I am a "white" man, born when Harry Truman was in the last month of his presidency, in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Oh, how far we have come since then, as a state, as a nation, as a people, as a party.
On the flip, some background and a couple of personal anecdotes to illustrate how far we have come - when the Democratic Party of Virginia can vote overwhelmingly to nominate a "black" man to be President of the United States, and the whole Party, in convention, can ratify and unify upon that hopeful choice.
In my youth, politics in Virginia were dominated by "The Byrd Machine." Harry Flood Byrd was the quintessential "pay-as-you-go" fiscal conservative. Even though he was the descendant of some of the most illustrious of the "First Families of Virginia," he saw his share of poverty as a youngster. He claimed to base his political philosophy on this experience of poverty. He also learned politics in the experience of building his father's bankrupt newspaper business into a regional chain.
I stand for strict economy in governmental affairs. The State of Virginia is similar to a great business corporation . . . and should be conducted with the same efficiency and economy as any private business.
As well, as the owner and manager of a private Shenandoah Valley turnpike, Byrd was an early proponent of state-subsidized road building and tourism in the Commonwealth. He gained a national reputation as a fairly progressive governor (1926-1930) and was a timely and crucial supporter of Franklin Roosevelt's nomination in 1932. Also as governor, Byrd used road building to forge iron political ties at the county level across the state, founding "The Byrd Machine" on control of the pipeline of office seekers in a Virginia dominated by the post-Reconstruction Democratic Party. But things were changing in the relationship between Virginia and the national political scene - in fact, Virginia went for Herbert Hoover in 1932, and elected Harry Byrd to the US Senate. Byrd broke with Roosevelt over New Deal legislation, refused to support Harry Truman in 1948 and Adlai Stevenson in 1952 - then voted against Eisenhower's interstate highway bill.
With an unchallengeable political base in white dominated, near-feudal rural districts, where Jim Crow and racial disenfranchisement were endemic, Harry Byrd was positioned to become a key figure in the brewing fight over civil rights. Byrd made himself a ringleader of the opposition to the desegregation of public schools mandated by Brown v. Board of Education - a case based in part on a suit against school official in Farmville, Virginia. He collaborated in the launch of the "Southern Manifesto" in 1956, which was signed by 19 US Senators and 81 Members of the US House from across the South - all but two of whom were Democrats (the two Republicans were Representatives from Virginia). The "Manifesto" accused the Supreme Court of "abuse of power" that "substitute[d] naked power for established law" and threatened to destroy "the amicable relations between the white and Negro races that have been created through 90 years of patient effort by the good people of both races." Byrd had never been a serious proponent of public education in Virginia, now he and his southern brethren asserted that the Constitution made no provision for any law concerning state conduct of educational institutions or affairs. Their answer, in the face of NAACP moves to register black children in segregated, southern, white public schools - Harry Byrd's answer - was "massive resistance." This doctrine was publicly championed in Virginia by Byrd's newspaper chain, and by the Richmond newspaper monopoly under the byline of its firebrand editor, James J. Kilpatrick. The Virginia Generally Assembly, under the control of the Byrd Machine, responded by passing a series of segregationist laws, which cut off state funds to integrated schools, instituted racist "pupil placement boards," and established "tuition grants" to allow "school choice" for white families faced with having to send their children to school "with the n*****s." These provisions were eventually struck down, and Virginia schools put on the road to integration, but not before years of bitter struggle, the shut-down of several county school systems, and the Federal Court-enforced busing of students in many Virginia school districts - including my own.
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I grew up with an openly racist grandfather, who was himself the son of a Confederate soldier and a slave-owning family. I lament this family history - even though my grandfather, as a third son of a second marriage, under the old Virginia tradition of primogeniture, inherited nothing but genes and attitudes from our slave-holding progenitors.
My father, a World War II vet and a mechanic, was less racist that my granddad (- who, by the way, was, despite his overt racism, a warm, loving, and funny old guy who told me great stories about how the world was in the early 20th century). And yet I have a distinct memory of when I first even knew there was a "difference" between "blacks" and "whites."
I was playing with a toy truck in our gravel driveway by the street in front of our house in a post-war suburb. I was maybe three or four years old. Along came a kid, a little older than I. He stopped to play with me. We had fun. After a while he left, and I went inside. My mother asked, "So who's your little colored friend?" I literally had no idea what she was talking about. So she explained to me the thing about skin color and "difference." My older sister overheard the conversation, and teased me about it. I still remember that I didn't know.
Later, my family took vacations to Buckroe Beach on the Chesapeake Bay. There was a pier there, with a fence on one side, dividing the beach. On one side was the sparsely peopled "white" beach. On the other side was the crowded "negro" beach. There was also a nice little amusement park, with rides and games and ice cream, where we would spend the evening. "Whites Only."
I was a high-school senior when busing came to my school. As a senior, I was exempted from the ride across town to the "black" high school my younger peers were taken to. The black students who were brought to my high school were mostly, it seemed, not too happy about it. Some teachers who I and my friends had feared and loathed as strict, no-nonsense task masters, seemed intimidated and demoralized by the disruption of old norms and routines. Education suffered a bit in my school as a result.
So, yes, there was a price to be paid for school desegregation in my Southern world of mid-Twentieth Century Virginia.
But now I look at my daughter. For her, it's almost as if I never had that talk with my mother 50 years ago about the "meaning" of skin color. Her best friend - Xan - is a beautiful, dark-skinned young lady from a nice family. She and my daughter both look forward to seeing President Obama bring change to our country - change in policies like health-care and war. How far we have come . . .