Sophie's Other Child - Chapter Two

conceived in hell, born in strife

My father's family was notable. I tried several different words there, none seemed right. They weren’t notorious, famous, or infamous. They were notable. They served on boards. They were in the newspaper. One was a war hero who gave his life trying to save other soldiers. One was shot by Poncho Villa while trying to protect America. Back in those days, we really did have to worry about Mexicans coming across the border.

Their father, a man with one arm who built most of the roads in Atalla County, Mississippi, believed in Methodism and Education. Without much money, he made sure his brood got a degree at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi. One look at the big city, and none of his children returned to Hestervile, Mississippi.

His oldest child died in France, the victim of German mustard gas. His second oldest child studied education at Millsaps and became a school principal, then a school superintendent. Seeing how schools in Mississippi had to order textbooks, furniture, and supplies from other states and wait for the railroad to deliver them, he got the idea for a new business.

Moving back to Jackson, Alexander Boyd Campbell got a loan on his life insurance policy and started the Mississippi School Supply Company. His first employee was a brilliant and enterprising black man named Jim Woodson. His second employee was my grandfather, his younger brother, still at Millsaps. In time, he bought The Office Supply Company, then added The School Book Supply Company when Mississippi passed its first free textbook laws (we were one of the last). Through the years, they added Interstate School Supply Company and General Equipment manufacturers that, to this day, produced the best laboratory furniture in America.

Boyd Campbell twice served as the president of the US Chamber of Commerce. He consulted with two U.S. presidents. He traveled to China representing the American small businessman. He helped found St Dominic's Hospital, Lamar Life Corporation, and the Jackson Symphony Orchestra. He was the longest-serving lay person on the Millsaps College board of trustees, and rose to the level of treasurer, the highest office a lay person could hold.

My mother's family was also notable. Living in Learned and Lebanon in Hinds County, the Brady family excelled at having children. Unlike my father's family, they were mostly girls. Being Presbyterian, they sought degrees at Belhaven College in Jackson. Becoming educated as the twentieth century opened was considered a new hope for Mississippi.

My parents began dating in Junior High school. They were locked for life. My mother had other swains, but she never let them become attached. My father figured he had made his choice. There were no other girls. When the world went to war, my parents joined the ROTC together.

In college at Millsaps, my father continued ROTC. When Japan surrendered, ROTC closed its Millsaps chapter. My father transferred to the University of Mississippi, so he could continue with ROTC. My mother remained at Belhaven, studying education and home economics.

Upon graduation, my father was made a lieutenant in the newly formed US Air Force. He wanted to fly, but they said he was too tall and too heavy. Instead, they trained him for the newly invented Radar technology and assigned him to man the massive listening post in Germany. He spent the Korean War listening to see if the Soviet Union was coming across the border. They never did. If they had, he probably would have been one of the first killed.

My dad liked technology and Germany and considered making this his life's career. At the end of his tour, his father and his uncle started saying, “When are you coming home? We need you.” Mississippi can be very difficult to escape from. He returned to Jackson and took up a position at the newly acquired sheet-fed printing operation, which was added to The Office Supply Company.

Returning from Germany, my parents took up with other returning Central High School Graduates and moved into a duplex. Jack Floor and his wife Elenore (who everybody called “onie”) had the second unit, and Leon Lewis and his wife Jane took a unit in a duplex across the street.

These were their bohemian days. They shared kitchens. Nights were popcorn, gin rummy, and games of chuckle belly. Chuckle belly is a game where you lie in a circle on the floor with your head resting on the belly of the person next to you. One person says “ha!” and the second person says “ha ha!” and so it goes until everyone's head is bouncing off their neighbor’s belly with each “ha!” Until the laughter is real. It helps if you're drinking illegal beer. All beer was illegal. My father, William Winter, and Warren Hood were accused of orchestrating an event at the Jackson Country Club to end prohibition. If I knew they actually did this intentionally, I don't think I'd admit to it. I don't know, though, so your guess is as good as mine. Or is it?

Pretty soon, the Campbell and Flood families were swollen with babies. The Lewises struggled to get pregnant. Eventually, they adopted three remarkable children. Soon, there were babies invading the floors of the bohemian duplex complex.

My mother's first child was named for his father. James Boyd Campbell, Jr. Naming a child exactly after someone else in the family actually becomes something of a challenge. The child takes on the mantle of someone else's legacy, and they haven't even learned to eat by themselves or poop properly yet. They did the same to me. I don't know that I recommend it. It’s tough enough being a baby.

This went on for three years, then a second round of babies was in the oven. My father was promoted to the head of printing for the whole company and oversaw the installation of printing operations at the other Office Supply Company locations. Joseph William Campbell was born. Named for his two grandfathers, he came into this world with a mop of her black hair. It soon fell out and was replaced by one of the whitest tie heads you ever saw, which lasted for years.

A house was bought—a three-bedroom unit with asbestos siding. When my mother's father died, my grandmother moved in with us, spending six months in Jackson and six months in Atlanta with her other daughter. The two boys shared a bedroom and slept in bunk beds that broke down to twin beds. They were in my sister's bedroom for years, and then into the room for her two boys. God knows what happened to the ladder from when they were in a bunk bed configuration.

In 1954, the US Supreme Court decided the Brown vs Board of Education case, ending legal school segregation in the United States. The following year, photographs of the bloated and mutilated corpse of Emmett Till appeared in Life Magazine. The eyes of the world were on Mississippi, demanding change. This is the world my brothers were born into.

