A painful memory resurfaced the other day. It concerns the integration of my previously all-white high school.
Like virtually all public school systems in the South, we had separate schools for Black children and for white children. Then came the Civil Rights Act of 1964, passed despite the profound objection of Southern lawmakers and a 72-day filibuster.
My Mississippi hometown's response was typical. Each household was given a "freedom of choice" form for each of their school-aged children: Check the box to choose the school your child will attend.
God bless that handful of Black children whose families checked the box for the white school. I'm pretty sure you could count the Black students who enrolled in my white high school on one hand. And that's where my memory flashback comes in.
One of the new Black students was a skinny boy with angular features, a little like Sammy Davis Jr. I don't think I ever knew his name. But the kids with power in my class called him "Hatchet Face." He walked alone down the halls, slowly, in a perfectly straight line. Two of those white kids -- leaders, football players -- aligned their direction toward him precisely in front of his path. As they approached, right before encountering him, the white boys suddenly split apart and simultaneously quickly raised their inside hands, as if to throw a punch, but instead each scratched his ear and continued to walk down the hall. The Black child ducked to the floor, dropping his books trying to avoid the attack.
That's the context, but here's the part of those memories that has resurfaced lately. It's some time later, I can't recall, a week, maybe several. Exact same scenario. The lone Black student walking in a straight line. The white football boys headed straight for him again. They split right before meeting him and raise their hands in the same provocative way. But the Black child just keeps walking. He doesn't even blink. He just looks straight ahead, expressionless, and keeps walking. For years, that memory has returned to me.
I thought then, and I think now, what did that level of disciplined, self-control cost that young man. Did it turn into a gift, a strength? A trauma?
Civil rights activists in those days learned techniques of nonviolent resistance, eschewing violence or the threat of violence while challenging discriminatory laws and racist practices.
I've often thought of that young man. The optimistic me hopes his experience inspired him to become a peaceful warrior for justice. The realistic me worries about the likelihood that he carried trauma into his future. He certainly had a right to feel anger and resentment.
In 1968, the Supreme Court struck down our "freedom of choice" policies, and real integration happened. Private schools popped up across the South, many founded by white churches. But they did not use public funds to resegregate. Happily, in my town the seg-academy just took the hotheads out of the system. That school went out of business a few years later after integration went smoothly.
I understand the Arkansas Legislature and the newly appointed secretary of the Department of Education, Jacob Oliva, are working on plans for a new form of "freedom of choice." Some parents seem to resist the notion of their chldren studying subjects that might make their children uncomfortable -- such as a history of racial oppression that rightfully haunts us Southerners -- all in the name of protecting their "values." Underneath the resistance, though, it's the parents' discomfort at stake.
As a white Southern male, I recognize I am the inheritor of massive unearned privilege and power -- white privilege and male privilege. In my bones are patterns of unconscious oppression. All of us "good ole boys" need enlightenment and education. We need to know history, and not just the history written from the perspective of people like us.
I've been helped by the publications of the National SEED Project, especially the writing of Dr. Peggy McIntosh. She helps me observe and think systemically and personally -- without blame, shame or guilt. You might try reading her list of the daily effects of white and male privilege she has identified in her life at https://bit.ly/3ZnRKv2 online. That list makes connections for me.
We seem as divided today as we were in the 1960s. But I do hope that courageous young man at my high school has grandchildren now who don't face the oppression he did.
In many ways we've improved. Maybe one day we will learn how to love our neighbor as ourselves.