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  As disappointing as it was, this young woman’s story rang completely true to me. Even though the purpose of the organization was to create a support system for the black child who might otherwise feel like an outsider in a predominately white world, it nevertheless reflected some of the best and worst characteristics of the privileged class. From the time I entered the group at age six or seven until I graduated at seventeen, I saw moments that were truly inspiring, as well as some that were the most heartbreaking of my childhood. There were good kids and there were mean kids, thoughtful parents and jealous parents.

  Even though we kids were constantly told how we were all “in this together,” there were often cliques among the kids and the parents. Sometimes they divided along geographical lines, with certain kids sticking with kids from their own town, or hanging out with the kids of parents who went to the same black colleges or boarding schools. But more often they divided along economic lines, with the doctor families sticking together with the affluent lawyer families, and the more middle-class clique consisting of kids whose fathers were educators, entrepreneurs, or successful civil service people. Because many of the events and meetings took place in people’s homes, the kids were acutely aware of each other’s homes and cars.

  “Your house is so small, I walked in the front door and fell out the back.”

  “Your kitchen is so tiny, I lit a cigarette and your mother asked, ‘Who turned up the heat?’”

  “Your garage is so small, you need a shoehorn to get your car inside.”

  The four-bedroom home I grew up in didn’t compare with the large Victorians or stately colonials of some of my fellow Jack and Jill friends. And I can still remember the hurtful remarks that some of them made to me when we were no more than eleven or twelve years old. Even though the rest of the world would have seen our house as roomy and comfortable, I suddenly saw it as embarrassingly small during these Jack and Jill get-togethers. Fortunately, the house sat inside a neighborhood that matched or surpassed most of my other Jack and Jillers’. But in our world, you were supposed to have the whole package in order: a good neighborhood or two fancy cars didn’t get you off the hook. As new kids were inducted into the organization, they too were subjected to house jokes (“Your house is so small…”) or neighborhood jokes (“Your street is so tacky…”) until another aspect of their lifestyles or families was found to put them to shame. Virtually everything was up for discussion and comparison: your allowance, your father’s job, your spring vacation, your stereo, your mother’s car, your housekeeper, your complexion, and even the size of your family’s summer home.

  In its early years, Jack and Jill—like many groups that catered to the black establishment in the first half of the twentieth century—attracted a negative reaction from many blacks who lacked the resources, the pedigree, or the physical appearance to be considered for membership. History shows that some chapters, particularly the ones in the larger southern cities, were clearly guilty of placing a great emphasis on these characteristics, but others were unfairly attacked for doing the same thing when what really was happening was that they were just nominating people who were in their social circle, their church, their bridge club. And not surprisingly, these darker, less-pedigreed people had long before been shut out of those institutions.

  “Maybe there was something elitist about creating a group that catered to the concerns of well-educated and affluent people,” says Portia Scott, who grew up in the Atlanta Jack and Jill and whose family owns the Atlanta Daily World newspaper group, “but why is it okay for well-educated whites to be ambitious—and then not okay for blacks? We are not a monolith. Just as many whites and other ethnic groups want one generation to improve on the last generation, blacks want to do the same.” A member of one of Atlanta’s oldest and most influential black families, Scott, who is general manager of the sixty-five-year-old company, feels Jack and Jillers should not apologize for their ambitious agenda and aspirations to be successful. I understood her point after attending years of Jack and Jill events where the kids were practically berated for settling for the mediocrity that we might have encountered from the non–Jack and Jill black kids we saw at school.

  “You don’t contribute to black achievement by knowing how to dance or play basketball,” one of our chaperones used to tell us when I was vice president of our teen group. Her remarks were filled with well-meaning yet elitist overtones. “You are the ones who are supposed to be setting the example for the rest of those kids at school. Just because you look like them doesn’t mean you have to act like them.”

  “Sure,” says Boyce, as she and three other parents stared out at the Atlantic Ocean in the backyard of a Jack and Jill mother’s home on East Hampton’s Lily Pond Lane. “There are still people that want to stigmatize us as being into elitism. They also say we’re into straight hair. But here I’m president of the second oldest chapter in the country—a group with 108 families—and I’m not light-skinned, straight-haired, or green-eyed. So that old stereotype is long gone. What they should really be judging is the fact that this organization’s goal is to put children first.”

  Ilyasah Shabazz agrees. “A Jack and Jill child has nothing to apologize for. Today’s black child should want to be introduced to everything that the smartest white child has access to. To be ambitious, well-rounded, and bright are things we should celebrate.”

  When Ilyasah and other Jack and Jill alumni of my generation look back, our hindsight is twenty-twenty because we now realize the futility of trying to please the detractors—both black and white—who might question our blackness when we display characteristics that are uncommon for blacks.

