Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black

“He leaned closer and spoke very softly. ‘There’s something else I want to tell you!’

‘What?’ I groaned.

‘Remember Miss Sallie who used to work for us in the tavern?’ Dad’s lower lip quivered. He looked ill. Had he always looked this unhealthy, I wondered, or was it something that happened on the trip? I felt my face—skin like putty, lips chapped and cracked. Had I changed, too?

‘It’s hard to tell you boys this.’ He paused, then slowly added,

‘But she’s really my momma. That means she’s your grandmother.’

‘But that can’t be, Dad! She’s colored!’ I whispered, lest I be overheard by the other white passengers on the bus.

‘That’s right, Billy,’ he continued, ‘She’s colored. That makes you part colored too […].’”

In this pivotal moment, the boys’ father, Tony, confesses to them that their grandmother is Black. Even though they’re only 9 and 10 years old, he knows that they’ll grasp what this portends for them. Like those who hear of the unexpected death of a relative, the boys’ first response is denial and then amazement. Knowing what it means to be Black, they spend days fantasizing that their parents will reunite and take them back to the relatively privileged life they led in Virginia.

“Colored! Colored! Colored!

He continued. ‘Life is going to be different from now on. In Virginia you were white boys. In Indiana you’re going to be colored boys. I want you to remember that you’re the same today that you were yesterday. But people in Indiana will treat you differently.’

I refused to believe Dad. I looked at Mike. His skin, like mine, was a light, almost pallid, white. He had Dad’s deep brown eyes, too, but our hair was straight. Leaning toward Dad, I examined his hands for a sign, a black mark. There was nothing. I knew I was right, but I sensed something was wrong. Fear overcame me as I faced the Ohio countryside and pondered the discovery of my life.

‘I don’t wanta be colored,’ Mike whined. ‘I don’t wanta be colored. We can’t go swimmin’ or skatin’,’ he said louder. Nearby passengers turned toward us.”

For the first time, Williams begins to voice an understanding of the absurdity of racial prejudice. This is less an innocent child’s inability to grasp an adult reality than a confrontation of obvious truth: Nothing has changed about the father or his sons, but by admitting that they’re of African American heritage, they’ve instantly relegated themselves to a totally different existence. It’s illogical and hurtful yet totally beyond the control of those who experience it.

“What I had mistaken for a tool shed in January was now our home. Three tiny rooms. Crammed into the narrow kitchen were a two-person table and an ancient potbellied stove. A two-burner hot plate was on a counter next to a cold water faucet. There was no sink or drain. Dirty water was tossed into the yard. Squeezed into the room next to the kitchen were Grandma’s bed, a couch, and a dresser. Her house did have one advantage over Aunt Bess’s—an indoor toilet in the tiny, windowless back room—but there was no sink, tub, or shower. Crammed next to the toilet was a wooden army folding cot—our bed. Mike curled up at one end, with me at the other.”

This is the final step down for the Williams brothers in the sense of lodging. Just weeks earlier, they lived in a suburban house in Alexandria, Virginia. From that, they returned to sleeping in their father’s tavern, where occasional late-night intrusions interrupted them. Upon arriving in Muncie, they first shelter in Great Aunt Bess’s home, from which they’re ejected to go either into the care of an orphanage or to the home of their Grandmother Sallie, who clearly doesn’t want them. The step down in lodging symbolizes their step down in social status and potential. No longer eligible for inclusion in a middle-class white community, they’re now pale, unwanted intruders in a Black community.

“My father’s father lived in a fine antebellum house in the rolling hills of Bowling Green. He was a man of wealth and leisure, a true son of the South. My grandmother worked for his wealthy white family for less than a year before she became pregnant by the young master of the household. Immediately, she was fired from her job. After my father’s birth, his light skin was a daily reminder in turn-of-the-century Bowling Green of the forbidden and unforgivable star-crossed union between black and white. Hostile stares on the streets and murmurs in the stores about her “white n*****” baby were followed by relentless demands from both whites and blacks to flee that racially torn town. Yet my illiterate grandmother managed to withstand the attacks. She drew strength from her ability to challenge the prized racial purity of the city, parading her ‘white’ baby in a shabby, wooden cart she pulled while shopping downtown.”

