No, this isn’t a picture of Paul DeMarco. It’s Mr. Rogers. But they are alike in some important ways…
By Paul V. DeMarco
Guest Columnist
When our family moved to Marion in 1993, we knew very little about the place. We had visited to interview for what would become my first job, but had little time to search for a home. Without the benefit of internet browsing, we ended up renting a house we had only seen in a video (shot with an old-fashioned video camera). Once we moved in, we discovered that our neighborhood was all white.
This was, of course, not unexpected. Many neighborhoods in our country remain homogeneous. I never saw a black person in the blue-collar neighborhood in Charleston where I grew up.
But I didn’t choose the neighborhood where I grew up. I had chosen, albeit hastily, this one. Not that we had many other choices. Few small towns have neighborhoods that reflect the racial and economic diversity of the population at large. Many towns still have recognizable dividing lines. In some places it is the railroad tracks. In Marion, it is one of the main thoroughfares, Liberty Street, that marks the invisible line, once strictly enforced, between the black and white sides of town.
My hope when we moved in was that the neighborhood would grow more diverse over time, and that hope has been realized. Slowly, more and more black neighbors have moved in. In 2018, a retired black woman bought the house across the street from us. She is a good neighbor. We see each other in our front yards and speak. We enjoy looking at each other’s flowers.
During her first Christmas season, I carried over a small container of goodies, something we have done every Christmas for our closest neighbors. A few days later, as the sun was setting on Christmas Eve, she came to our front door and reciprocated. As she handed us her gift, she said, “Thank you for accepting me into the neighborhood.”
I think often of those eight words and all they say about American society. It is a sentence foreign to me. It would never occur to me that my neighbors might not accept me. But this was her first time as a homeowner, coming back South after a career in the Northeast. She knew our nation’s history – redlining, white flight, resistance to blacks moving into all-white spaces (exemplified most violently in 1951 in Cicero, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago). She understood that she was a pioneer in our white neighborhood. She knew, in a way that I could never know, the fear of being ignored, rejected, or despised because of who she was.
It also was a personal affirmation for my wife and me. We had done nothing special. We had treated her like any other neighbor – usually a brief greeting and a smile, sometimes walking across the street for a longer chat on a Saturday morning, watching the house and taking the mail when the other was away. But those mundane kindnesses were magnified to her in a way I did not recognize until she visited us that Christmas Eve.
I still have much to learn, as was demonstrated at her housewarming the next spring. She was very excited to have her neighbors, friends, and family share her joy as a homeowner. She worked for months redecorating and preparing. She put in an above-ground pool in the backyard. Finally, the day came. Upon arriving, every guest was invited inside for a tour. Then we congregated in the garage, and the inevitable happened. All her white neighbors were gathered in one corner, while her friends and family were in the other.
Her sister told me clandestinely that her birthday was in a few days and that they had, unbeknownst to her, bought a cake and were about to present it to her. Here was my moment, I thought. I would unite us all in song by leading “Happy Birthday!” But as the cake arrived and I opened my mouth to sing, after the first syllable I discovered that the black partygoers were singing a different “Happy Birthday.” I learned that day that there is another version of “Happy Birthday” that was written in 1980 by Stevie Wonder to promote adoption of the MLK holiday. The chorus of Wonder’s song is a marvelous, up-tempo tune, much more melodic and fun than the dirge that I was accustomed to singing.
It was painful to grasp that this song, an important part of black social life for decades, was something about which I was ignorant. But the reason was obvious. I’d never had a black neighbor or close black friend. So I was never invited to any birthday parties where that version would be sung.
In the five years since the housewarming, the neighborhood has continued to diversify. From my side yard, I can now see three other homes owned by black or mixed families. Seeing black neighbors walking past our home is no longer a rarity.
Bit by bit, the kind of diversification that my neighborhood is undergoing could lead to a society that is, well, more neighborly. If we live near people who look different from the way we do, we will know them as human beings. We will be better equipped to resist relying on caricatures of them drawn by those politicians and media whose livelihoods depend on us fearing each other. I’m confident that if Mr. Rogers could visit my neighborhood, he would be cheered by the changes.
A version of this column appeared in the June 20th edition of the Post and Courier-Pee Dee.
