I saw a diary the other day where the writer stated he grew up in the south in the ‘50s and ‘60s and really never saw mistreatment of Blacks. Many of the commenters were skeptical, and so was I. I started trying to recall my time growing up in the south, and it was very different from his experience.
In 1958, when I was six years old, we moved from Iowa City, Iowa to Huntsville, Alabama after my dad got a job right out of college with a Redstone Arsenal/NASA contractor. He had earned a degree from the University of Iowa in cinematography and journalism. He was a photojournalist, and was offered a job with the Des Moines Register, but turned it down for better pay with Thiokol Chemical in Huntsville. His main claim to fame in college was taking a photograph in 1955 for the Iowa City paper of the first Black homecoming queen at the University of Iowa just after she was crowned. It went around the world on the wire services, primarily UPI (United Press International).
Her name is Dora Martin Berry, and she was actually crowned Miss State University. They didn’t use the title ‘Homecoming Queen’ at the time, but the role functioned the same. Only for whites, apparently. The Hawkeye football team was invited to the Rose Bowl that year, but Berry was not allowed to ride the Rose Parade float. While students voted her in, the university staff and powers that be did everything they could make make her ‘reign’ disappear. They’ve since apologized, of course.
We were Midwesterners and, while clued in about the systemic and more subtle racism that existed outside the south, we were not clued in about the fully segregated south or the open bigotry that existed, and had existed for centuries.
So, we packed our bags into a 1954 Chevy and headed to Huntsville. We stayed at a motel near the corner of Sparkman Drive and the Parkway. After we moved into our home at Pearsall Gardens, I quickly learned that southern whites were in control. By that I mean: in control of the Black population. And the n-word was commonplace. The polite or proper way to address African-Americans at the time was ‘colored’ or Negro. Some southerners thought that saying ‘ni*ra’ was as good as saying Negro.
My initial experiences with the plight of Blacks as a kid were limited, and my racist friends skewed my impressions of African-Americans. If I came home using some of the language for Blacks they used, my mouth would get washed out with soap. In that way, I had to be calibrated from time to time by my parents, who were ‘integrationists.’
As one of my earliest memories, I went to the Huntsville library downtown and, passing a water fountain, took a drink. Next thing I know, some old man is slapping me on the head for drinking out of the ‘colored’ fountain. I figured since the ‘colored’ sign said ‘coloreds’ and the white fountain said ‘white’s only’, it meant I had a choice. He pointed my six-year-old “ass” to the white’s only drinking fountain. The man told me that it’s unclean to drink from the ‘colored’ fountain. My mother called the library next day to inquire about who slapped my head, but didn’t find out, except the librarian was sure he wasn’t an employee. It was the first time any adult, other than my parents, cussed at me – to, “get your ass up to the white’s only fountain.” If you look at pictures of these fountains, the white fountain was usually refrigerated and the ‘colored’ fountain was sometimes just a rusty sink. Separate but equal it wasn’t. Even with as simple an apparatus as a drinking fountain, we had found a way to extend our hatred to the basic necessities of life.
As I remember, the Huntsville Public Library downtown had the ‘colored’ library in a corner room of the building down the hall with a separate entrance. The books they had in there were worn and outdated, if textbooks, or in very used condition if fiction or non-fiction. It was widely believed by southern whites that the majority of Blacks weren’t interested in reading or education.
In 1994, Charles Murray would write “The Bell Curve” which argued much the same, but this isn’t the only recent screed on this racist topic.
The shameless bigotry was everywhere in the south, incessant, and pervading every corner of the oppressed Black population. And these attitudes still exist here. Make no mistake.
The segregated libraries for Blacks were often supported by educated Blacks in the community, sometimes allied with more liberal-thinking white librarians in the south.
But, protests at libraries were more commonplace than you might imagine, and it is not well known according to a 2017 article in American Libraries Magazine.
The article describes the Tougaloo Nine, who attempted to integrate the Jackson, Mississippi library. And, once put in jail for trying to do a research project at the library, the Tougaloo Nine started wondering if it had been worth it, imagining the Klan coming by to drag them out of jail to you know where.