As he gets to know his Black relatives, Williams learns more about the history of his father’s family. His father’s birth, he learns, is a story that plays out all too often in the Black community. Any child who is the product of a Black and white relationship is automatically considered fully Black. A child who is fair skinned, as Tony and his two sons are, is also anathema in the Black community. While Sallie for a time was adamant about showing her “white” child in Bowling Green, the brutal murder of her brother prompted her to escape to Muncie. Williams realizes that his brother and him are again playing out the drama of being biracial children.

“Then there was the nightly recitation of lost ambition. Dad became morose when he recounted failed dreams of becoming a lawyer. But he would brighten as he quipped, ‘I’ve got me a big shot lawyer in the making. He’s sitting over there gettin’ coal dust on his books. He’s gonna be the man I wanted to be. Right, Counselor?’ All eyes in the room turned toward me. I never wanted to say anything at all. I preferred the role of silent spectator, but every night Dad challenged me. He expected me to avoid his failures and right all the wrongs done to my family and the entire Negro race. It was a tough order for a ten-year-old boy. Even though Mike sat beside me, I was the one chosen.”

Rather than taking his boys away from the deprivation they experienced at Sallie’s house, Tony moves in with them. The result is a nightly parade of drinking and gambling friends. Each night, the ritual is the same: loud conversations and disputes, eventually leading to Tony’s repeated, remorseful description of his lost opportunities along with predictions of Williams’s coming glories. In contrast, Williams quietly does his homework in the room’s only available space, alongside a small coal-burning stove, all the while feeling unequal to his father’s vision.

“He stumbled over a stone on the track bed, then looked up. ‘People in Indiana never let you forget you’re a n*****! Look at Momma. She’s been cooking at the drive-in for damn near fifteen years. She can’t even walk in the front door. They treat her like a kid when she’s the oldest woman there. All they can say to her is “Hi, Sallie Ann.”’ He mimicked them with a high falsetto voice.”

Tony is speaking in a moment of great frustration. He and his sons are returning home from a walk to the unemployment office in downtown Muncie to find any available jobs. The boys express a longing to return to Virginia. Their father explains that everything they possessed there is gone and now he has no job opportunities in Muncie. He attributes this to being Black. His intent was to earn some money and relocate with his sons to California, where he assumes more opportunity exists and he might assume a white identity. He offhandedly says that he may have to send the boys to an orphanage if his mother can’t support them.

“Just then we heard the whistle of a passenger train. We stepped off the tracks and stood with our backs against the siding of an abandoned warehouse. The screech of steel wheels slicing against the groaning tracks shut out the rest of the world. Lighted coach windows blinked past us. I gazed at the passengers, so isolated and peaceful, lounging in their seats, with their heads resting against sparkling white cotton cloths. Already robbed of so many dreams, could I believe Dad when he said that one day Muncie would be just a vague memory? Was it idle boasting, or was there a small kernel of truth in his words? He was a master at drawing tantalizing visions that never materialized. Though only ten years old, I faced one of the hardest choices of my life: to dream or to despair. Too young to realize the odds against any one of us ever walking away from those tracks and changing the circumstances of our lives, I chose to dream.”

This is one of the most significant moments in Williams’s life, and it comes when he’s only 10 years old. In a moment of disillusionment, having just secured a promise from this father that they won’t be sent to an orphanage, Williams sees a passing train filled with seemingly unconcerned, casual passengers. Fueled by his desire to live a life of hope, Williams decides that he’ll dream and fulfill a better future rather than surrendering to despair. He notes in passing that had he grasped the odds facing him at that moment, he might not have chosen hope.

“After dinner I noticed Bishop Sanders momentarily alone. He stood at the door, toothpick in hand, plucking remnants of the chicken dinner from his teeth. I wanted to join the church, but there was one dream I couldn’t surrender. Could he help me?

