Whenever there is a “No Vacancy” sign on display at a roadside motel, memories flicker. Sometimes the thoughts pass quickly, but other times they stick and haunt. That’s because “No Vacancy“ is a direct symbol of my first significant childhood memory of racism.
This was August 1959. My father announced to the family that we would take a summer vacation “up north.” I was 8 years old that summer. This was my first-ever vacation and I was excited. We would be going up north to see my grandmother. I had never been to northern Michigan, and I was looking forward to the big day.
I was getting ready to enter third grade at Saginaw’s old Jesse Loomis School near the fairgrounds, and my younger brother Peter would be going into first grade. This vacation up north was a big outing for us. My friends from school always talked about up north and how exciting it was to experience “the great Michigan outdoors!” My mother packed a shoe-box lunch and we all piled into the car for the long ride, with my father at the wheel. The plan was to drive up, spend some time with my grandmother and return the same day.
My grandmother, Carrie Nash, worked for a very wealthy family and would travel north every year to work at their spacious summer house on one of the beautiful lakes in northern Michigan. She would join the family at the beginning of July and stay until September.
She was responsible for taking care of the home, cooking for the family and doing other domestic chores like cleaning and laundry. The summer house was not like any cabin or cottage. It was a big old home and there were additional buildings, including another cottage behind the main one for overflow guests.
Our ‘up north’ story unfolds
As a young child I remember Grandma Nash’s annual summer departures at the Pere Marquette Depot on West Genesee Street. She would board the train and always go to the back and wave to us goodbye.
My grandmother was a very proper and well-respected lady. She was an amazing cook and pastry chef. Her lemon squares were the best and now, every time I see lemon squares, I am reminded of my grandmother. I was hoping as we traveled the four hours north that I would get a chance to have some of her lemon squares.
My mother, Marion, was pregnant in 1959 with my soon-to-be brother, Geoffrey. As we neared our destination along the newly built I-75, she became gravely ill. My father, Jack, had been a medic in WWII and knew my mother was in serious trouble.
As soon as we had reached Cheboygan near the bridge and the family’s cottage, we immediately drove to the hospital emergency room, where she was promptly admitted. We certainly had not planned on this happening, and our plan for a day trip turned into a whole different experience. Now we had to find a place to stay while my mother was hospitalized. My father would not leave his wife alone in a strange city.
As my father drove from one motel to the next, it became clear that there were no overnight rooms for a Black father with his two sons. The “Vacancy” signs would always flip to “No Vacancy” as he would approach the motel office.
I was too young at the time to understand that there was no place available to us. The signs would flip on, and we would head off for the next possible place, hoping to find a room. From Cheboygan to Mackinaw City, there was no place available.
I did not know about Jim Crow laws but in 1959, northern Michigan was no different than the deep South. There was no place for a black family to stay. I felt in my heart, for the first time, the reality of discrimination. As I watched my father go from place to place, I was beginning to understand.
Crisis in Cheboygan
My father knew what was happening. Having served in a segregated army, he had experienced doors slamming everywhere. He knew what I did not yet know; that being black brought many challenges as well as slammed doors.
Later in life, while attending my younger brother’s wedding brunch at the Princeton University Student Union, my father told me about his experience there in 1942. Dressed in his decorated U.S. Army uniform, he had attempted to go in. The doors were quickly slammed in his face. No blacks allowed!
Back to that night 63 years ago up north, my father called my Grandma Carrie and told her about his fruitless search for a place to stay. She was beyond furious. She went to the cottage owner and explained what had happened. She had worked for this family for years and they were sympathetic to what was happening, and he also expressed his outrage over the racial bias. He made some calls, pulled some strings, and lined up accommodations at the main hotel in Cheboygan.
Still, even with my grandmother’s employer’s efforts, we were relegated to the rear service entrance and stairs and forbidden to be in the hotel lobby. We were told to stay out of view. The hotel management wanted none of their guests to see two young black boys roaming around in the spacious hotel which was for whites only.
My father had to be enraged because now he was forced to sneak into a hotel after he had risked his life for this country in WWII and in Korea. He had seen racism throughout his entire life and had wanted better for his children. He did not show his anger outwardly or act out at the hotel, but I know it must have been killing him inside.