The Huntsville school system was segregated and wasn’t integrated at my school until I was in the 7th grade in 1964. Huntsville’s first integration was in 1963 and included four Black students enrolled at four different schools.
At the first of the 1964 school year, right after it was announced that all schools were being integrated, many of our neighbors refused to send their kids to school. Because the school buses weren’t running for this reason, my mom took us all to school, my brother, sister, and me.
The history of it shows that Huntsville at the time defied George Wallace and chose to integrate its schools. As noted above, this was not a popular idea in Huntsville among the native white population. Huntsville was being ‘modernized’ with an influx of people from all over the country who came to work at NASA or the Army’s Redstone Arsenal, or their contractors. But the complete integration didn’t occur until about 1969.
The first Black at our Jr. High School was taller than me, thin, and I would only see him during class changes. He was in a grade or two higher, and I didn’t know his name but saw his face during most class changes as he walked by. He always looked straight ahead and, I recall now, was even spit upon in his face on at least one occasion that I witnessed during class change. I can still see him recoiling from the assault, his eyes briefly closing as he walked past. But he kept walking and maintained no expression. This caused me to feel sorry for him, angry at the injustice, and he must have been very brave.
During a geography class around this time, taught by Mr. Kennedy a retired Army guy who thought he should be teaching, the subject of integration came up. This teacher must have known my parents were very supportive of integration, because he goaded me into answering what I thought of integration. I was shy, barely able to speak in front of a group of people, but I echoed what my parents told me: it’s a good thing to integrate; Blacks have been kept down too long. Well, no one else supported integration, and I really felt isolated. Next day, Kennedy had me read a passage from our textbook. Now, I can read pretty well, and after I finished, he came over and told me to read it again, only the right way. I read the passage again, and he said it still wasn’t right. He began to twist my ear. I thought he was going to take it off. I remember crying and being very embarrassed. This news got to the principal somehow and Kennedy was mildly reprimanded. I still don’t know what he meant about “the right way” except I never adopted a southern accent, choosing instead to maintain my Midwestern accent. I’m not even sure that was the reason.
The next semester several more Black students followed the first Black student who had to endure taunts and physical shoves, and the tension among the racist class of kids (and teachers) started to fade a bit.
My high school in Huntsville, the Butler Rebels, had a rebel flag and a cartoon Confederate colonel as mascot, Colonel Reb. The fight song was “Dixie.” And the cheerleaders were the Dixie Debs. A famous ‘riot’ took place in 1969 in the commons area of the school, but it was more a shoving brawl between Black and white students. After that, we had a ‘rap’ session, where grievances could be aired, and a local court order later ‘clarified’ what was allowed at school.
As an aside, in 1972, when I was in the Army, ‘rap’ sessions were mandatory. We sat across from each other and had very frank conversations, among Blacks, whites, and Hispanics. The emotions would run high, from anger to disbelief, to grudging respect, to great stories, and much laughter as we ended friends and we caucasians were a little more enlightened. The idea about ‘rap’ sessions was to air everything out.
Back in High School, these rap sessions tended to ease tension among the racist class as Black students explained to them why they wanted the flag and ‘rebel’ name changed to something more inclusive (it never was). White students, who claimed to be descendants from this or that Confederate fighter (one of whom actually came to class with a rebel flag draped across his shoulders), started literally crying tears because their ‘heritage’ was being run-down. That their ancestors had it hard too, poor whites, hardscrabble farmers. It’s the same tired ass thing you hear today. Blacks? They looked confused and quite amused at the tears. They explained some very bad parts of their history and, man, it was much worse. We weren’t educated then on anything about Black History. It would be years before the history of African-Americans in this country would be taught in schools.
I can’t explain what hold this southern heritage thing has on southern whites. It’s all a myth that they’ve convinced themselves of, that before the Great Unpleasantness, the Lost Cause, and all that, was a better era. And it was, for them. Countless old plantations in the South still stand and are almost worshipped. To be fair, some are museum pieces that try and explain the real history.
