Judith Bell: The Whole Story

****

There were 11 girls and 5 boys. They were all individual births. No twins. There was a span of close to 40 years between the oldest and youngest sibling. Closest to me is my sister who is three years older. Everyone else was about two years apart. My mother was 47 when she had me.

My sister is going to be 90 next month. My oldest sister was the superintendent in the Baton Rouge schools and a principal. She died a few years ago at 99. My sister Elyse is in a retirement home now. She was a doctor. She went to Howard University Medical School when she was 18. Carol is now deceased. She taught music. My sister Jocelyn retired from the school system in New Orleans. Pretty much everybody works or worked in New Orleans.

****

My father delivered mail in the Garden District, in the area where they had all these rich, rich, rich people. We grew up, even in a segregated society, being exposed to white people. Some people at Tulane University did a study on my dad and concluded this man is a genius, just born before his time. He was very extensively well read. I knew how to read before I went to school, and my dad taught me to read out of the Bible. If you can read out of the Bible, you can read anything.

He taught us about history, about Gandhi. We read poetry.

We had dinner at 6 o’clock. Everybody, no matter what you had to do, you were at the dinner table at 6 o’clock. After dinner, each one of the kids had to go to the front of the table and say one new word you learned that day, spell it, tell what it meant, use it in a sentence. Instead of watching television, we read, we played music, we had conversations.

****

My father always said don’t ever look down. Look a person in the eye. If a person can’t look you in the eye, then there’s something wrong. He instilled those old values. The message we got as long as I can remember is that you are a Chatters. You are a Chatters, and there are certain things Chatters don’t do. So you don’t bring any embarrassment. I think that’s one of the things that’s wrong right now in our society, that expectations aren’t set high enough. My mother and father had very high expectations for all of us. You didn’t even think about getting a C. That was unacceptable. When I went to college, I went on scholarships. My dad said, “I laid the foundation. If you have a good mind, you use your mind. If you want to accomplish something, you can accomplish it. Somebody else may be gifted and they can do it faster than you. But if you want to do it, then you put in the hard work and the time and the sweat and you can do anything. He never accepted ‘I can’t.’ What is that? I don’t want to? I don’t want to work hard enough?

****

My mother and father, a lot of people in New Orleans even to this day hold them in high esteem because of the way they raised their children. A lot of people thought we were only children, because my mother sewed, we were well dressed. A lot of times when I told people I’m the youngest of 16, they think poverty. They think you didn’t have this, you didn’t have that. And it was completely the opposite. My father was a man of plans. He wanted a big family and he planned for it. We had one of the first big houses black people had in New Orleans. It took two people working together. My dad couldn’t have made it without somebody like my mother. My mother made stuff go. She sewed, she did other things to make extra money. She could look at a picture, cut a pattern out of newspaper, and sew it. They were a team. I can remember saying, everybody else is so much older than me and times have changed. I wanted to do things that the younger people were doing. My dad said, “It worked for your sisters and brothers, and it will work for you.” And that was it.

****

I told my daughters, I never had a babydoll. Not like they had babydolls. I had to make mine. I got a Coke bottle, clothespin, rope. You created things. It made you use your mind. Now we give our kids the toys. They’re not creative. They’re not using their minds. My dad would say all the time, when I would complain about what my friends were doing that I couldn’t do, he would say, “Let me tell you something. Even if I was a millionaire, I wouldn’t give it to you.” I thought that was so horrible. He said, “Do you understand that?” And I said, “No, I don’t understand that.” He said, “The worst thing you can do to another human being is to destroy their desire. As long as you have a desire, it will push you further.” That still didn’t make me feel happy. But the older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve appreciated the wisdom of that.

But if you listen to my sisters, they’ll say I got spoiled. They’ll say that by the time I came along that momma and daddy had loosened up a lot. I don’t believe that. When I was a little girl, I would say, “My name is Judith Cynthia Chatters, Mama and Daddy’s Baby.” That was my name.

****

In our family, we had a full orchestra. Cello, violin, my brother played bass, my other brother played trombone. The best instrument I played was the French horn. My father started all of us out, as soon as we could hold a bow, on the violin. These are some of my nieces and nephews. The music goes on. It goes on in our family. It’s a big part of our family.

****

I was in my early 20s when my folks died. I was finishing my master’s degree when my mother passed. They were able to see me at least go through school.

****

My mother was part Cherokee. She had deep-set eyes and hair down to here. She never cut her hair. That’s one of the things that people realized about black families, especially in New Orleans, everything is so multicultural. My sisters, some of them, taught in the Jewish nursery. And a lot of the people I grew up with were white people, Jewish people, Italians. I just grew up that way.

The interesting thing about my family is my grandfather on my father’s side is white. From England. My maiden name is Chatters. If you see pictures of my family, they run the gamut. From some of them looking like they’re white to dark, dark, dark. Prior to desegregation, a lot of them passed. A lot of my relatives live in Canada. When they would come to New Orleans, they would pass, they would go as white. If you hadn’t grown up with these things and understood the impact of not just racism, but colorism. Colorism really impacted black people. Because during slavery, if you were an offspring of the master, you were lighter skinned, you worked in the house. If you were darker skinned, you worked in the fields. In New Orleans, particularly because you had such a multicultural mix, there was a lot of colorism. I remember I sat in detention – I went to Catholic school – because I asked one of the nuns why was it that we were an all black school.

