Black Kids Can Smile Too

Spencer Ann

Inspired by “Children Gathered in Street, Harlem, New York, USA, 1963” by Leonard Freed

I have been the girl in this photograph before. I can see it in the way she holds the young boy close to her chest, in the slight smile on her face and in her white sweater that she promised her mother she wouldn’t get dirty while she hopscotched and foot raced down the street. They may all be children, but she watches over them as they all play, making sure the game is fair and whoever is counting for tag isn’t skipping over his own foot. There is so much love in this scene, so much warmth. It’s in the way their hands are placed over each others’ shoulders, particularly the one chubby hand that cradles over the coils of a shorter boys’ head. Upon closer observation and with the knowledge that these were taken against the backdrop of the civil rights movement, I realize there’s a very serious tone this photograph carries. It’s halfway attributed to it being black and white, but it is also because I know that the children are only allowed to play like this in their little pocket of Harlem; outside of it they must keep their hands to themselves and their heads held down and they will be addressed as “Boy” until they are grown men watching their own children play hopscotch, and when they leave this block they will hold their tongues except for to say “yes ma’am” and “thank you sir”, and their mothers will be grateful for every day they get to spend drawing hopscotch patterns on the street before they must walk in the gutter on the way to work like their fathers do. Such responsibility comes with being Black and trying to find pockets of joy in a country that spits on your face and tells you to be thankful for the rain.

Every Black child remembers the first time they realized that they were Black and how disadvantageous it was to be such a thing in this world. Mine was when the results of the Trayvon Martin case were aired on TV. I was ten and it was July, and we had every television in our home tuned to the same channel, so when the verdict read not guilty we heard it from every room in the house. But it was the primal scream that my mother let out that informed me of the pain I would be forced to experience while living in this country; it was in the way she held my brother close to her as she watched Zimmerman breathe a sigh of relief. There was an intense fear that paralyzed Black homes everywhere for a short while after that, as there always is after one of us is murdered publicly and without justice served. My brother wasn’t allowed outside without a chaperone for the rest of that summer, he was to be home before the sun set and he was never allowed to mumble, or sag his pants, or wear gold chains on top of his uniform. My mother began reciting prayers of protection over our heads before we went off to school, and I began reading about the history of our people in this country. Over years of studying I turned from a confused young child, saddened by the thought that there could be so much hate in our world, to a great flaming ball of rage, and directed my hostility toward the powers that be in America. By the time I was fourteen I was deeply invested in studying the social political movements that shaped our country, mostly paying attention to the ones where our people fought and rioted and screamed for justice. I delved deep into The L.A Riots and the events that occurred on Bloody Sunday. I read pages and pages on the lives of Nat Turner, Franz Fanon and Malcolm X. I only wrote about my plight as a young Black woman. I was only interested in discussing the hardness of the struggle and in seeking justice for the boy who was hung over a whistle, and for the boy who was killed over a pack of skittles. I began to recite my mothers prayers over my baby cousins and my big brother, watching the phone whenever it was ten minutes past the time he said he’d be home. I have been the girl in this photograph before.

It’s rather exhausting to hold so much rage in such a small body. A component to the Black condition is being exposed to images of people who look like you strung up on trees and brutally murdered time and time again until you begin to believe that is your fate. When I was in the sixth grade, we decorated our classroom doors for Black history month. The room down the hallway had the photo of “Whipped Peter” blown up to the size of its door for all 28 days. This was their only decoration. I walked past it every day not as myself, but as the only person in our grade who looked like him. The other children stared at me with wide eyes after we watched videos of Black people getting hosed down during the civil rights movement; in what I felt was bewilderment at my joyous personality, what with all of the violence my people have been subjected to. In the history books, we were not enslaved people, we were born slaves. All of the turmoil and chaos that has been so thoroughly documented all these years has been taken as the whole story of the Black American and everyone gets caught up in the violence of it all. In this way, the identity of the Black American becomes synonymous with that of a blind bull blundering through America, almost entirely helpless and angry at our circumstances. Black pain becomes a spectacle as bruised bodies get the prime tv slot on the news cycle while our mothers devote their prayers to us and teach us all that we should be thankful for the lives we get to live today, as our ancestors have fought with their very last breath to get us here and our people have had a long journey on a very hard road.

So when I first saw this image, of all these Black children with their heads held down, my very first impression was actually that they were praying; until I observed the playful wrinkles in the little boys’ shirt and the smirk on the girls lips which let me know these boys are living right here, and the frayed edges poking out of her plaits let me know that the girl is not angry, she’s been playing too. Such images of Black children doing something so innocent and lighthearted in a time period of great political unrest and turbulence are so very appreciated and must be preserved. They are just as important as those who depict their fathers and mothers getting hosed down. The Black experience is not entirely an endless battle against our oppressors, it is also the freedom of getting to build our own culture and raise children in our own homes in New Orleans, in Chicago, in Atlanta. It is Black brothers and sisters finding their voices in church and coming up with dances in the living room while dinner is being made. It is little Black girls and boys spending all summer outside, laughing and singing and playing on the street in Harlem.