E. Dolores Johnson - Say Im Dead: A Family Memoir of Race, Secrets, and Love

Copyright 2020 by E. Dolores Johnson

All rights reserved
First edition
Published by Lawrence Hill Books
An imprint of Chicago Review Press Incorporated
814 North Franklin Street
Chicago, Illinois 60610

ISBN 978-1-64160-277-8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Johnson, E. Dolores, author.
Title: Say Im dead : a family memoir of race, secrets, and love / E. Dolores Johnson.
Other titles: Family memoir of race, secrets, and love
Description: Chicago : Lawrence Hill Books, [2020] | Summary: Fearful of violating Indianas anti-miscegenation laws in the 1940s, E. Dolores Johnsons black father and white mother fled Indianapolis to secretly marry. Johnson searched her fathers black genealogy and then was amazed to suddenly realize that her mothers whole white side was missing in family history. Johnson went searching for the white family who did not know she existed. When she found them, its not just their shock and her mothers shame that have to be overcome, but her own fraught experiences with whites.Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020003064 (print) | LCCN 2020003065 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781641602747 (cloth) | ISBN 9781641602754 (adobe pdf) |
ISBN 9781641602761 (mobi) | ISBN 9781641602778 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Johnson, E. Dolores. | Jackson, Ella Lewis, 1910-2005Family. | African AmericansNew YorkBuffaloBiography. | African AmericansRace identity. | Jackson family. | Lewis family. | Racially mixed familiesNew YorkBuffalo. | Interracial marriageNew YorkBuffalo. | Indianapolis (Ind.)Race relations. | Indianapolis (Ind.)Biography.
Classification: LCC E185.97.J67 J64 2020 (print) | LCC E185.97.J67
(ebook) | DDC 306.8509747/97dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020003064
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020003065

Interior design: Nord Compo

Printed in the United States of America
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For Mama and Jennifer, my fellow travelers

He began to have a dim feeling that, to attain his place in the world, he must be himself, and not another.

W. E. B. DuBois,
The Souls of Black Folks

Everything cant be explained by some general biological phrase.

Nella Larsen, Passing

M y identity has always been tangled up in the fraught definitions of Americas racism, just as it was a few years later when I drove onto the world corporate headquarters campus nestled back in low, rolling New Jersey hills, along with thousands of other professionals. Like them, I was suited up and carrying a presentation for the days meetings. Unlike the others, I was black and female.

I shut off Smokey Robinsons sweet crooning and took a minute to shape-shift into my oh-so-heavy white mask and to rehearse the code switching needed to get my ideas across to white colleagues. Then I walked briskly through the maze of corridors to my office.

It was 1977. My job managing part of the national marketing strategy for telephone companies business communications products was an ever-growing pile of assignments, most labeled URGENT or VERY URGENT, all due yesterday. That meant hammering out agreements with a team of engineers, lawyers, accountants, sales managers, and factories. The work was intense, but I was up to it. The real challenge was being respected as an equal in one of Americas largest companies, dominated by white males. Their normal old boy power was my mountain to climb.

But I was on it, as was my husband, Luther, who had gotten a Department of Defense job here in New Jersey after we fled that hellacious mess down south. At least up north in New Jersey people were more inclined to treat blacks fairly, which was some comfort. That didnt include the police, who routinely made the news profiling men stopped for driving while black. At work the companys legal compliance with affirmative action was an established procedure, though a human resources rep had called me about a form Id turned in the first day at orientation. She had just one question, about my profile.