In a fumbling manner I put the question to him. Then I stood meekly, waiting for an answer.

He laughed. ‘Sonny, don’t you know that it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a lawyer to enter the Kingdom of Heaven?’

Unwilling to give up my dream of becoming a lawyer, I turned away from him. Yet his sermon cycled over and over in my mind during our walk home with Miss Dora. My faith grew as I looked at her and believed life would get better, that there was a reason for everything, and that the Lord brought us to her to help us find our way.”

After Miss Dora takes the Williams brothers into her home, she emphasizes the importance of church life and faith. One Sunday, a barrage of people pressure Williams to join the church. He resists, as he wants to know joining the church relates to his possible career choice. When he later asks the pastor his question, he confronts the stark alternative: He can either be a lawyer or go to Heaven. Williams presents this exchange in a buoyant tone, portraying the pastor as somewhat indulgent given his ability to condemn sinners and pronounce who is worthy of entry into Heaven. A curious aspect of this is the pastor’s liberal interpretation of Matthew 19:24, a Bible passage that speaks to the difficulty the rich have in entering the Kingdom of God but says nothing about lawyers.

“At the beginning I was angry that he didn’t try harder to find work for himself and support us the way he had in Virginia. But the first lesson I learned was that my anger had no effect on him, and more important, it didn’t keep me from going to bed hungry. Mike and I resigned ourselves to the fact that we were on our own. As we made our way to our jobs, we often passed Dad on the street corners sharing jokes and wine with his buddies. It was infuriating as we passed to hear him brag to his companions, ‘My boys know how to hustle.’”

Although Tony promises to undergird the financial needs of his sons while they live with Dora, he rarely follows through on this promise. Instead, he criticizes his boys for not providing for themselves and forces them to find jobs while they’re years from even being teenagers. Williams records this as one of his great lessons: No matter how angry he is, his father doesn’t care. No matter how righteous his anger is, it doesn’t put food on the table. It’s ironic that as Tony’s boys pass by on their way to work, he idles, bragging about his sons being hustlers. An even greater irony is that Williams goes beyond merely being a hustler to understanding that he must totally disregard his father’s promises.

“In the refuge of Uncle Osco’s sitting room, I had laughed at the pale, jowly southerner. In a white sheet and pointed hat, he looked more like the ‘dreg of society’ than anybody I knew. Yet his nasal repetition of ‘mongrel mulatto’ finally hit like a thunderbolt. He was talking about me. I was the Klan’s worst nightmare. I was what the violence directed against integration was all about. I was what they hated and wanted to destroy. And that was the biggest puzzle in the world to me because I had absolutely nothing.”

Once Williams becomes attuned to the absurdity, unfairness, and poverty of his life, he stumbles onto another level of prejudice. Beyond merely wanting to confine and marginalize the lives of Black citizens, among some white Americans—which the Klan epitomizes—the greatest fear is the mixing of the races, which biracial children embody. While watching a television interview of a Klansman, this realization strikes Williams with amazing clarity. He’s stunned, wondering why he’s such a threat to bigoted white people since he possesses nothing and harbors no desire to harm anyone. This fear reemerges when adults warn Williams not to show any interest in white girls. 

“For the next several weeks pages from yellow legal pads littered Grandma’s floor. She didn’t have much use for the Republicans. Every time Dad raved about them, she countered with stories from her early days in Muncie when the Klan was strong and had infiltrated the Republican party. The Klan openly paraded in Muncie during the 1920s. Once a Republican party leader astride his white stallion during a Klan parade threatened Grandma with a beating if she didn’t salute a Confederate flag. She was so terrified she peed on herself. In 1954, that very same Klansman was one of Muncie’s most prominent citizens, revered by many residents as a patriarch of the Republican party.”

As an opportunist, Tony is willing to align himself with any person or group he thinks can help him. When he writes political brochures for the county Republican party, his mother tries to dissuade him by pointing out that the Klan infiltrated the party some years earlier and apparently still has ongoing ties. Tony pays no attention, volunteering himself and his boys for duty. When the Republicans do well in the local election, Tony’s reward is being made the city hall janitor.