  But a part of me envies the Jack and Jill kids who have come through since the 1980s. I grew up when the black middle and upper classes were small and therefore nearly invisible. We felt outnumbered in school, in the country, in statistics, and on TV. We seemed equally unreal to whites and other blacks. We were often mocked by the other black kids because our lives looked like the Brady Bunch kids during a period when the only black families on TV were Sanford and Son junk dealers, Good Times project dwellers, and Flip Wilson jive talkers.

  I envy the Jack and Jill kids of the 1980s and 1990s because they are more readily accepted as valid representatives of black America by whites and other blacks, thanks to The Cosby Show, Oprah, Bryant Gumbel, and Colin Powell. Because of these TV images, it is now at least believable that black families can be well-educated, intact, and articulate. My Jack and Jill existence took place during a transition period that left me feeling somehow betrayed by a world that said we couldn’t possibly be real. We were fifteen years ahead of our time: living like the Cosby kids before mainstream America had been formally introduced to the notion.

  Another Jack and Jill member who is able to contrast the old and new Jack and Jill is Judge Henry M. Kennedy Jr., who grew up in the Washington, D.C., chapter in the late 1950s and the 1960s. Growing up during the final years of segregation, he saw the group’s effect strictly within the boundaries of the black community. Today, with two children who live in a more integrated world, he sees Jack and Jill’s role and stature in a black community that is more diverse and more spread out. A member of the superior court of the District of Columbia, Kennedy says, “Our kids are in the same chapter that my parents and I first joined in 1956, and we have them there for the same reasons I was put there.” Kennedy acknowledges, however, that even though he and his wife feel the group is necessary, “we meet more and more parents in black elite circles who don’t feel Jack and Jill is so necessary any more.”

  A graduate of Princeton and Harvard Law School, Kennedy acknowledges, “When I was growing up, I was in a mostly black environment and Jack and Jill was coveted to a much greater extent than it is today. Years ago, it was a necessary sign that showed that a person was a member of the black elite. It put a small group in touch with others who were like them. At that time, almost all of the parents were doctors. An affluent family would never have passed
up the opportunity to join. Today, there is more diversity in that we do have many members who are affiliated with universities or governmental agencies. And furthermore, there are now some Washington doctors who, for whatever reason, simply decide not to join the organization.”

  Ronald Walter, station manager of WREG-TV, the CBS affiliate in Memphis, remembers growing up in the Memphis Jack and Jill and eventually serving as teen president of the Memphis chapter. “My three children are now in the same chapter where I grew up,” comments Walter as he sits in the living room of his sprawling brick home on a tree-lined section of Parkway, a boulevard that is famous for the affluent Jack and Jill families who have populated it for three generations.

  With the perspective that comes from seeing two generations of members, Walter believes Jack and Jill is becoming more progressive. He remarks on the way in which it differs from other elite black organizations. “Jack and Jill is much more fluid and progressive than other groups today because there are constantly new officers and members joining each year.” As Walter points out, the parents who serve as officers of their children’s chapters are allowed to hold positions only while their kids are still members. Once the parents’ youngest child graduates from high school, the parents have to move on to the Associates division of Jack and Jill, which is an extremely active but nonvoting group of members.

  “That’s an excellent point,” comments a mother in the Columbus chapter. “One of the reasons why Jack and Jill remains progressive and continues to stay on top of important legislation like children’s rights and education is that there is no stagnation. You will not find officers who have stayed in positions for years and years like those you will find in other groups.” I remember several mothers in my parents’ generation who reacted to this rule with great consternation. They were old-world people whose agenda was distinctly social and elitist. Their agenda was focused on tennis parties, fashion shows, reading clubs, and horseback riding.

  A look at the agenda at a recent national conference demonstrates how the group has evolved and kept pace with the changing needs and concerns of its members. In addition to workshops on “Building Your Child’s Home Library” and “Parenting in a Media Culture” and “Investing Your Family’s Wealth,” there were seminars entitled “Single Parenting” and “Addressing National Health Concerns.”

  At a recent Jack and Jill convention, national president Shirley Barber James spoke of the importance of staying on top of the changing political climate. Her son, a 1995 graduate of Harvard Law School, had been extremely active in his Jack and Jill chapter in Savannah. “Like my two daughters, Robert developed a strong identity through Jack and Jill.” As a student at the very exclusive and mostly white Savannah Country Day School, James’s son was able to mobilize his black and white classmates to insist on establishing a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday in the face of the school’s reluctance to observe the event. In my day, a Jack and Jill child would have been perceived as a troublemaker to have pursued such an agenda. Not by the 1980s.

  As a part of its attempt to become more socially and politically relevant, in 1968 Jack and Jill created a foundation that continues to give scholarships and offer grants to national and international programs to address such issues as illiteracy, job training for Vietnam Veterans, and early childhood education.

