Metty Vargas Pellicer - Invisible History: Growing Up Colored in Cape Charles, Virginia

Miles Barnes noted Shore historian and Librarian of the Eastern Shore Public Library for 41 years.

It is an important contribution to the understanding of the black experience in Cape Charles and on the Eastern Shore. The narrative is always powerful and is especially moving where Mr. Godwin speaks of his family and his faith.

Marion Naar, Past President: Cape Charles Historical Society, Museum and Welcome Center

A most engaging memoir, at once intimate and universal. The book presents in his own words the vivid, moving life story of a sensitive, intelligent, and gregarious man through a period of great change for black Americans. Tom's long life and detailed knowledge of his own family history enables the account to extend from slavery times into segregation, the civil rights era, and the present day. Son of an economically successful family, Tom's description of life in a small segregated southern town is authentic and not without humor. Through his words one comes as close as would be possible to experience and deal with the daily insults, inequities and unfairness of life for a black person in a climate of unquestioned white supremacy, but within a town which also contained a vibrant and confident black community. The account is enriched by the author's framing Tom's core personal material in local and national historical context and adding observations from her own Filipino life experience. The book is a captivating read.

Mary Barrow, award-winning author of Small Moments, A Childs Memories of the Civil Rights Movement

The promise of our future is built on the foundation of our past. This carefully crafted memoir by Tom Godwin is a portrait of what it means to build a foundation. It is an honest portrait of Cape Charles, a small town in Virginia known as the Jewel of the Eastern Shore. As told to and written by Metty Vargas Pellicer, it specifically traces the African American communitys important contributions to the success of the town, a part of history that has been overlooked by earlier writers. It lays bare the joys, the accomplishments and the obstacles faced by African Americans as they built businesses, homes, schools, roads and lives that intertwined with their white neighbors. It should be read by students of social history. It should be read by the residents of the town and the state of Virginia. All of our futures are strengthened by acknowledging our shared foundations. It is a wonderful addition not only to the history of Cape Charles but also to the thinking of those concerned with the on-going disparities between the races.

Nancy Dalinsky, former resident of Cape Charles, now in Brussels, Belgium

This is your best book. It is professionally written, and the subject matter is very timely. It also puts Cape Charles into a historical context. This is my view about slavery:

Slavery is as old as the history of the beginning of homo sapiens. Even the ancient laws of Hammurabi, the Greeks and Romans so called democratic governance, King John's Magna Carta and the American Declaration of Independence addressed the issues of some human beings as being more equal than others.

It was what it was. But at the end of the French Revolution when the western world finally awakened and embraced the ideas of the Enlightenment (the right to dignity and freedom of every individual), then there is no more excuse for slavery to be part of any civilization.

Odelle Johnson Collins, former Board Member, Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel Commission

Thomas, my over-the-hump classmate and neighbor, has vividly depicted life for the Negro in Cape Charles during Segregation. Well done, friend.

Copyright 2020 Metty Vargas Pellicer

Print ISBN: 978-1-64718-724-8

Epub ISBN: 978-1-64718-725-5

Mobi ISBN: 978-1-64718-726-2

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

Published by BookLocker.com, Inc., St. Petersburg, Florida.

BookLocker.com, Inc.

2020

First Edition

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Pellicer, Metty Vargas

Invisible History: Growing Up Colored in Cape Charles, Virginia A Memoir by Tom Godwin, As Told To Metty Vargas Pellicer

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020913062

Keith Ansel April 12, 1961-August 13, 2011

To Keith Ansel Godwin, my son who brought love and joy to our family and made us happy in so many ways. He gave so much and asked for so little and left us much too soon. We will always hold him dear in our hearts.

I first met Tom at The Historic Palace Theater event sponsored by the Board of Trustees and Friends of the Cape Charles Memorial Library to celebrate the Librarys 100th Anniversary, A Cape Charles Century, Past, Present, and Future.

In the theater lobby, another community group was distributing fundraising information about the Rosenwald School Restoration Project. I had never heard of these Rosenwald Schools before.

According to the fundraising pamphlet there were 4,977 built throughout the rural South during the era of Segregation with seed money from Julius Rosenwald, a wealthy son of German-Jewish immigrants, who became the CEO of Sears Roebuck, Company. Booker T. Washington, a former slave who had become very influential as an eminent orator and educator, believed that education was the key to improving the lives of African Americans. He and Julius Rosenwald became friends and in 1917, Julius Rosenwald established the Rosenwald Fund and with Washingtons guidance these schools were built with active participation and support from the Black Community to support the construction of rural schools in the South, pay teacher salaries, and provide books and school supplies. These schools not only served as models of construction but became symbols of the African American communitys determination to fight for equality and the key role of education in that fight. In Virginia, 364 such schools were built and the one just outside the Cape Charles historic district, located just past the railroad overpass bridge fondly called the Hump by locals, was the beneficiary of the nights fundraising event.

Before the Civil War, it was illegal in the South for Black children to go to school. During the Reconstruction, when free public education became possible, Black children attended school for the first time. These schools were at the mercy of local governments for funding and were woefully inadequate.

From the end of the Reconstruction in 1877, until the early 20th century, the Supreme Court ruled that it was constitutional for states to allow segregation in public facilities. Jim Crow laws were enacted in the former Confederate states. These laws were intended to restore White supremacy and to disenfranchise Blacks, limit their freedom and remove protections won after the Civil War. It was evident that separate but not equal became the norm in practice, a continuation of racist practices in the South since before the Civil War. The schools were especially vulnerable, since many European-Americans objected to African-Americans being well educated, fearful that they would no longer be content to remain in their traditional roles such as field and service workers.