“‘Nobody would’ve bothered Dad,’ I insisted. ‘He owned a restaurant and tavern and made a lot of money.’

‘It don’t make no difference what he owned. He was still a n*****, and if they found him out, he would’a been a dead n*****. You better watch out too, boy, and not mess around with no white girls. It was the ruination of your daddy. I bet them killers don’t get a day. Anybody that growed up in the South know they ain’t going to jail. And probably wouldn’t, even if they done it here.’”

This exchange is part of a discussion between Williams and his Grandmother Sallie after he reads her a newspaper article about the arrest of white men who have been charged with the murder of Black teenager Emmitt Till, who allegedly whistled at a white woman. Sallie notes that she always feared something like Till’s murder would happen to Tony while he was in Virginia. Her comments are eerily prescient, since those accused of Till’s murder were acquitted.

“‘She really ain’t my mother and Keg ain’t my father either…I’m adopted.’ He lowered his head and continued in a whisper. ‘Nobody knows it around here, but my daddy was colored and my momma was white. Momma got me from an orphanage in Lincoln, Nebraska.’

I was stunned by the revelation. Brian’s golden skin and brown curly hair matched that of Mrs. Settles, so he never had to justify his color as I did. But for the first time I began to understand why his face reddened when Jerry hailed ‘the white boys’ as we joined our Project playmates. Though I continued to endure barbed teasing about my white relatives, I began to take some solace in the belief that there were many more members of the black community who wanted to ignore white relatives than one might imagine. Denial of their full heritage was due less to anger and prejudice toward their white families than the total and absolute rejection of their existence by them.”

This is another awakening moment for Williams, as his close friend Brian Settles describes his secretly biracial status. Williams suddenly realizes that he’s not the only biracial person in Muncie. As he reflects on this knowledge, he speculates that the Black community may have many people who, like himself, have diverse parentage. In addition, he grasps that most individuals have mixed feelings about it and keep the information to themselves because sharing it would lead to prejudicial treatment from both the Black and white communities.

“He had tried to quit drinking so many times that I lost count. But a few days without a drink caused the anger and guilt feelings about the loss of his business and family to create a depression of such an intolerable level that he just could not face it. Grandma was always threatened by Dad’s struggle for sobriety. It invariably included an attempt to sober her up as well. Although I didn’t recognize it then, I believe the DT’s and blackouts truly scared him, and like any sane person, he was afraid he was going to die. The men from Alcoholics Anonymous had convinced him that drastic action was required. Dad had sporadically attended AA meetings over the years, but recently AA had begun to play a larger role in our lives. The white men counseled Dad in coffee shops and on street corners. One ‘sponsor’ felt Dad needed a totally different environment. It was hard to be optimistic with a history of so many failed attempts, but self-commitment to the state hospital seemed radical enough to offer new hope. So began the summer of ‘the cure.’”

When Williams is in junior high school, his father’s alcohol use advances to the point that it has extreme health consequences. Attempting to quit drinking, Tony voluntarily commits himself to a state mental hospital. After attaining enforced sobriety, Tony convinces those charge of the institution that he’s making stellar progress. He’s sent to a different facility, closer to his home, and placed in charge of the sobriety of other resident patients. Soon thereafter, he’s not only drinking but taking other residents on binges as well.

“Later, as we were leaving Joe’s, I complained to Dad, ‘Why do you call me white? I’m not white. And Mike’s not a n*****. Miss Dora said being a n***** ain’t got nothing to do with color. It’s a bad, low-down person.’

‘Billy, you’re supposed to be a smart boy, but you haven’t learned a damn thing in Muncie. Don’t you remember the only time I was somebody was when I was white? In Muncie, I’m just another n*****. You’re smart enough to make it out of this hellhole. You brother’s not.’”

