MUSINGS ON MLK DAY

Today is Martin Luther King Day, a federal holiday in the United States. This puts me in a reflective mood because racism was fundamental in the world in which I grew up. You see, I grew up in the Jim Crow south. Any native southerner of my age can tell you all about how pervasive racism was then; and if you did not live through it, you really cannot know now just how important racism was to life in the south.

Looking back on growing up in Pensacola, Florida, in the 1940s and 50s I marvel at how stoic were the "coloreds," as African Americans were called then in polite company (the "n" word was usually reserved for private conversations). The discrimination was embedded deeply all around us. When my wife Sandy first got her drivers license, this must have been in the late 1950s, she decided on a whim to take her maid, whom she loved, to McDonalds for lunch. The maid knew what was going to happen but she said not a word. They stopped and Sandy went to the counter to get the food to take back to the car (no inside dining in those days). Back in the car, the manager came out and told them they would have to leave because they did not serve "coloreds" there. Sandy was mortified with embarrassment but the maid was not. She said to Sandy, "Don't fret, honey child, I am used to it." That little incident changed Sandy's life. It brought home the inexcusable unfairness of racism.

I did not need any such jolt myself as I saw the awful racism all around me every day. The city bus had a sign painted over the driver, "Whites sit from front to rear, coloreds sit from rear to front." If there was any question, the "colored" person gave up the seat. The railroad car had a partition behind which "coloreds" had to sit. There were two waiting rooms in every station. No black person could sit at the luncheon counters. If they wanted anything, they had to stand at the end of the counter, order, pay, and take the food off. It seemed that everything imaginable was separated with the "coloreds" getting the short end. It was humiliating.

The Saenger Theater in Pensacola, about 1938. The Saenger was the premier movie house in town. The Colored Entrance was on the side of the building. "Colored" customers had to climb an outside staircase to sit in the balcony where they were confined. This entrance was removed in the 1960's but the last time I checked the staircase was still there. There were theaters on Palafox Street which did not admit "coloreds" at all.

It would take a book to describe all the aspects of daily life under Jim Crow. Looking back now, racism was unbelievably pervasive in society and culture. And, the mindset was just as present in my family's church as anywhere else. So, I grew up assuming this was the way it was everywhere, that is, until I was in the Sixth Grade. Most of my little friends were like me, in families that had come from rural northwest Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi. Racism was a given among these people. However, I always had classmates whose fathers were in the Navy (armed forces were integrated in 1948) and they told me about the wonders of the world in exotic places as Hawaii, the Philippines, Guam and the sort. In the Sixth Grade, a bunch of us were sitting in the cafeteria having lunch and the subject of "coloreds" going to school with us came up. A Navy girl said loudly, "Well, why shouldn't they go to school with us?" We all fell silent. No one had an answer. That started me to thinking that she had a point and we ought to change our ways for the sake of fairness. I have forgotten the girl's name but I never forgot the impact she had on me.

Racism is still with us, unfortunately. For instance, Alabama is now in an election campaign for governor and senator. George Wallace may be gone, but what he represented is not far below the surface. It seems that the candidates are vying with each other to denounce "critical race theory" curriculum even though it has never been in the schools. This is thinly veiled racism. Moreover, all sorts of laws have been passed to restrict voting. In Jim Crow, it was practically impossible for blacks to vote.

So, MLK day is always bitter sweet for me. Too much of the awful anti-Christian and anti-democratic racism of the old days is still with us, and not just in the south. Yet, I can promise you what we have now is very, very far removed from what we had under Jim Crow. We have progressed light years; and if you have trouble believing that, talk with a southerner of my age and learn what daily life was like before 1960.

As I keep saying on this blog, America had a great democratic revolution after the Second World War and that revolution is still going on. What we are seeing now is the clash between that revolution and the people, mostly white men, who feel threatened by it all. Judging from what has happened in my lifetime, I would say democracy will win out, but it will be far from easy. It will win because of brave people like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the countless good people who also gave their lives to improve life for their fellow human beings. I am also remembering today Blessed Jonathan Daniels, the patron saint of the Episcopal dioceses in Alabama.