A Memory From the Past at Year's End

The Legend of Addie Faye

I haven’t thought about Addie Faye for over fifty years until recently. It was at ZaZa’s when my granddaughter and I started talking about popularity, always an important subject for a twelve-year-old. When asked my advice about how to be popular, I immediately began telling Caitlyn that she should be a friend to all people, regardless of race or class. She should work hard to make sure no one was excluded. She should speak to all she knew in her middle school hallways and call them by name. It was only then that I remembered where I myself had learned such traits; it was from Addie Faye Sullivan, a senior in my rural delta high school. She was indeed a queen and a legend at West Tallahatchie High School in 1957.
My grandfather had died in the spring of that year, and my worn-out, depressed waitressing mother decided the three of us—she, my sister Judy, and I—should move in with my grandmother to live. I was just completing my seventh grade year at E. E. Bass in Greenville, Mississippi, and was in that pre-adolescent stage of life. Not only was I gawky as a 5’9” kid of around 100 pounds, I had naturally curly dirty-blonde hair with the highest forehead ever recorded in history I was sure. My hair frizzed frequently in the damp fall days in the delta. I had also just started wearing glasses since my vision was near being considered legally blind. Nevertheless, I was determined to make the best of the move and began meeting new friends as an eighth grader.
I noticed Addie Faye immediately as a cute, short vivacious senior. As she walked down the hall every day, she would call each person by name and say hi. I am still not sure how she learned my name, but soon I was added to the list of junior highers who admired her greatly. Oh yes, I had heard about Addie Faye that fall—how she had just had a baby girl out of wedlock (it was after all 1957, and no one, except Addie Faye, kept their babies back then. Other girls went away to visit their “aunts” for a few months and then returned all slim and trim with no babies in their possession). The whole experience though had cost Addie Faye the head cheerleader’s position since a mommy cheerleader couldn’t be expected to yell, “Can you make it? Can you take it? Can you Tallahatchie shake it? Can you boogy to the left? Can you boogy to the right?” It would not be appropriate according to the school administrators.
I continued to observe Addie Faye’s friendliness to all in spite of her own exclusion in some circles. I did not have much success making more than a friend or so that first year since I was still unbearably shy. Not many people back then lived with their grandmothers who were in their 60’s without a mother (ours had decided to work by that time in Memphis) or a father (ours had been absent since we were quite young). With Judy’s encouragement, however, I decided upon a bold step: to run for the position of student council treasurer. I decided to ask Addie Faye to be my campaign manager. We put posters everywhere throughout the school; we glittered letters to hang across the hallways saying, “Sims for Treasurer.” We even had cards printed to promote my candidacy.
The final day of the campaign was to be for speeches. Mine I knew was rather dull and standard, “Please vote for me for treasurer; I’ll do the best I can for you,” I stammered as my knees clapped together in a strange rhythm which I was sure could be picked up over the microphone. My voice, never strong and confident at that time, was barely above a whisper.
Addie Faye’s speech on my behalf, however, was magnificent. While I can’t remember all the great things she said about me personally, I knew that I was swelling with pride as I heard those words. She ended the speech with Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If.” You remember how it goes, “If you can keep your head when all about you / Are losing theirs, and blaming it on you, / If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, / But make allowance for their doubting too / If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, / Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies. / Or being hated don’t give way to hating. / And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise.” By the end of the poem, the rural students, who weren’t exactly college material, were on their feet clapping thunderously. The next day, of course, the election took place, and the votes were counted. I waited nervously for the votes count, hoping that I would get enough votes not to be humiliated.
I lost the election that day by seven votes to a sophomore boy, but I gained something much more important: a newly-found confidence for myself and a respect for all the women who go through tremendous odds and still emerge as victors. In my eyes, Addie Faye has always been, and will always continue to be, a delta legend.