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Teresa Gaston, A Quiet Superheroine By Diane Gaston
It was the mid 1960s in Alabama, on the same Army base where the National Guard was billeted when Governor George Wallace stood in the doors of the University of Alabama. It was a volatile time, a time when images of the civil rights movement were broadcast around the world. Out of sight of cameras, so quietly even her teenaged daughter did not realize, a most unlikely woman became a superheroine.
My mother, Teresa Gaston.
We lived at Fort McClellan, Alabama, about 150 miles from the historic hot spots of Selma and Montgomery. My father was a colonel in the U.S. Army, and this was the first time he was stationed in the Deep South. At that time, discrimination against African-Americans could be found in any part of the country, including within the ranks of the Army, but in Alabama and other southern states it was the law. We had never before lived in a state that practiced segregation. The Army had been desegregated for years, and that was what we were accustomed to. At that time in Alabama, the home state of Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and other courageous African-Americans, one could still find water fountains saying “for whites only.”
Because the Army was desegregated, a few African-American families were stationed at Fort McClellan, a posting that must have been very difficult for them. Their children had to attend segregated schools, “Negro schools” that were separate and not equal. Off post, the African-American families would have suffered the same discrimination as the local African-American citizens. Yet an African-American soldier could not refuse being stationed in Alabama. It was his duty to go where the Army sent him.
The military was not just a job. It was a life that encompassed the whole family, who were expected to behave according to military standards. For example, I answered the phone, “Colonel Gaston’s quarters. Diane speaking,” and if we children were anywhere near the raising or lowering of the flag, we stopped and faced the flag with our hands over our hearts. At Fort McClellan, my father was about the fifth highest ranking officer on the post. Because of his high rank, my mother was expected to be active in the Officers Wives Club and in their charitable and social activities. To do otherwise would have reflected badly on my father’s military career.
My mother was a very shy person. She left school in the 11th grade and consequently believed she was not as intelligent as women with more education, even though she was an excellent bridge player and an avid reader. She had very little confidence in herself. The Officers Wives Club was directed by the post commander’s wife and when this woman asked my mother to head up a committee, my mother could not refuse, even though it was difficult for my mother to assert herself as a leader.
My mother’s superheroine moment came when an African-American officer’s wife volunteered to serve on my mother’s committee. The post commander’s wife, a southern woman, ordered my mother to refuse. My shy, insecure mother was faced with turning away the African-American woman, who must have been quite isolated in the larger community, or locking horns with the most powerful woman on the Army base, powerful enough to hurt my father’s career. Luckily, my father supported my mother in whatever she decided to do. I, on the other hand, was so busy being a teenager that I was mostly oblivious to my mother’s moment of courage.
My mother included the African-American woman on her committee.
It would have made sense for my mother to make her decision an issue of civil rights, equality, and fairness. My mother believed in all those things, and it was the perfect time in history to take such a social stand. Her reason for accepting the African-American woman on her committee, however, was based on something deeper than a social cause. It was based on something that ought to be at the root of all human interaction.
My mother could not bear to hurt the African-American woman’s feelings.
February is Black History Month, an appropriate time for me to belatedly honor my mother as a superheroine for her quiet, largely unnoticed, courageous act. My mother, timid though she was, always considered other people's feelings, not their skin color or anything else. Underneath it all, isn’t this the very essence of equality?
By 1996, 30 years later, Fort McClellan’s post commander was Major General Ralph Wooten, an African-American.
The neighborhood where Diane lived in Fort McClellan, Buckner Circle (above), is now an Alabama historical landmark. Her INNOCENCE AND IMPROPRIETY is available now on eHarlequin.com and will be in bookstores in March 2007.
To read last month's SuperHeroines article, click here.
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