The summer house had a guest cottage. I do not know if someone was staying there or not, but it was not offered to us.
To learn from my elders
My parents were not naïve and thus not surprised by any of this. They had planned a same-day excursion, sunrise to sundown, fully aware that outright oppression was prevalent not only in the Deep South but in Saginaw as well as up north. Mom was hospitalized for nearly a week. She had developed gestational diabetes and was stuck in a hospital in a town that did not accept blacks.
My father must have been miserable. Stuck with two young boys, his wife in a hospital, I am sure it was rough on him. Restaurants were not available to us. My father would pick up food from their side door and bring it back to the hotel. On some days, he would pack us a picnic to eat. I do not know how he survived, but he did. After four years in the segregated Army, he sadly knew the drill.
I had not experienced the racism my parents had. At eight, I was quickly learning, and putting the pieces together. “No Vacancy.” I was gathering what it all meant. I am not sure my brother Peter knew what was going on, but I was learning.
There were moments on that trip that were brighter, but still now damaged with ethnic awareness. My father took us boys to the public beach at Mackinaw City and taught us how to herd minnows into little sand traps. I befriended a boy about my age, and we asked our parents if we could go swimming. As the two of us were getting ready to head out, my father pulled me aside and told me not to go into deep water. I thought it was strange because I knew how to swim, after having taken some lessons. I found out he was afraid the older boys might have tried to drown me. Later, my mother told me that the Emmett Till murder had always lurked in my father’s mind. Knowing he had we boys, he was worried that one look at a young white girl might just result in the same 1955 fate as Emmett Till. I listened to my father and did not go to the deep water.
Thursday night was the “helps” night off for Grandma Carrie and other domestics at the resort. She wanted to ease things for my father, and she offered to take us to Mackinaw City to the movies, so my father could visit with my mother. We were excited to go. She was taking us to see South Pacific and it was on the big screen. I had never been to a real movie in a theatre so big and extravagant.
Once again, racial prejudice stared me in the eyes. It was a gorgeous night in Northern Michigan, so most of the locals and tourists were out enjoying the great outdoors, not venturing into a movie theatre. As we walked into the theater we were allowed to go through the front door and buy snacks. We were then ushered in to sit in the back row of the near-empty theatre. Our black faces were not allowed to sit up front.
Up North, back to Saginaw
For better or worse, after the lessons from this mini vacation, my racism radar became more finely tuned.
Peter and I were the only black kids enrolled at that time at Jesse Loomis. Some American Indian children arrived for opening day that following September, within weeks of our experiences up north, and they were treated badly. They were roughed up while being pelted with pea gravel on the playground, thrown by children too young to know about racism but old enough to know these children were different from them. We never saw them again after that day.
A few years later, another black child enrolled and to my disbelief, police cars were outside the school to prevent any neighborhood uprisings with the new student. The historic Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education ruling had struck down the separate-but-equal laws on the books but that was only on paper. In the minds of many in 1959, little white children should not share schools with little black children.
When I told my best friend about my experience in Northern Michigan, he became excited and he spoke to me about my coming to visit his family’s cottage the next summer in Tawas. When the time arrived, there was another kid in the car going to Tawas. Not me. His father had heard of the plans and decided that it was not appropriate. Up north was not the place for a black child, even if it was his son’s best friend. All I saw was “No Vacancy” flashing in my mind.
People may ask why I have waited until now to share these memories from childhood. The main reason is that while oral accounts have their place, history needs to be written down. My grandfather Weston Nash and my grandmother Carrie never had that chance. Neither did my parents. This is for them.
(Dr. Jack W. Nash, D.D.S. is a long-respected dentist with offices across South Washington Avenue from City Hall. He graduated from Saginaw High School in 1969 and from University of Michigan Dental School in 1977. Among his many civic activities, he volunteers for service on both the City Planning Commission and the Zoning Board of Appeals. However, audiences are far larger when he performs on bass guitar with peer local musical “cats.” Spouse Janet Nash is retired as principal of the Saginaw Arts and Sciences, SASA, and in 2020 she won election to the Board of Education.)
