Beverly Smallwood remembers an incident in sixth grade at Center Township Elementary School in the late 1950s when students were lining up for an activity.

A white student told Smallwood, who is Black, to get behind her because of her skin color, adding in a dreaded derogatory slur.

“I punched her dead in her face,” Smallwood said. “Her head hit the wall, and she slowly slid down.”

The next day, her father, the late Joe Smallwood, informed Beverly he would be driving her to school.

She wondered why, until she and her father had driven a short distance down the road.

“(The white student) and 15 people were at the bus stop, waiting to kick my ass,” Smallwood said.

The student disappeared from the school, never to be seen by Smallwood again.

“But was I constantly harassed? No,” she said.

Smallwood’s father worked at Pullman Standard because only Black veterans were hired at Armco in his day.

The elder Smallwood also drove Elias Ritts, one of Butler County’s preeminent postwar citizens, to his home in Florida each fall.

Smallwood told Ritts he wanted to buy a house in the Northvue plan in Center Township, but he couldn’t because he was Black.

Ritts told Smallwood he would buy a house for the Smallwoods using his name, but that Smallwood should consider the discrimination his children might face in the white neighborhood.

“Ritts said ‘Build a house,’” Beverly Smallwood said.

Her parents found a plot off Hendricks Road in Center Township beside a couple who were German and Greek immigrants, respectively.

The couple also suffered the slings and arrows of discrimination due to their status as immigrants, and the two families became fast friends and helped one another when needed.

Smallwood said growing up as a Black child and teen in Butler was made much easier by other families who were judged for their religion or short status as Americans.

“We had a lot of support from the immigrant and Jewish community,” Smallwood said.

She recalled hanging around with local business owner Dennis Offstein as a teen and going to Squirrel Hill in Pittsburgh with him to try lox and bagels.

“I loved it,” Smallwood said of the food and the company. “We had a lot of fun.”

Offstein recalled taking Smallwood horseback riding at a stable in the Prospect area.

On one occasion, the horse rented to Smallwood took off like a shot through the wooded trails used by the stables.

“All you could hear was screaming all through the woods,” Offstein recalled with a chuckle.

He said good parenting plus growing up with the immigrant and Black families in the West End neighborhood helped shape him as an adult and taught him an important lesson.

“Simply, tolerance,” Offstein said.

Smallwood’s teenage life also was made a little easier by the hippy culture of the time, when love and acceptance were the popular mantras.

When Smallwood graduated from Butler High School in 1972, there were six Black students among the school population of thousands.

“And I graduated with three of them,” Smallwood said.

She recalled the Dunlaps, Frosts, Whites, McCalls, Smiths and Potters as examples of the Black families in Butler during her childhood.

Smallwood said outside of having to ride with her family to Pittsburgh to get haircuts because Butler stylists were untrained in cutting Black hair, they could patronize any restaurant or business in Butler without much trouble.

After high school, Smallwood spent one year at the two-building campus at Butler County Community College before transferring to the University of Minnesota, where she majored in biology and art.

She recalled making friends with a young white student, who took Smallwood home to meet her family.

The girl’s brother kept rubbing Smallwood’s arm, expecting the brown tone to rub off.

“They were nice people,” she said. “They just had never seen a Black person before.”

Smallwood went to the neighborhood bar with the family and was asked to polka, which is a dance she knew well from hanging out with the immigrants in Butler.

“I was a star on a Friday night in Hibbing, Minnesota,” she recalled with a laugh.

When her father became ill a short time later, Smallwood left university to return home and got a job at Heckett Engineering.

She later transferred to a Heckett plant in Ohio, where she worked for 14 years.

Smallwood then moved to New Jersey to work for Blue Cross/Blue Shield, where she remained for 15 years.

Her mother then became ill and she moved back home just after Sept. 11, 2001.

“I could see the World Trade Center out of my window at work,” Smallwood said of that dark day. “I knew then I couldn’t stay there.”

When she found a place to live in her hometown, she called a heating oil purveyor that her neighbor had recommended to line up a delivery.

The company owner informed her his father knew Smallwood’s father, and was the only one allowed to call him by a racial slur.

Smallwood found out her father allowed the injustice because the company was the only one in the county that would extend credit to a Black family.

“I called him back and said ‘No thank you,’” she said.

She said little incidents continue to this day because of her skin color, but she overlooks many in the interest of peace.

“You go along to get along,” Smallwood said.

Butler Mayor Bob Dandoy shared his thoughts on the importance of Black History Month on Thursday night at a city council meeting.

“America is a culture of varied and distinctive races and ethnicities, and the city of Butler has long reflected this diversity,” Dandoy said.

He said Black History Month, which began in 1976 as part of the nation’s Bicentennial Celebration, acknowledges much of the history and contributions of African Americans with greater awareness and appreciation than had been historically recognized.

“As both mayor and community member, I recognize the month of February as Black History Month and I urge all citizens to celebrate our diverse heritage and culture and to continue our efforts to create a world that is more just, peaceful and prosperous for all,” Dandoy said.

Slippery Rock University has many activities planned all month for Black History Month.

Those activities can be viewed at https://www.sru.edu/news/012423a.