According to Orbitz, about 2,000 plantations existed on just a 45-mile stretch from Baton Rouge to New Orleans. Note the silly idea that we might think they’re still “totally amazing.” Here’s how one is described, the Houmas House Plantation:
This exquisite property was once a sugar cane farm. It is hard to believe it began as a three-room cottage, because now it consists of a lovely mansion plus many outbuildings set amidst 40 acres of magnificent gardens. Tour guides don era clothing and tell terrific tales. You’ll see a gold clock that once belonged to Marie Antoinette and then Napoleon, plus the room where Bette Davis slept while she filmed “Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte” here. Dinner in the splendid Carriage House, where the food matches the surroundings, is a must as is a drink in the adjacent Turtle Bar. New luxury cottages permit spending the night.
Really?
Southern whites have always, to me, been drawn to myth, whether it’s borne of military misadventures in the Civil War, snake-oil selling wannabe presidents, or professional wrestling. But, this myth-worshipping extends to the still closely held and almost-silent belief that Blacks are inferior to whites. Many millions of southerners still believe this, even if they tell you they don’t. And this myth further extended in slave days to whites believing wholesale that their vast wealth was the result of their own acumen and hard work. A 2018 New York Times column by John Eligon describes a visit to a ‘notable’ Vicksburg historian, Gordon Cotton, a classic throwback in ‘historians’ clothing. Eligon describes meeting him this way:
Slavery, Gordon Cotton explains, “did some good for some people.”
A white retired journalist, Mr. Cotton is propped on a stool in his cluttered kitchen, holding court before me and another black reporter. We showed up unannounced at his home just off a dirt road in a heavily wooded area on the outskirts of this city in the Deep South.
His great-great-grandmother owned about 30 slaves and “she provided nice little homes for them,” he says. “She provided clothing and food and medical care. She had one who made baskets, and she always bought his baskets.”
And this man is revered in and around Vicksburg, of course.
In the late 1960s, my dad joined the National Democratic Party of Alabama, where they would meet at Dr. John Cashin’s house near Oakwood College (where Little Richard attended a few years earlier). Dad had left Thiokol and got a job with NASA as deputy director of the Marshall Space Flight Center photo lab.
Dr. Cashin, a prominent African-American dentist in Huntsville, founded the party to counter George Wallace, who was getting ready to run for governor again. Cashin was also instrumental in forcing Huntsville schools to integrate. I don’t remember much about this, only hearing once from my dad that he had just met Julian Bond and to watch this rising star.
I don’t know why my dad joined the National Democratic Party of Alabama, except that he liked politics and liked to mix and mingle, whether as part of a bowling league, Toastmasters speaking club, or the Huntsville Press Club. And, yeah, he was a Democrat, just not the southern kind.
Now, there was (and is still is) a Black radio station in Huntsville called WEUP about a stone’s throw from where Dr. Cashin used to live. If we were camping out, us kids would tune in at 6:00 a.m. to hear the sign-on: “We Up, Is You?” Now, truthfully, I thought they meant that WEUP is me, rather than what the phrase really was: a catchy morning sign on meant for its family of listeners, not for snickering white boy racists in training, which many of my friends were. They thought, because of their parents, that Blacks were incapable of using proper grammar.
WEUP was located at a tabernacle church when we first moved to Huntsville, just off Oakwood Avenue. It used to interfere with our phone calls because the station was so close to our house at Pearsall Gardens. When WEUP moved to Jordan Lane near Oakwood College, we moved over that way too as a matter of coincidence. Before the station moved, I went by and a Black man said I could go in and take some posters if I wanted them. I took him to be the pastor. I saw hundreds of records on the floor, mostly 45s, and many had been stepped on and broken. I took several posters home with me, I don’t remember any of the acts they portrayed, but certainly the Gospel and Soul stars of the day. My mother made me take them back because she said they didn’t belong to me; that all that stuff is moving to the new station. Anyway…all that could’ve been collectors’ items, but it was not to be.
There isn’t continuous progress on racial matters. It’s two steps forward and one back. As a matter of politics, Republicans are majorly to blame for this. And, we all know the history with them – the Southern Strategy, which they’ve employed in every election since Nixon. It should be the death knell for this party, and they should all go down in flames come November.
