Host: Anna Roberts 

Anna: [00:00:04] Welcome to All Together Now, Fridays with The Moth. I am your host for this week, Anna Roberts. 

As manager of The MothWorks program and the most recent addition to The Moth team, I began this role from home on March 17th. Although I have not had the pleasure of meeting most of my colleagues in person, many of them have seen the inside of my apartment. Right now, as many of us are taking on new roles as teachers, activists, allies and more, it reminds me that the work begins when we call up the courage to accept the challenge. 

On the podcast today, two stories about perception and strength. First up, Shannon Cason. Shannon told this story at a New York City StorySLAM, where the theme of the night was Uniform. Here is Shannon, live at The Moth.

[cheers and applause] 

Shannon: [00:00:59] My dad wore big hats, and double-breasted suits and talked big when we drove around Detroit in his Cadillac. He said it was triple black. I was a kid, I asked him like, "What is triple black?" He said, "My Cadillac, boy." [audience laughter] I am like, "Dad, no, I mean, what does triple black mean?" He was quiet. I do not think he knew what it meant. [audience laughter] But my dad, he always had a big answer. He said, "Black on the outside, black on the inside and a Black man driving. Triple black." [audience laughter] 

Then something happened, and my dad blamed it on this guy named Reagan and this thing called Reaganomics. And then, he did not wear the big hat as much or the double-breasted suit. Somebody came and took the Cadillac. And the Toyota, we would drive around Detroit would leak through the sunroof on rainy days. But my dad still talked big. I was with him when he found another Cadillac. This one was huge. We pulled into the parking lot and I remember he got out the car, excited. 

I looked at it and it had rust on it. It was black and big, but it had rust and stucco and chrome and gold-plated trim. [audience laughter] My thought was, this thing is tacky. But my dad was so excited, he was telling me-- He said it was a limousine, what he was going to do with it. Excitement can be contagious. After a while, I said, "Man, this limo is fresh." [audience laughter] This was the 1980s. “Fresh.” I never should have said that. 

Eighth grade graduation, it was not the highlight of my scholastic career. But being I went to a high school with a 50% dropout rate, it was a big deal for 50% of the students. [audience laughter] Kids were talking about wearing tuxedos to the graduation. People were talking about boyfriend and girlfriend dressing in the same colors. And people were talking about getting limos. 

I had come home from playing basketball, and my sister said, "Daddy said to beep him." So, I went into the kitchen phone and I beeped him. This is how you did it in the 1980s. He called back. He said, "Yeah, man, you got the graduation coming up, right? I know how much you love the limousine. Your dad is going to take you to the graduation in the limousine, let you high post, show off to your friends" and then he got off the phone. 

I was mortified. [audience laughter] I did not want to drive in that Bishop Don Juan superfly, any Blaxploitation movie you can think of, the Willie Dynamite, a Dolemite. I did not want to ride in that thing. I could imagine getting out. I was an understated, like Boy Scout. I was good in school. I played basketball. I was a virgin.  just made up in my mind like, "This is Detroit. Cars are a very big deal in Detroit.” I was just like, “I just have to take this one for the team." 

Graduation Day. My mother is running around. She is taking Polaroids. I am like, "Ma, save it for college, or at least for high school, because it is eighth grade graduation, [audience laughter] you know what I am saying?" Then my sister comes in and says, "Dad is on the phone." So, I go into the phone kitchen. "Hey man, I have to run across town. I have to go over here to the East Side, pick up this money. I am not going to be able to drive you to the graduation. I know you are disappointed. Just go there with your mom, and I will be there in time to see you cross over." [audience laughter] 

So, I ride to the graduation in my mom’s Ford Granada, which is the plainest car ever. We get to the graduation. I get out of the car and I am looking at all my classmates. Some of my friends are getting out of limousines. Some of them had white tuxedos with top hats and canes, [audience laughter] going to the graduation. I looked at myself in the glass of the gymnasium, and I was like, "Man, I just always look so regular." 

