HOUSTON – For several of my adolescent years in the 1960s, my family motored 45 miles northwest on US 290 from southeast Houston’s Sunnyside neighborhood to Prairie View’s small community of African American farmers. There, we joined several other black families for what was billed as a picnic. It became a much-anticipated ritual that, to me, had no significance other than an opportunity to spend a day in the country gorging on fried chicken, barbecue, burgers, hot dogs, red soda water, and soul food dishes, and wallowing in an itchy bed of hay tugged by a clattering tractor.
When the appointed day arrived in June, my brother, sister, and I gave a whoop, as we piled into the back seat of the family car, and away we went for a fun holiday outing. If there was a reverential aspect to the day, it never registered with me, my siblings, or the other two dozen or so kids with whom we exhausted ourselves eating, racing around, and playing softball and other energetic games.