All We Had Was Each Other

In the Black community, family meant everything. We didn't belong just to our own family. We belonged to the community. The whole community was our family. It was just a feeling we all had, about each other. I'm not sure I have the words to express it. It's just that we all cared for each other. We were close to each other. We had this feeling of togetherness. We all felt it...I thought everybody lived that way. I didn't know there was anything different about the way I lived until they closed Broadway High School and I had to go to Madison High School. I say had to go because that's the way I felt about it. I didn't want to go. It was very scary...Even the school plays were closed to us. Unless the play had Black characters in it, like a butler or a maid. Then we could be in the play. In the gym the lockers and the showers were all segregated. They didn't want Black Kids using the same showers as the white kids used. The lockers in the dressing room. - Elsie Perry Payne.In "All We Had Was Each Other: The Black Community of Madison, Indiana", twenty Black residents of a small Ohio River town tell the stories of their lives. Madison, though in the North, had its cultural roots in the south, and for most of the 20th century the town was strictly segregated. In their own words, black men and women of Madison describe the deprivations of discrimination in their hometown: what it meant, personally and culturally, to be denied opportunities for participation in the educational, economic, political, and social life of the white community. And they describe how they created a community of their own, strong and viable, self-sustaining and mutually supportive of its members.Denied access to the resources of the white community, members of the Black community of Madison drew upon resources of their own deep commitment to family and religion, and to their own community school; hard work; self-discipline, self-responsibility, and self-respect. Many of the Black residents of Madison overcame the circumstances of their place and time to live strong and rewarding lives. Community was the key to their success: All we had was each other, and that was enough.