We did the graduation thing and my dad showed up. He always keeps his word. He showed up to see me. After the graduation, I walked down. We were going to go to Red Lobster after the graduation. That is where you go after graduation in Detroit, Red Lobsters with S.” I said, "Hey, Dad, I am going to ride with you." We walked out of the gymnasium, and my dad took me to this fly limousine and held the door for me. I got inside while all my classmates and friends watched and I felt like someone special. Thank you.

[cheers and applause] 

Anna: [00:06:30] That was Shannon Cason. Shannon moved back to Detroit from Chicago in 2015 to be part of his city's renaissance. He is a storyteller, and he hosts the long-standing podcast, Homemade Stories. His newest podcast is called In Good Company Detroit, and it highlights the entrepreneurial spirit of his hometown. You can find both wherever you listen to your podcasts. To see some photos of Shannon's father, who still drives a Cadillac, and to learn more about Shannon's work, head to the Extras for this episode on our website, themoth.org. 

Up next, June Cross. June told this story at a Mainstage in New York City, where the theme of the night was Walk the Line: Stories of Balancing Acts. Here is June, live at The Moth.

[cheers and applause] 

June: [00:07:21] Every family has secrets. In my family, the secret was me. I was a secret, because I was Black. These days, you would say I was biracial. But in the 1950s, when you were born, there was no biracial. You were either born Black or you were born white, end of story. 

My mother was a farm girl from Pocatello, Idaho, who had come to New York to seek her fame and fortune here on the big stage. She met my dad, who was a performer from Philadelphia. He was part of a duo called Stump and Stumpy, had been popular in the 1940s. They met backstage at the Paramount Theater and pretty much became constant companions for the next four or five years, and here I am. 

But as the 1950s progressed, my dad’s career began to go downhill. As his career began to go downhill, so did his life and he drank more and more. The more he drank, the angrier he got. And in some twisted vision, he thought that if he beat my mother long enough, she would stay with him. My mother had sunk pretty low, but she had not sunk so low that she was willing to stay with a man who beat her every day. 

So, sooner or later, she got up. I was about 18 months old. She left him, and we moved into another apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and that is where I lived with her for the next four or five years. But there was one problem. She had the courage to get into a relationship with a Black man, but she did not have the courage to raise this child who looked like me, who was me.

And so, she began to leave me for periods of time with a friend of hers in Atlantic City, New Jersey. It was a couple that she called Peggy and Paul, whom I would come to call Aunt Peggy and Uncle Paul. I would go and stay with them for periods of time. Gradually, one day, it was about a week before I would have started my first day of school, she left me there and I never came back to New York. 

So, the way it worked was this. I would go to school Monday through Friday in Atlantic City, and then on school vacations or breaks, I would come visit my mom here in New York. I really lived two lives. I lived when I was with my mom, the life where I liked Perry Como and the Beatles and Barbra Streisand, and then when I was in Atlantic City, I lived the life where I liked the Four Tops and James Brown. And that was the way life went. 

Aunt Peggy was a very strict disciplinarian. She thought that my mother had been way too lenient with me, which mom had been. There was no structure in mom's house. When I lived in Atlantic City, Peggy had structure. If you can imagine trying to live with two mothers, having one is bad enough [audience laughter]. Here I had two. [chuckles] One very strict one and one who was actually very demanding. My mom was very demanding. But when I would go to visit her on weekends, there was absolutely no structure. We would leave the Port Authority, go out, head to the rotisserie chicken place across the street from Port Authority, pick up a chicken, go home, eat dinner at 11:30 at night, stay up and watch whatever was on television as long as I wanted until I fell asleep. 

Then the next day we would get up, go to a matinee, usually on Broadway. We might go to a second one on Saturday night, and then to whatever we could watch on Sunday matinee as well, before I got back on the bus and went back to Atlantic City. It was almost like I used to liken it to crossing a razor blade. If I crossed it carefully, it would scrape instead of cut.

Six years went by in this fashion. Gradually, she began to date other men and finally, she began dating a comic and character actor who some of you may know. He was Larry Storch. He became Corporal Agarn in the series, F Troop in the 1960s. Mom was elated that she had finally found a man and thought she was finally going to be able to actually get him to marry her, which had been the driving force of her life [chuckles] to try to become Mrs. Somebody. 