This conversation takes place between Williams and his father after they leave an establishment where Tony parades his boys, forcing them to demonstrate their talents, and then goads them into fighting one another, striking Williams repeatedly until he attacks and overwhelms Mike. Dismayed at his father’s behavior and denigration of his brother, when they leave the joint, Williams asks his father why he uses a racial epithet to describe Mike. Tony’s response characterizes his attitude toward the brothers throughout the memoir.

“Now I was an anonymous speck of salt under the dim streetlight. I wrestled with the fact that Muncie would not permit me to date white girls, and apparently couldn’t tolerate seeing me with black girls either. Muncie’s white community would only be satisfied with an inconspicuous and unobtrusive eunuch. My very existence made people uncomfortable and shattered too many racial taboos. Dating for me was going to be like swimming in shark-infested waters. I would have to give it up.”

This awakening moment occurs after Williams takes an attractive Black girl to a Boys Club party. Along the way, white people gawk at them and shout racial epithets, as they assume that he’s a white boy dating a Black girl. At the party, where many of the Black youth present don’t know Williams, people are equally unaccepting. Later, sitting alone and reflecting on the experience, he recognizes—in a way like the moment he realized how the Klan would detest him—that he’s anathema as a dating partner for both races.

“There were two cafeteria serving lines, the ‘á la carte’ line, with a wide selection, and the cheap ‘A’ lunch line. Ben made a dash for the ‘á la carte’ side. I stood in the small ‘A’ lunch line, thankful I had the necessary thirty-five cents. A pang of jealously overcame me as I watched Ben pile his tray high with sandwiches, chips, and desserts. I realized I did not have four extra pennies for a second carton of milk. But Mrs. Reese, our neighbor, worked in the cafeteria. As she served the food, she winked, and she gave me very generous portions.”

This passage refers to Williams’s white cousin, Ben, who’s also a student at Muncie Central High. Ben attempts to completely avoid Williams except when he needs help from him. Consigned to the inexpensive lunch line along with most other Black students, Williams receives consolation when a family neighbor working in the lunch line gives him larger portions. This exemplifies the small kindnesses Williams refers to that give him the strength to persevere.

“‘A.D., one thing I want to get clear ‘fore we get married. Them boys was here when you got here, and gonna be here when you gone. And if you don’t like that, I don’ see no reason for us to get married.’

The final words were barely out of her mouth before A.D. gushed an apology. […] They were married in a private Justice of the Peace ceremony in a matter of days. I can still recall Miss Dora beaming like a schoolgirl, flushed with happiness, as she walked through the front door. She wore her finest Sunday dress. She had curled her hair and even wore a tinge of rouge. In the magic of the moment I kissed her and congratulated A.D. That evening as I lay in bed I realized that she had been willing to sacrifice her joy and even economic security for us.”

A poverty-stricken widow, Miss Dora is courted by the widower A.D. Smith. Marrying him will provide her with financial security as well as companionship. Like others in the Black community, Smith tries to convince Dora to get the boys out of her house. She stoutly informs him that, in a choice between himself and the brothers, he’ll lose. Overhearing this exchange, Williams realizes the depths of the sacrifice Dora has made on behalf of him and his brother.

“[…] some ‘big shot’ politician rose from the front row of chairs behind him. The ‘‘POI” leaned across the podium and kissed Kennedy on the cheek. Even from a distance I could see shock register on Kennedy’s face. I had seen male politicians give a friendly embrace to female supporters, but I had never seen one male politician kiss another. When the crowd roared its approval, Kennedy ignited them again by throwing a kiss to the crowd. The response was deafening. Who was the mystery man? […] Whoever he was, he would not sit down. He continued to wave to the crowd. The mystery politician twirled his hat in the air. Standing and straining to see above the crowd, I tried to catch a glimpse of him as he turned toward the south side. I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was Dad!”

This describes one of the most hilarious yet humiliating incidents resulting from Tony’s drinking. Having worked diligently for the Republican party, Tony somehow ends up on the dais with the state’s most important Democratic politicians to welcome John F. Kennedy. As an indirect result of this stunt, Tony is arrested for drunk and disorderly behavior and spends five days in jail, where other inmates revere him as the man who kissed the future President of the United States.

