Truth Be Told: Virginia

Norfolk: The Baby in Berkley

Episode Summary

A young boy in Berkeley is forced to reconcile the love that he had from his community vs. the love he could have had from his Mother, if Norfolk could have loved her for who she was.

Episode Notes

 A young boy in Berkeley is forced to reconcile the love that he had from his community vs. the love he could have had from his Mother, if Norfolk could have loved her for who she was.

https://lgbtlifecenter.org/

https://www.pilotonline.com/2010/06/28/whats-in-a-name-berkley-section-of-norfolk/

Episode Transcription

(Inspiring music plays-like it's the start of an athletic competition)

Nichole Hill: You may recognize the voice you are about to hear. But chances are, you haven’t heard his story. 

Rev. Dr. Mayor Alexander: In the life of of a little Kenny Alexander in Berkeley, on the south side, it's, it was very relational family, church, Boys and Girls Club. 

Did not know that we were different. Different meaning being in an impoverished community. I had no idea because there was certainly a lot of love. A lot of support, and it was generational. 

When I was born, my Grandmother had already had nine children of her own. 

My Mother was 17 years old when she got pregnant. My Father was about 25. So a little older. However, my Grandmother decided that I would come and live with with her and her Husband and her nine children. And so I grew up with Aunts and Uncles who I considered as brothers and sisters. They were very supportive and being the baby in the home, I received a lot, an abundance of love and protection and support.

When my Grandmother brought me home from the hospital, her youngest child was only two years old. And her oldest child was 18 years old. And so I'm a newborn, and there are nine children, including my mother, who's 17. And so you have these stair steppers, (sound effect of him illustrating stairs) And so we grew up like sisters and brothers we, we bathed in the same tub. We wore each other’s  clothing. We slept head to toe. We ate from the same pot. I mean, it's--yeah, it's siblings. They're my people. They're my brothers and my sisters.

Brothers and sisters. They're my people. They're my brothers and sisters. Yeah. And so you can you can pick, you can choose who you want to be your brother, who you want to be your sister. 

Music fades out

Nichole Hill: Having nine children under the same roof called for rules and structure. 

Mayor Alexander: It was required that we do three things, one that we go to school, but there was no option of ducking out of school, no matter how sick, or how uncomfortable we were with whatever was going on, go to school. Number two, we had to participate in our church. And three, we had to participate in extracurricular activity. And I think that for me and for my siblings, that gave us that additional, undergirding foundation, about community about relationships.

My mother had me at 17 years old. My Mom was a tomboy. I mean, she lettered in every sport that a female could play at Booker T. Washington High School. And I didn't get any of those traits in sports. (Laughs) But she was great, a great athlete. 

My Mother left Norfolk at a very early age, she moved to New York. My family knew my Mother was was gay. I did not realize my Mother was gay until a neighbor who, whose damn blessed memory said something very ugly. Maybe this neighbor was experiencing some disabilities. And she used a very derogatory word to describe my Mother and said, "You need to go live with your ____ Mother."

And at that point, it was like an epiphany. Aha! Why did my mother leave so early in life to move to New York? And why couldn’t  she stay here? And it was because of her lifestyle. 

(beat)

My Grandmother was a Deaconess and Secretary of the church. My Grandfather was Clerk of the church. He was the Clerk and Deacon. My Great Grandfather was Chairman of the Deacon Ministry. And the church was only a very young church, founded in the very early 1900s, as a very young church and my family had, and still has strong ties and roots in the church foundation. And I guess my Mother just could not live an open a life as a gay woman in the 60s here in Norfolk, Virginia. 

So she moved to New York, where she lived with her partner. I visited summers and, and some holidays and she would come. But that was the reason that she left. 

She passed in 1985. In New York, she had come back, visited but went back to (New York)–where she passed away. I went recently to visit the brownstone where she lived, where I used to stay with her, 46 Fort Green Place right across from Brooklyn,Technical High School, corner of Flatbush in Fort Greene. I could walk to Jr.'s Market. 

I loved it, visiting with her in New York. But that was that was the reason she left and the reason my Grandmother decided that I would not go to live in New York. 

And it was the right decision for my Grandparents to raise me, absolutely the right decision. My Grandmother was–my Mother, new job working for the post office trying to get herself established. And she passed away at age 36, in New York, so 18 years after giving birth, to me, her only child, she passed away. And it was diabetes. 

My Grandmother protected–over protected, uh, because in my whole family, we never had that conversation about my mother.

Nichole Hill: It might be hard to imagine how conversations about his Mom never came up, especially after visits to see her up in New York, but no one seemed to have the words.

(Hum/drone, dust settling after bomb sound, with gentle uplifting synth beat)

Mayor Alexander: And I just came out about my Mother's uh, uh lifestyle. Just a few years ago, I felt comfortable. 

That you know, it's nothing to hide. 

I mean, it's it's okay. 

And so, just recently, I start talking openly about my Mother who she who she was. Yep. So yeah.

Nichole Hill: So why two years ago? What prompted this openness?

Mayor Alexander: The hate in America I–-to see politicians, propose policies, very discriminative policies, motivated by pure hate against people who are different, especially those who are gay, and queer. There's no place for it. And for my Mother, and my Grandmother, and my Grandfather to make a decision: it's probably best for you to, to go to New York or go live with relatives, so that you can be happy and so that you can live an open life. 

As a politician, I said, I'll be damned if I let that happen under my watch to another child. Because that child may not have the infrastructure, have that family, that community that I talked about, that I had. But for that community, where would I have ended up?

Do I think about what my life would have been like if my mother had lived here and stayed here? Would it have been the same? Would have been better? Would it, would it, would have been worse? Well heres the answer: I don't know. But I sure would have liked to find out. (Laughs)

Tell me what child wouldn’t want their Mother at a recital. 

Here's a kid who was the most talented, the most talented kid in every school that I've ever attended. Mother never ever seen him perform, ever. From K-12. Mother never seen him perform anything. 

First African American male to be a state senator from Norfolk. First African American male to be the Mayor of the City of Norfolk, took my father's business from our house and scaled it to the largest Black owned funeral home in the state. And my Mother's dead at 36. 

Now, would she have still been alive if she would have stayed here? I would argue that yeah,  probably because her diabetes was was was brought on by lifestyle. The infrastructure was not in New York to support her. But Grandmother did a great job. Grandfather did a great job, Father was here. My Brothers and Sisters who were my Aunts and Uncles. I mean, they all picked me. And they, of course, I'm here because largely, because of that, because of that unit.

Nichole Hill:  Visit our website Truthbetoldcommunity.com to find out ways to get involved, and share this episode with friends. 

This series was written by Jackie Glass and Hannah Sobol, edited and hosted by me, Nichole Hill, Sound Design by Trendel Lightburn, and our work has been supported by the Virginia African American Cultural Center through a grant from Virginia Tourism Corporation. Follow our work by subscribing wherever you get your podcasts. We couldn’t do this without people brave enough to share their experiences, so thank you Rev. Mayor Kenny Alexander!