One weekend while I was here in New York, she threw a party for Larry and his family and the managing agent. She asked me to play a game with her. The game was, call her Aunt Norma during the entire period of this party. Being eight years old and not really knowing what she was asking me to do, I said, "Fine, I will." And I did. But at some point, during the evening, the adults started giving me champagne. Being a show biz crowd, they thought it was cute to see a tipsy eight-year-old running around the house. I slipped and I called her mom. 

She snatched me and dragged me into the bathroom. Really, her face was so contorted with, I thought then was anger, but what I now know was fear. And she said, "Do not you ever call me mommy in front of people like this. Do not ever call me mommy in front of Larry's family. They will disown him and we will lose everything." I hung my head, not knowing quite what I had done, and I said, "Yes, Aunt Norma. I will not." 

I went back to Atlantic City and I told Aunt Peggy and Uncle Paul about this. And they were horrified. And then, several months later, when mom called to say that she was going to become Mrs. Larry Storch, that her dream was finally going to be fulfilled, I was as elated as she was. I was jumping all around the house. "Oh, I am going to be the daughter of a star. Daughter of a star!" 

We hung up the phone, and Aunt Peggy pulled me aside and said, "Not so fast. You need to make sure that you never tell anybody, that your mom is married to Larry Storch. If it is found out that he is married to a woman that had a Black child, his entire career could go south. They will cancel the show that he is in. All those ballet classes and tap dance classes and swimming lessons and piano lessons and the summer camp you love, they will all disappear." 

She was trying to get me to understand the economic price of being Black in this country, which during the 1960s was still pretty severe. Frankly, it still is. In 1960, according to the census, there were only 25 Black millionaires in the United States of America, which is an amazing thought to think about. And so, the money that she and Paul got to help raise me was really important in our family. So, I learned that I was just going to be Black. And I was fine with that.

By the time I had reached college, I was Blacker than now. [chuckles] We got to the 1960s-- You have to remember, I am growing up at the same time that the country is going through the Vietnam War crisis and African-Americans as a whole are reaching the point where we had it. This is the period when Cassius Clay beats Sonny Liston and changed his name to Muhammad Ali. It is the period when Stokely Carmichael invented the phrase, Black Power. I went to work with the Black Panther program. I served breakfast in Atlantic City, New Jersey. I sold the papers as long as Aunt Peggy would let me, but when she found out about that, she put the kibosh on it pretty fast.

By the time I got to school, I was really determined that I was going to live my life as a Black woman. There was a group on campus of multiracial students. I think they called themselves the Multiracial Harvard Students Alliance or something like that. I refused to join them, because I did not want to have anything to do with being multiracial. If I was multiracial, why had I just lived this entire painful existence that I had been growing up with? And sure enough, I chose my side. And then, in November of that year, my freshman year, my mother calls me. She was having her 50th birthday party. She had decided to have it in Las Vegas.

Now, as a card-carrying member of the Black Panther Party and an avowed socialist at the time, [audience laughter] going to Las Vegas was a counter-revolutionary act. [audience laughter] I could not figure out what I was going to do. But Aunt Peggy had raised me to always do what my parents told me to do. So, mom was turning 50 and she wanted me to come to Las Vegas, I was going to have to figure out a way to go to Las Vegas.

But I went to Las Vegas on my terms. 

I had this big afro that was bigger than Angela Davis is [audience laughter] Some of you remember Roberta Flack’s first album. [audience laughter] I had a leather miniskirt, and my leather high-heeled boots and my fishnet stockings. I arrived at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas to a sea of white folks wearing chiffon and Indian and coral turquoise jewelry. [audience laughter] I did not want to have anything to do with them. But there I was with my mom and with Larry. She was wearing a Ralph Lauren original navy-blue rayon long gown and a white feathered headdress, looking gorgeous as she always did. She wanted to go see Johnny Cash for her 50th birthday. 