In 1960, Ross Barnett was elected governor of Mississippi on an anti-segregation ticket. He promised to protect Mississippi from the Brown v Board of Education ruling and “outside agitators.” At the Democratic National Convention, he presented himself as a candidate to lead the Democratic Party in opposition to John Kennedy's stance on race and integration. This became known as the beginning of the end of the Dixiecrats. By 1980, they were nearly all Republicans. I could write an entire other book about The Southern Strategy, its effect on Mississippi, and how the recently converted Dixiecrats took control of the Republican party in Mississippi, leaving more traditional Republicans like Gil Carmichael and Jack Reed swinging in the wind in their efforts to become governor.

My mother conceived again after the birth of my brother Joe. Solidly in her proud new house on Northside Drive and Audubon Park, the doctor examined my mother's swelling belly with his stethoscope. He could hear three heartbeats, hers and the twins. Needless to say. There was a celebration in the Campbell, Harris, Epps, and Brady households.

One night, my mother felt an urgent need to go to the bathroom. That happens with pregnant women. In her second trimester, she called for my father from the toilet. “I need to go to the hospital.” In the toilet were two, undeveloped, but clearly boy fetuses. Their eyes had not developed yet, but their fingers had. She panicked and flushed. On the drive to the hospital, she said, “I think they were boys.” My father tried to comfort her. But how could he?

What followed were many months of healing and deep depression. My parents continued to sleep together, but there were no more conjugal relations. My mother couldn't bear it. She poured her life into her two surviving boys.

My Uncle Boyd, who would eventually be named after, got divorced and contracted cancer. Cancer wasn't survivable then. His number was up. It was just a matter of knowing when the timer bell would ring.

On September 29, 1962, the University of Mississippi played Kentucky in Jackson. It had been almost two years since my mother's miscarriage. Mississippi School Supply Company had season tickets to every game at Veterans Memorial Stadium. We kind of had to. They paid us a fortune to install the bleachers and maintain them.

At the Kentucky game, Governor Ross Barnett took the microphone and screamed, “I love Mississippi! I love her people! Our customs! I love and respect our heritage!” Forty thousand people cheered. That night a riot broke out in Oxford Mississippi to protest the admission of James Meredith, a black man, as a student at the University of Mississippi. Federal forces were sent to Oxford to put down the riot and protect Meredith. For the most part, it wasn't Ole Miss Students in the riot. Most of the rioters were segregation extremists. Klan involvement was suspected. It’s been sixty-three years, and I suspect it too.

The next week, with 1962 new school orders in the bag, Mississippi School Supply Company would host the national convention for the National School Supply Equipment Association at the Broadwater Beach Motel in lovely Biloxi, Mississippi. A past president, this would be the last one for Boyd Campbell.

On the beach, full of good food, good friends, and an Autumn moon, my mother was feeling more herself again. In a Broadwater Beach Bungalow, with Ue o Muite Arukō, popularly known as the Sukiyaki song in America, playing on the radio, I was conceived. I know this because she told me a hundred times.

Back in Jackson, the doctor’s stethoscope said there was a single strong heartbeat. My mother prayed for a girl she would name Martha. If it were a boy, he'd be John Allen after his uncles. These plans were made before knowing the family patriarch, Alexander Boyd Campbell, would soon die.

Again, in her second trimester, toward the end, about the same point where she miscarried before, my mother started having bloody spots in her underwear. Some days, the doctor could hear my heartbeat, and some days he couldn't. Boyd Campbell died.

My mother was ordered to complete bed rest. My grandmother put off her six months in Atlanta to take care of my brothers and cook for the family. Time went on. My expected due date was in June of 1963. This part of the story always makes me sad. Having lost two babies, my mother sat in bed not knowing if I was dead or alive. That's torment. Considering what the miscarriages did to her mental state, I can only imagine how she felt.

1963 became a year of terror in Mississippi. The lead pastor at our church stepped down when lay members of the congregation wouldn't allow black Methodists to worship at Galloway Memorial United Methodist Church.

On June 12, 1963, Medgar Evers was murdered by a white fertilizer salesman from the Delta in his driveway. I would be almost forty before his killer was brought to justice. Doctors had been hearing a strong heartbeat from me for three weeks. My mother was no longer leaving blood spots.

On June 16th, four days after the Evers Murder, not quite a mile from where he was pronounced dead, my mother was admitted to the hospital for childbirth. While she was having normal contractions, the doctor said it could be the next day before I was born. If my father wanted to step out while she rested, he could. Jim Campbell met Jack Flood and Leon Lewis at Primos for hamburgers. They were old hats at this new baby thing. He ordered one to go for my mother, in case she felt like eating.

By the time they walked back over to the hospital, they were wheeling my mother back into her room. I was in the nursery getting cleaned up. I definitely had a heartbeat. Dumbfounded, everyone laughed at my father, still clutching the bag with the hamburger in it.

The devil wasn't done with Mississippi. A week later, there was an attempt on Reverend Ed King’s life. King was one of the people seeking to integrate Methodist churches, lunch counters, and other places of public accommodation. The Methodist conference broke ties with him. With severe damage to his face, no plastic surgeon would treat him. He wore those scars the rest of his life.

By the end of the year, I was baptized at Galloway United Methodist Church by a new minister. Before it was over, he, too, would break from Galloway before they integrated.

The Devil wasn't done with Mississippi in 1963. He had staked his claim. The murders would continue, as well as bombings, and in four more years, the KKK bombed the Jewish church in Jackson. The war was on, but I was here. A fat little baby with a gigantic birthmark over one eye. The doctor said my eyebrows would cover it. By the time puberty started, they almost had.