Transcending Racism

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”  Martin Luther King, March on Washington, 1963

Stephon Clark

In Sacramento, California, demonstrators gathered after the funeral of 22-year-old Stephon Clark. On March 18 police shot Clark 20 times after they suspected him of breaking neighbors’ windows.  They tracked him to his grandmothers’ backyard and claimed he had a gun that turned out to be a cellphone.  The Trump administration has termed what happened a purely local matter.   Attorney-General Jeff Sessions has blunted Justice Department efforts from the Obama years to investigate police brutality and stated publicly that local polices forces would be more effective if subjected to less federal scrutiny.  Reverend Sharpton, speaking at the funeral and afterwards, disagreed, saying: “They've been killing young black men all over the country, and we are here to say that we're going to stand with Stephon Clark and the leaders of this family.   This is about justice. This is about standing with people with courage.”  According to the Los Angeles Times, “In police videos, an officer is heard saying, ‘Hey, mute,’ before the sound cuts off, indicating that the audio recording had been stopped. Sacramento's police chief said the request to mute ‘builds suspicion’ and is part of the investigation.”

 Martin Luther King in London, 1961

IUN Librarian Scott Sandberg invited me to be a panelist on a program to discuss Martin Luther King’s 1964 Nobel Peace Prize address “The Quest for Peace and Justice.”  It will take place on the fiftieth anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination in Memphis, Tennessee.  I shall talk about the relevance of King’s goal of transcending racism and his tactical use of nonviolent forms of civil disobedience.  I was 14 when King came to my attention as elegant spokesman during the Montgomery Bus Boycott.  Neighbors from the South claimed that outside agitators were stirring up  the trouble and that most Alabama Negroes were content with the status quo.  The Boycott gave the lie to that argument.  I marveled at King’s bravery, tested by racist threats and being jailed in Montgomery for driving 30 miles per hour in a 25-mph zone.  In college I was deeply moved by King’s “Letter from the Birmingham Jail,” where he declared: “One has not only a legal, but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”

I still recall hearing the news of Dr. King’s death and watching on TV Bobby Kennedy informing supporters in Indianapolis.  Next day, as riots erupted in nearby Washington, DC, and around the country, I attended a University of Maryland chapel service, where folks were asked to hold hands and sing, “We Shall Overcome.” At the line “Black and white together,” I could only imaging the bitterness black people must have been feeling.  Black Power advocate Stokely Carmichael called the assassination “white America’s biggest mistake.”  Indeed, King’s vision of a post-racist society was mine as well and, hopefully, all people of good will.

At Ron Cohen’s to work on a third edition of our Gary pictorial history, I learned about a new book by Leonard Moore, “The Defeat of Black Power: Civil Rights and the National Black Political Convention of 1972.”  Ron ordered it for the Archives although annoyed that there was no mention of Mayor Richard Hatcher, the convention host and convener, in this synopsis:

      In March of 1972, civil rights activists and black power leaders met for three days in Gary, Indiana, looking to end their intense four-year feud that had effectively divided Black America into two camps: integrationists and separatists. While these tensions always existed within the black freedom struggle, the situation escalated in the aftermath of Martin Luther King's assassination.

      National Black Political Convention would bring together 8,000 of America's most important black leaders. The convention's attempt to develop a national black agenda would merge competing ideologies under the theme "unity without uniformity." Over the course of three intense days, the convention produced a document called "The National Black Political Agenda", which covered areas critical to black life. While attendees and delegates agreed with nearly everything within the document, integrationists had fundamental issues with certain planks, such as the calling of a constitutional convention along with the nationalist demand for reparations. As a result civil rights activists and black elected officials withdrew their support less than ten weeks after the convention. Since nationalists did not hold elective office, have a broad constituency, nor have access to levers of real power in pragmatic ways, their popularity within black communities rapidly declined, leaving civil rights activists and black elected officials holding the mantle of black political leadership in 1972 and beyond.

