Beverly McIver: Invisible Me

Text by Irving Sandler

I have spent all of my life questioning my identity.  As a little girl, I felt invisible, non-descript.  I was in the shadow of my oldest sister Renee, who is mentally retarded.  Our family life centered on the well being of Renee.  From day to day, activities were planned, always subject to cancellation depending upon if Renee had a seizure or threw a tantrum. My mother was a single parent, working as a maid to raise my middle sister Roni, Renee and me.  We grew up poor, dependant upon welfare and other handouts to make it.  We grew up in a housing project called Morningside Homes, in Greensboro, NC. I became aware that I was poor at the start of school integration, as I was bused to predominately white schools, K-12.  Several of my friends were white, and instantly I noticed a difference between their lifestyle and mine.  Although my mother created a loving home for my sisters and me, the reality of what it meant to be poor slapped me in the face every time I left our two-bedroom apartment. Danger lurked around our home. In fact in 1979 the KKK visited our home and shot five Communist worker party members dead. My mother witnessed the entire scenario from our kitchen window.

-BM