Baptism

In Frankie Lennon’s, Mee Street Cronicles: Straight Up Stories of a Black Woman’s Life, the selection “Baptism” reveals a new chapter in the narrators life. Baptism can be another word for reborn, a new beginning and an initiation. In this selection the narrator experiences events that will contribute to her baptism in life.

Growing up with the Jim Crow laws and having been segregated from white people all her life, coming back with the laws no longer being put into play is a big change the narrator goes through. The narrator experiences “black college students [storming] and [overrunning] ole Jim Crow’s fort with their lunch sit-ins… acting on their faith in The Constitution and The Bill of Rights, young Black students and their White compatriots would put life and limb on the line… starting the Voter Education Project.” She later witnessed the results of these actions starting of positively small to the abolishment of ““White Only” signs over water fountains and bathrooms” to the negatively big assassinations of the Kennedys’ and Slaughter of the children in the Baptist Church in Birmingham.

The narrator shares her feelings towards these changed society gestures in which she notices that though the changes have been made physically, emotionally and mentally is the true goal. The goal of acceptance because, if the changes were made due to common vote and pleasure to make one look good, the events that happened were bound to happen. People are stubborn and will act of just that, and their stubborn actions will result in the death of others.

In this selection, the narrator is baptized into the world of reactions to these changes, initiated to be able to stand up for who she is and reborn to be able to express her thoughts and not be condemned or damned for doing so. The narrator’s purification of innocence is now taken away and she is baptized into the new reality of her life now as a grown black woman living in America.