 Black G.I.s at post exchange in Huachuka, AZ, 1942

In the March 2018 issue of Journal of American History is Thomas A. Guglielmo’s “A Martial Freedom Movement: Black G.I.s’ Political Struggles during World War II.”  Protest against humiliating Jim Crow practices took numerous forms, including the stoning of the post exchange at Huachuca, Arizona in June 1944 at army camps in Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, and Pennsylvania, blacks stormed supple rooms and fired weapons in response to physical abuse at the hands of white officers, military police, and civilians.  Boycotts against segregation took place at Freeman Field officers’ club in Tuskegee, Alabama (Quentin Smith of Gary participated), segregated chapels at Fort Clark in Texas, at a USA show in Fort Jackson, South Carolina, and a dance at Camp Gordon Johnson in Florida.  Future Mississippi civil rights activist Aaron Henry organized boycotts of a segregated movie theater on a troop transport shop en route to Hawaii.  Citing Sherie Mershon and Steven Schlossman’s “Foxholes and Color Lines: Desegregation of the U.S. Armed Forces” (1998), Guglielmo concluded: “Jim Crow’s prodigious wartime inefficiencies, some of which were a direct result of the martial freedom movement, helped push America’s military and civilian leaders toward integration.”

 Matt Atherton and Dennis Norton

Tony Sanchez

Jerry Davich wrote about Portage teacher Matt Atherton  of Willowcreek Middle School inviting mentor Dennis Norton, 78, to speak to his class.  Davich’s favorite instructor was Tony Sanchez, who taught him at Kennedy-King School in Miller.  After reading Davich’s Post-Tribune column, Sanchez wrote:

Thanks, Jerry. You made me cry again. My spirit is so uplifted that I think I could go another ten years!  I wish there were stronger words to express my gratitude for your kind words. Let’s say that you’ve made an old teacher very happy.

My favorite Upper Dublin  history teacher was H.M. Jones, who, I later learned in college, was fired for propositioning male students.  Jones coached varsity baseball and was a scout for the L.A. Dodgers.  I first got wind of his sexual proclivities when he made a play for a friend on a scouting trip.  At first I was totally devastated but probably shouldn’t have been surprised.  He hung out quite a bit in the boys locker room, where guys showered after gym.  In his classroom, if a girl took off a shoe at her desk, anyone was free to throw it out the window.  He took particular delight teasing minister’s daughter Vicki Vroom, who needlessly worried she’d done poorly on tests.  H.M. would hand exams back going from best to worst and commonly keep Vicki’s till near the end.

 LeeLee Devenney in 2017

Former Upper Dublin classmate LeeLee Devenney and husband Robert are celebrating their fiftieth anniversary by embarking on a two-week guided tour to Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.  They met in Afghanistan while she was in the Peace Corps.  LeeLee wrote: “Our kids think we are a bit crazy but well aware we love an adventure.”  My response, that my upcoming adventure was going to Finland in June, must have sounded pretty lame.  Toni and I love Middle Eastern Kabob, Pilau (a rice dish), and Naam (flatbread), as well but know where to get it closer to home.

IU Press sent me an annual statement pertaining to my 1978 book “City of the Century,” of which they have sold 4,375 copies, including 8 in 2017.  My share of earnings: $0.00.  There was a time when the press offered to pay my royalties in books, either mine or by another author.

Brenda A. Love’s Facebook message reminded me of a neighbor kid who’d occasionally take target practice at the back of our house:

      Usually, I am awakened by one of the cats around 2:30 am. I then will pet them or feed them then go back to sleep for a few hours (if I’m lucky). Today, however, I was awakened by the sound of a B.B. gun. Perhaps a Rough Rider B.B. gun, I’m not sure. So, because I’m an idiot, I decide to go outside to investigate. Some dipshit to the east of our house was shooting a B.B. gun at about 2:45 am. I became quite alarmed when a B.B. struck the siding of our house (I actually ducked).  Not being a complete idiot, I went inside and debated calling the police. But not knowing exactly who was doing the shooting and being incredibly tired, I just went back to sleep for an hour.  So, to the person or persons having fun with B.B. guns this morning: I hope you shoot your eye out.

I bowled a 510 series, my best effort of the year.  In the final game, a 189, after a split and a blown tenpin, I made four strikes in a row, including one where I apparently left the 6-10 only to have the tenpin fall backwards and knock down the 6-pin.  On an adjacent alley George Villareal did a little jig whenever he struck.  Gene Clifford showed me a flight tracker app that his grandson had put on his iPhone that shows images of every plane in the Chicago area, including those overhead.