  I would imagine that most former members would agree that the Jack and Jill of today is less status-conscious and less color-obsessed than the Jack and Jill of my childhood. Of course it still sponsors the cotillions, black-tie dinners, and student trips that were de rigueur in the 1950s and 1960s, but the organization has also placed a priority on training young people to be unafraid to function outside their social class. As the group moves toward its fourth generation of family members, it is developing a greater number of programs that will embolden black youth to participate in and change the surrounding less-advantaged black community. Jacqueline Parker Scott, a Jack and Jill mother from southern California, founded the organization’s national teen leadership development program, a project offering workshops on public speaking, leadership qualities, and personal management skills. The group is also establishing teen summits, where the teen presidents from each of the nation’s chapters will talk about such formerly Jack-and-Jill-taboo topics as affirmative action, abortion, interracial marriage, and the politics of South Africa. These are all subjects that would have drawn uncomfortable reactions one or two generations ago.

  Because the organization’s original founders and many of its subsequent leaders were light-skinned professional blacks with money and position, some detractors still sound quite credible when they accuse certain chapters today of choosing their membership only from light-complexioned, well-educated, well-to-do families. That accusation is often fueled by individuals who have been unable to gain admission or by those who simply ignore the fact that the group has become far more diverse over the years. In fact, these detractors have failed to notice that some old-guard blacks are distressed that most of their elitist traditions have been eradicated from the group today.

  “At one point,” a Jack and Jill mother from Atlanta admits while standing in a Cleveland hotel lobby when I attended the group’s recent annual convention, “I used to be a little hesitant to tell certain black friends that I was in Jack and Jill because in some parts of the country it has this elitist reputation of only taking parents who are professionals or socialites. You know, the doctor-lawyer, high-church, high-yellow, Episcopalian crowd.”

  I nodded at the woman.

  She continued. “But then I realized that what I was really apologizing for was this group’s focus on shaping successful kids. I was embarrassed that I believed in ambition. And frankly, every other group—Jews, Asians, and other ethnic persuasions—values families and individuals that accomplish a lot. Why shouldn’t we? This is supposed to be an elite group.”

  “I agree with you,” I added, almost sure that we were on the same wavelength.

  “And I think we can simultaneously infuse Jack and Jill with a more diverse group of black people at the same time,” the woman added. “If they are hardworking and ambitious, who cares how wealthy they are, what their parents do, what they look like, or how big their house is?”

  Even though I was sometimes victimized by the socioeconomic narrow-mindedness of the kids I grew up with in Jack and Jill, a part of me recoiled at the suggestion that the group could or should be more diverse or open-minded. Having survived the tough economic and social standards of the group, I wasn’t sure I wanted one of its members suggesting that it was changing or even needed to change. I had always thought that its strength and its value were based on establishing an ideal black family model. How could it change, become more diverse, and still be a place where we could find the elite families? How could it remain an important credential for me, for other alumni who had belonged, and for our children, who would one day need to be introduced to kids who were just like them?

  As she walked back into the ballroom where a group of teenagers—half of them with complexions darker than my own—were lining up for a presentation of gospel songs, she pointed out with pride in her voice, “Now there’s the new Jack and Jill. I never heard gospel music at a Jack and Jill event when I was growing up.”

  I paused and thought for a moment. It was obvious that we had a lot to learn from this younger generation of Jack and Jill members.

  CHAPTER 3

  The Black Child Experience: The Right Cotillions, Camps, and Private Schools

  Within the black elite, parents aren’t the only ones expected to have impeccable résumés: Kids are too. The most cynical members of the old guard would argue that a child’s social and academic credentials are intended not only to prepare the child for a life filled with competition and high standards but also to fill out a family’s already stellar résumé or shore up a less-than-perfect one.

  Since my mother had not been a debutante and my father was not a physician or an attorney, others woul
d indicate to me, even when I was only eleven or twelve years of age, that there were serious holes in my nuclear family’s résumé. Each of my parents and many of their siblings—as well as my grandparents—had some good connections to respected groups and schools. But I think they didn’t push us toward the black cotillion-and-boarding-school crowd because the gaps in our social résumé might be even more closely scrutinized—and make us feel even more like outsiders—in settings where the most elitism occurred. Nevertheless, the members of the old-guard elite quickly made it clear that it was up to my brother and me to affiliate with the right organizations and schools if we were ever to be accepted by the upper ranks of this group.

  Getting their kids into Jack and Jill was not the only strategy that the black elite used to ensure that the next generation was starting off on the right foot—it just generally happened to be the first step. Since most kids were placed in the organization by their fourth or fifth birthdays, membership preceded their entrance into the designated debutante cotillions, private schools, clubs, and black summer camps whose sole purpose was to cater to the affluent black child. Like Jack and Jill, these groups have become a social screen, an educational strategy, a network, and a cultural reinforcement mechanism.

  “When my parents told me I was coming out, I knew I might as well give in right then and there. It had always been an important event in their crowd,” says Phyllis Murphy Stevenson, who was one of the most celebrated black debutantes in New York in 1952. “I don’t think I really understood the significance at the time, but being a debutante gave me the additional confidence that most teenagers of any color lack when first put in public situations,” explains Stevenson, who was presented at a Girl Friends black-tie ball during the same year that her mother was elected national president of the organization.