But, I’m not totally optimistic about this. Back in 1994, when Newt Gingrich took over the House, I had a regular column in the Potomac News in northern Virginia and wrote about this election, which we’re still suffering from (Potomac News, Nov. 16, 1994, “The GOP debt of the ‘80s moves voters to ask for more”). I just reread it and am still not optimistic we will see true equality in the near future. The angry white male that I thought would be subsumed by the growing minority population hasn’t occurred. The 2016 election proves that. The big change I didn’t see coming was the Koch Brothers effect on state legislatures gerrymandering themselves into power.
These recent moves by Bill Barr to federalize state and local issues with his storm-troopers is part and parcel of the same insidious power grab.
Since this was before Internet, mostly, none of my columns are searchable (at the Potomac News). Here’s how I ended it, and the reason for my lack of confidence, 12th paragraph down to the end:
It is estimated that by the turn of the century, half the citizens of the United States will be from one minority group or another – either Hispanic, Asian-American, or African-American. It’s no wonder, then, that this election was made possible by white males, who voted 60 percent Republican and count themselves solidly conservative.
By the time the federal debt is eliminated, if it is, white Americans will be in the distinct minority. In this century the GOP has been the party of the elite. The tide that turned their way Nov. 8 was a power grab by the minority of white males who are angry. This election and the ’92 election were a matter of economics. Eventually, most issues could boil down to a struggle between the haves and the have-nots like nothing seen before; between those who want an inclusive, pluralistic America, and those who believe it is their mandate to divide and conquer.
An economic Apartheid with a hardened, bigoted cast is not unthinkable in America. It’s evident in the rhetoric of Newt Gingrich, who calls Clinton the “enemy of normal Americans.” It’s evident in Pat Buchanan’s rhetoric to “take back America,” and his talk during the ’92 Republican national convention about a cultural war. It’s evident in California’s Proposition 187 and the best-selling book The Bell Curve, which proposes there will be a permanent underclass because blacks are mentally inferior to whites.
Republicans have been staying on message since Nov. 8, but their real agenda is a transition to a position of strength before America’s ethnic makeup forces a new socio-economic model and leaves divisive White Anglo-Saxon Protestants on the wrong side of affirmative action forever.
Even now, before the large swearing in on Jan. 4, you can see and hear Republicans touting their true inclinations. Orrin Hatch, the incoming chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, wants to review the “outrageous” policies at the Justice Department’s civil rights division.
Jesse Helms, the incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is threatening to curtail foreign aid and is presumably scouting around for new right-wing dictators to coddle. And the new GOP leadership promises to fashion another crime bill to lock up criminals and throw away the key.
After the “Contract With America” is acted on in the first 100 days of the next Congress, the GOP will likely return to the party of suspicion and country-club elites. They can’t help themselves. They’ve won control of Congress. The media – of all political stripes – is next.
I just watched an interview with Stacey Abrams and she says her organization has registered 70,000 new voters in Georgia. That’s not quite enough to make up for Gov. Kemp’s purge, she acknowledged.
It’s going to take a huge amount of energy to vanquish this insidious political enemy.
In June, a month before John Lewis died, he told The Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart that his advice to the BLM movement was to, “Give until you cannot give anymore.”
I was 13 when the march took place across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. The bloody images, which thrilled southern white racists to no end, helped usher in the Voting Rights Act. Of the BLM movement, Capehart wrote that Lewis...
...told me he was “inspired” to see thousands of people in the United States and around the world peacefully protesting against police violence. “It was so moving and so gratifying to see people from all over America and all over the world saying through their action, ‘I can do something. I can say something’,”
On August 28, another March on Washington is planned. This is going to be a huge event, undertaken by Al Sharpton’s National Action Network. The jack-booted Republicans and their enablers will attempt to shut it down. In fact, it could be another confrontation; but I think the advocates are ready for it with another peaceful response.
C.T. Vivian, who died just hours before John Lewis, was also lauded by the Atlanta he loved. He told a story once that some at the SCLC asked King why they were protesting. Vivian said King went over to the large office window facing the street and wrote across it: “We’re here to redeem the soul of America.” King always believed we could live out our creed.
But, the numerous remnants of the Old South have to go before this sentiment is fully realized. Monuments? Yes, gone. Flags? Gone. Sons of the Confederate Veterans? Humiliated and run out of town. People like Gordon Cotton? Exposed and subsumed, finally.