“I didn’t think Dad could beat me in a fight, but I really didn’t want to fight him. Yet when I saw a third punch coming, I knew I had no choice. I blocked it with my left hand and punched him in the chest with my right as hard as I could. Dad tumbled backward into the bathtub. I don’t know who was more surprised—Dad, that I had hit him, or me, that I’d finally had enough. [...] Pulling himself out of the bathtub with as much grace as he could muster, he carefully avoided touching me. […] Dad stormed out of the house. He never hit me again, nor did he ever mention the incident. Although my eye was swelling shut, and the pain was excruciating, I felt an exhilarating sense of freedom on the day of my eighteenth birthday.”

Tony invariably gets his sons to do his bidding until the point when, after they do their father’s janitorial work for him, he gambles away the paycheck he’s supposed to share with them. Williams then refuses to do his father’s job anymore, resulting in Tony’s drunkenly assaulting him in Dora’s bathroom. They never discuss the incident, but Tony stops expecting Williams to honor his arbitrary demands.

“I have always felt a lot of guilt over the years about how Mike’s life unfolded, often wondering if there was something I could have done for him that I did not. Even if I didn’t fail him, what caused our lives to diverge so sharply? I believe that in his own way Dad loved both of us, but I have always wondered why he treated us so differently. Did he need for one son to fulfill his thwarted ambition, and for the other to accompany him in failure?”

Concluding a brief chapter that describes the downward arc of Mike’s life, Williams wonders what more he could have done to convince his brother not to follow through on decisions that were clearly wrong and harmful. Mike apparently became the living embodiment of his father’s predictions. Thus, the better question may be what it would’ve been like for Mike if his father had predicted the same glorious future for him that he did for Williams. The brothers each embodied a portion of Tony’s life—one glorious and full of achievement and promise, the other replete with failure and indulgence.

“A short pale woman opened the inner door and moved cautiously to the screen. Peering through the wire mesh, I strained to recognize her. She didn’t look like my uncle’s wife. Then it hit me. I was looking at my mother. If we had passed on the street, I would not have known her. My last memories were of a tall, beautiful woman with long auburn hair. Now I towered over a small woman whose eyes moved with uncertainty. As she stepped onto the porch, I searched in vain for something familiar—the curl of her lip, the color of her hair, even the smell of her soap. Yet nothing was familiar. She was my mother, but she was a stranger. ”

After Williams has graduated from high school and is a college student, Mike and he finally get to see his birth mother again after 10 years of longing. For Williams, however, this reunion is much like his disappointing reunion with his father, who abandoned them for several months after moving them to Muncie. Williams is dissatisfied with his mother’s explanation of why she didn’t contact them—even when she was in Muncie and secretly watched them walk to school. He recognizes that Mary wants to negate the past 10 years of their lives by having them move to Virginia and pretend again that they’re white.

“wedny Oct 31, 1967

My dear son greg only a few line to let you know that i gat your seet and loveli letter. same time go well and doing pretty good. hope your are well and duen finne. Mike was here last week and stay 2 night. he look well and was glad to seen him. greg I thank about you every day and night and get lonesom and want to see you and wish you was still in Muncie. But I know you are try to go to school and try to wark and be a lawyer and I hope I will live to see you make it. I wish I had maney to help you some But Idont dont have it Im just a poor old lady. Buster is duin prety good now he’s been sober two months. now he look so much better go nice and clean. he com by evury morning to see how 1m feal. well it get cold her now and that near wenter now you write when you can Because I all way want to hear from you

love all way, your truly mother

Dora Smith.”

Williams kept this brief letter, full of typos, from when he was a struggling college student. He contrasts this letter, from the semi-literate woman who took him in and became his “truly mother,” with his earlier portrayal of his mother, Mary, an exceedingly bright and well-read woman who deserted him and his brother. For Williams, Dora was truly his mother, and he named his daughter, Natalia Dora, after her.