Now, Black folks do not listen to country music [audience laughter] in Atlantic City, New Jersey. So, this really was not happening for me. I was like, "Johnny Cash? Are you serious?" I had to go, because she was going. So, we go and we were sitting in the grand ballroom of Caesars Palace, which at the time I think was the largest place I had ever been in. It was just huge

Larry looks around and all of a sudden, he sees the heavyweight champion of the world, Muhammad Ali, sitting a few tables away. We get up and we go to meet Muhammad Ali. Muhammad Ali at that time, who was still a heavyweight champ, was still in shape. He was the biggest man I have ever met. Huge. It was like meeting the Berlin Wall.

[audience laughter] He put his hand out to shake mine, and I felt like a six-year-old. My hand just disappeared inside of his. But as I looked around, I am seeing he and I are probably the only Black folks in the grand ballroom of Caesars Palace. 

So, I decided that I was going to rib him a little bit, because I was so shy. That was the only thing I could do, use laughter to try to get out of the situation. So, I said, "Hey, champ, how come you and I are the only Black people in here getting ready to listen to Johnny Cash?" Then he says to me, "Girl, I am from Louisville, Kentucky. Where I came from, there is a whole lot of Black people listening to country music." [audience laughter] So, this put a damper on my revolutionary fervor. I go and I sit down and I am listening to Johnny Cash begin to play. 

I had never really listened to Johnny Cash. I did not realize the degree of talent, the degree of emotion that the man brought forth from an acoustic guitar and his voice. As he sang the song, it was almost a trite reaction. But as he sang the song, I Walk the Line, I felt like he was singing it to me. I felt like he was describing my entire life.

I had grown up in a world where my friends were either Black or white, where my family was either Black or white, where I listened to music that was identified as music that Black people listened to or music that white people listened to. I dressed the way I thought Black people should dress. I talked the way I thought Black people should talk. But that night, the champ and Johnny Cash taught me a lesson. The lesson was that maybe I could balance myself on that razor and walk the line, and have the people that I loved and the things that I like be on both sides in me and not have to choose. Thank you.

[cheers and applause] 

Anna: [00:20:03] That was June Cross. June is a documentary filmmaker, journalist and the author of the memoir, Secret Daughter: A Mixed-Race Daughter and the Mother Who Gave Her Away. 

Listening to Shannon and June’s stories got me thinking about being a kid, when you are told who you are by adults before you have the experience to decide for yourself. When I was little, every summer my family packed up our station wagon and drove to my granny’s place in Maine. I hunt for the best soft ice cream with my mom and drag the old rowboat into the lake with my dad in search of lily pads and dragonflies. I still remember those summers with this idyllic, hazy glow. 

My brother, cousin and I were all born in July, so these trips felt like a big birthday celebration just for us. The boys were born days apart, almost exactly six years after me. Nearly every adult in my family had taken to referring to them as identical. But actually, they look nothing alike. My brother and I are biracial. Our dad is Black and our mom is white. My cousin’s mop of ginger hair and complete lack of melanin give it away immediately. But as a kid, I saw the resemblance. 

They were identical, after all my Papa was Black and my Granny was white. Their sons, my dad and my uncle, are Black. Their daughters, my aunts, are white. We are all one family, so why would it matter that our skin colors were different? I knew nothing then about the intricacies of blended families or the deliberate choices my relatives made over two generations to ensure their kids always felt deeply connected to one another, regardless of DNA. 

Stories help us understand who we were, who we are and who we want to become. If Shannon and June’s stories have inspired you to tell one of your own, here are some questions to get you started. Has someone else’s perception of you changed how you see yourself? What about a time you defied what you were told, by accident or on purpose? How about a moment you realized you did not have to choose between two sides of yourself? You can also find these prompts in the Extras for this episode on our website, themoth.org/extras. 

That is all for this week. Until next time, from all of us here at The Moth, have a story-worthy week.

Julia: [00:22:30] Anna Roberts is the manager of The MothWorks program. Raised by artists and educators, she is driven by fairness, progressive action and amplifying the perspectives of women and people of color. If you want to chat about bringing The Moth to your workplace, reach out at aroberts@themoth.org.

Anna: [00:22:49] Podcast production by Julia Purcell. The Moth Podcast is presented by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public at prx.org.