At the Christmas pageant, they would always get a fair-skinned girl to play Mary. My father taught us to question if we had a question, as long as you did so in a respectful manner. If something didn’t make sense to you, you were to keep questioning and researching until you felt comfortable. So I asked the question, why? The nuns took offense and sent me to detention.

****

During those days, when you rode the bus, if a white person got on and the bus was filled and the white person wanted to sit down, they would move the sign back. And if a black person was sitting there, they would have to move behind the sign. People can’t understand. But if people don’t learn from history, we’ll repeat it. I think it made me strive harder and work harder and more determined to help people understand the history of a lot of this stuff. A lot of people didn’t understand why. They just accepted it.

When my cousin who was a doctor from Canada came down, he was crazy about me. I remember the experience of getting on the bus with him. He looked white, and here I was a little black child. We sat in the front seat. And the driver said I couldn’t sit there. But then my cousin said, “This is my niece. If she can’t sit here, I can’t sit here.” The driver didn’t say anything more. One characteristic of my family, the Chatters, is being very, very vocal and strong-willed.

****

I worked in the mayor’s office of Baton Rouge, Lousiana – Pat Screen. (One of the people who worked with me was – guess who – [political consultant and TV personality] Jim Carville.) Particularly in my generation, I thought that I would get married and live in a little white house with little picket fence and have lots and lots of babies. But I had the encouragement of my professors to go on into economics. I taught at Southern, then I went to direct the CETA program under Pat Screen. Then I ended up with IBM. I learned computer programming and became a systems analyst. I started here in Research Triangle Park in 1981. And I’ve been here since.

****

I met Bill at a conference in Kansas. When I was working with CETA for Baton Rouge. One of the jobs I had was I worked for an architect, economic research. I worked with Joyce Hall of Hallmark Cards, planning a redevelopment around the Crown Center in Kansas City. So I met Bill at a conference there in the late 1970s. I didn’t think I’d ever see him again. But then I came up here to IBM. [Ed. Note. At this point, I asked, “Did you know Bill worked for IBM?” A nod. “You didn’t come here for Bill, did you?” Another nod, and a laugh. ] Why do women do stupid things? There’s always a man involved somewhere. I came to IBM as a planner in 1981. We got married in 1983. Together we have four children. I had one child, Anjanee, by my first marriage. And Bill had two children by his first marriage. And we have one together. One of the compliments he gives me a lot is, particularly since we have a blended family, that you can’t tell any difference between his children. I worked very hard to make sure none of the children felt like they were being treated differently.

****

When I first came to Durham? Well, of course, coming from New Orleans initially, my first reaction was, “I’m going home.” It was just a different vibe. But after I go home to New Orleans now, and I see my family for a while, then I’m ready to come back. This is the home that my kids know. This is home for them, so it’s become home to me.

****

What attracted me to Bill initially, really, was his mind. I guess growing up in the type of family that I had, I really had to be with somebody who could stimulate my mind. Bill reads a lot and is extremely intelligent. And he can be funny. He has a sense of humor if you catch him at the right time. The first date we went on, you know what we did? Roller-skating. That was my idea. I said, you want to go somewhere? I’m going roller-skating. And he did well. If he puts his mind to it, that’s it. The other thing that attracted me to him and what I still admire is that he is a man of his word. If he tells you, yes, he’s going to do something, you can count on it. If he tells you no, you can count on that, too.

****

When we were at IBM a lot of people didn’t even know we were married. Our personalities are so different. I’m very outgoing, and he’s very reserved. A lot of people said, ‘You and Bill? I never put that together.” I said, “Well, see? Opposites attract.” We balance each other out.

****

Bill works very, very hard. But I always tell him, “You need to learn to take compliments when people give them to you.” Because you’ve worked hard and you’ve earned it. You’ve really given your life, and my life, to Durham. I was teasing him about the Marry Durham thing. I said, “You’re already married to Durham.”

The general population doesn’t understand the sacrifices that a family makes to support a person who chooses a political life. Bill could have been much wealthier if he had chosen to stay at IBM and keep going up the ladder where he was. But he wanted to be in Durham and help to build Durham. There are negatives because a lot of people make a lot of untrue assumptions about you. I can remember when we had the big ice storm. A lot of people assumed that we were the first ones to get our power on. We were without power for a week. It’s those kinds of assumptions that in some ways really work against you. As a wife, I’ve pretty much had to be a single parent in a lot of ways for Bill to be able to do what he does. And also to keep your life separate. I work very hard to keep a balance. To have accomplished the things that he’s accomplished, he brought the job home a lot. If I was a more dependant person, it wouldn’t have worked.

It’s been hard. It’s not an easy job. But I think it’s been worth it. Seeing what’s been accomplished, the direction Durham has moved in the time that I’ve been here, I see that it was worth it. There’ve been times when I really questioned whether that was true. It has been really trying at times. A lot of times people don’t think you have a life, that you’re a human being. People have called and been nasty and rude and they don’t think you have a family. People say you’re the mayor’s wife, you have all this stuff, and you can do this, you can do that. And I’m like, “Do you understand what the mayor gets paid?” The thing is that you have to always be cognizant of where you are and how people perceive you. But I’m just me. That strong upbringing helped me with that. I always tell people when they say, “Well, this is the mayor’s wife.” I say, “No, my name is Judith. And I am my own person.” Tomorrow, he may not be the mayor. But I will still be Judith. DM