On a cool autumn day in 1956, I was 9 years old, sitting on the front porch, waiting for my grandfather, Papa Manchester, to come home from work. I couldn’t help but wonder what I would say to him when I saw him. I was looking up and down the neighborhood, not for any real reason, but mostly trying to get my thoughts together. The number one songs on the music charts that year were “Don’t Be Cruel/Hound Dog” by Elvis Presley and “My Prayer” by The Platters. The President of the United States was Dwight David Eisenhower and the Vice President was Richard Millhouse Nixon. While I was thinking, I was remembering that just five minutes earlier, I had gotten a whipping from my grandmother, Big Mama. Why I got this whipping will come later.

My mother’s parents, Shawn Fred Manchester, who we all called “Papa Manchester” and Ellen Jane Manchester, who we all lovingly referred to as “Big Mama,” were the greatest grandparents anyone could have.

 My two sisters, Ranae and Sherrie, and I were truly blessed to have grandparents like them in our lives. I was the oldest. My sister Ranae was a year-and-a-half younger than I was and my youngest sister, Sherrie, was four years younger than me.

I also had two half-brothers, Tyron and Donte, and a half-sister, Debra, on my father’s side. We had the same father, Daddy D.P., but different mothers. Ranae and I were being raised by Big Mama and Papa Manchester. Sherrie, my youngest sister, was with my mother, Cara Ann and my stepfather, Daddy James. My father’s parents, Daddy Clack and Mama Clack, were raising Tyron, Donte and Debra.

Papa Manchester and Big Mama were from the South. Big Mama was from Kenneth , Missouri , and Papa Manchester was from Forest City , Arkansas . They came to Flint , Michigan back in the early ‘20s, when “colored people,” as they were called back then, emigrated to the North for a better life, better jobs and greater opportunity. My grandparents shared plenty of stories with us about what Flint was like in the ‘20s, ‘30s and ‘40s. Big Mama related these stories so many times, she said.

Back then, General Motors was recruiting and hiring people of all walks of life for employment. Colored people who had come here from all over the United Stated were living on Main Street and in the surrounding area. This street was right off Industrial Avenue , which was on the North end of Flint . People back then believed that General Motors had set up entire neighborhoods for its workers. A few blocks east of Main Street was another “colored” living area off St. John Street, which was also believed to be set up by General Motors to house mostly the “colored” employees. Just east of St. John Street., across the Flint River , was Flint ’s East Side , which housed many white employees of General Motors who had also emigrated to Flint from the South.