Geneva Dejean Riggs: Civil Rights Pioneer?

In the summer of 1989, I was going though the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego California. We were going through the second phase of training when I was pulled off a training exercise, shoved into the back of a hummer and transported to the rear where I was ordered to call my mother from a pay phone. When I did, I heard my mom hit me with the sad news that her mother, my grandmother had passed away. I was devastated.  Mamí as we called her was the Riggs family matriarch. She was a bespectacled, slender, chain smoking freak of nature who had hearing so acute that most bats envied her. She had a dry sarcastic wit, which could make almost ANYTHING sound funny and was possibly the best cook I've ever known and you had better stay out of her kitchen if you knew what was good for you.
         When Geneva Dejean was born in Opelousas, Louisiana in the 20s she had two things going against her. She was black and a woman back when neither blacks nor women had any voice at all. What's more, she was the second daughter of a beautiful black woman and a white man at a time when persons of mixed race (male or female) were treated as pariahs by both the black AND white communities.  She met and married a man named Alvin Riggs and raised a big family which included an adorable daughter with a funny voice named Lee Etta who would eventually have five children of her own including myself.
         For reasons I'll never quite understand the Department of defense & Marine Corps in their infinite wisdom would not allow me to attend Mamí's funeral. This made the loss seem that much worse.

       I didn't know this until a few days ago but paying last respects to Mamí changed the HISTORY of small town of Church Point, Louisiana.  My mother had made Mamí's arrangements years earlier with a mortician in Church Point. Contracts had been signed, fees had been paid and all had been taken care of, at least that's what any sane person would have assumed; however, the good people at the mortuary informed the grieving children of Geneva Dejean Riggs, widow of Alvin Riggs that their mother could not be interred at their facility because she was "colored." My mother, aunts and uncles were then informed that "colored" funerals were handled by the mortuary near the old Handy place.
      
      Those who have met my mother describe her as an unassuming, very humble person. She is as sweet as a peach cobbler unless you're stupid enough to make her mad and unfortunately the good people at the un-named funeral home did precisely that.  My mother can be called many things, but I've never heard the time shrieking violet used to describe her. When you mess with those she loves mom digs in her heels and you're in for one hell of a fight.
      Over the course of two days mom battled an idiot mortician and his son, mentioned getting the NAACP and their lawyers to stop by, threatened to call the Louisiana Attorney General AND the State Licensing board of morticians to review his license and at the end of all of that she reminded him that unless he was ready to go outside and put up "Whites Only" and "Coloreds Need Not Apply" signs outside he needed to look at a calendar to remind him that it was 1989 and not 1959.

         The mortician yelled, screamed and nearly had a small heart attack but in the end relented.
So it came to pass that Geneva Dejean Riggs who grew up and spent the better part of her life being told to use the rear entrances, who was relegated to using certain water fountains and public facilities because of the color of her skin was the first person of color (well technically bi-racial person) interred in Church Point, Louisiana at a mortician who had previously served an exclusively white clientele.  All the while this was happening I was flat on my back in California receiving intravenous fluids and some beautiful medications to help me rest and recuperate from dehydration I suffered in the desert,  oblivious to the events in the part of the world which I frequently call "The ancestral homeland".
         I've always respected my mother, she's a person of character and if there is any good in me she most certainly is responsible for it.  Being a humble person mom waited more than 20 years to tell me of those events and while I didn't think it POSSIBLE my already towering respect for my mother grew.

      Some would have been content to have had the wake and services some place else and would have gone away threatening a lawsuit that would have never materialized, but my mom fought and by doing so gave Mamí the dignity and respect that she had been denied so many times in her lifetime by men and women who had no reason save the color of her skin.
      When I remember my grandmother the first thing that came to mind was a gumbo recipe which I try to emulate each time I'm standing over a cast iron skillet attempting to re-create her roux. I remember a woman who woke up in the morning and lit a cigarette on her stove and seemed to have one dangling from her lip for the rest of the day. I remember a woman with a quick, dry sarcastic wit who could always quickly clown me, my cousins Darnell, Junior, Terry & Jason with impeccable timing and relative ease, and NOW I'll remember a civil rights pioneer.
        She wasn't told to go to the back of a bus, but she forever changed the small town in which she had quietly lived her life and for that I'm even more proud to be her grandson. Happy Mother's day Mamí.

Love,
          Tiny