more money, to work jobs that was earmarked for whites, or to share resources with the greater colored community. Simply put if you were white you were right.

When I became an adult I learned that my maternal great grandmother, Myrtle Smith abandoned my grandmother, Girlean Smith James ("little Moma") and my grandmother's brother, Uncle Jasper Smith to live in New York as a white woman. My grandmother was eleven when her mom left. She did not return until my grandmother was thirty-three years old. She successfully lived as a white woman for twenty-two years.

When she returned she told a forgiving family how much she did to help blacks in New York. My grandmother never spoke a bad word about her mother. She seemed to understand why my great grandmother did what she did. Apparently there were no emotional scars left on my grandmother and her brother because I remember them as very happy people.

Since learning how some black people have been passing as white people for years I am now very suspicious of the white people that I see at Church's Fried Chicken in my black neighborhood late at night. They look at me and I look at them. Who knows and who really cares?

Greg Griffin is a free lance writer. You can read his previous articles by logging on to his web page at www.greggriffin.com

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