Heritage Column for January 12, 2006
By Fred Anderson
The death last fall of Rosa Parks, an icon of the civil rights movement, brought back memories of my own. Like anyone who ever lived in the South in the days of segregation, I have memories of a time which, to borrow a phrase, has gone with the wind.
I remember separate water fountains, separate public restrooms and “separate but equal” schools. I shall never forget riding an interstate bus when it pulled off onto the shoulder of the highway and the driver shouted at a black person to move to the rear. I was born and reared in Albany, Ga., in the heart of the Deep South where the population was either 50-50 or predominately black.
My family accepted the social order which had always been. But they were good people. I never heard the “N” word from my grandparents. They never engaged in any of the race-baiting conversation which was commonplace.
Albany was the town where Martin Luther King Jr. held non-violent demonstrations. I remember sitting on my grandparents' front porch and watching as hundreds of black youth passed on their way to the downtown area where there were nightly demonstrations. Many whites would gather nearby and watch the demonstrations but my family forbade their teenager to go and watch.
One day I was walking downtown and suddenly, right in front of me, the police were escorting Dr. King and his associate, Ralph Abernathy, to a waiting police car. It was my “Forrest Gump” moment when I almost brushed up against these historical figures.
I shall never forget the brave stand which our pastor took. Brooks Ramsey was the pastor of the First Baptist Church of Albany and he actually went into the black neighborhoods and met with the black clergy, hoping to find ways of peaceable social change. It was the time of the sit-ins and the kneel-ins. Our pastor begged his deacons not to allow the arrests of anyone who might come to the worship services. It was a time of raw emotions and I remember one irate member who nailed his own theses to the doors of the church, defending the laws of segregation. I still remember our pastor telling the members that he must have a free pulpit. As a teenager I really did not know just what he meant. In short order, the pastor resigned and the church continued to reflect the social customs of the times.
In the fall I was off to Berry College in Rome, Ga., where, in time, I encountered a new world of thought. I fell under the good influences of a liberal sociology professor who often took some of us to attend the interracial meetings of the Human Rights Council. I began to see that there was a new beginning in the making for a different social order.
My professor gave some very good advice. She told us that when we returned home for visits, we should not try and convert our families. She explained that they always would be our parents and grandparents and uncles and aunts. She emphasized the vital and lasting need of family relationships. “Start with your own generation,” she urged.
When the Christmas break was over and probably on or soon after New Year's Day, I took the Trailways bus back to North Georgia and my college campus. The bus was crowded with holiday travelers; and at some point in the journey, I found myself sitting next to a black student from one of the Atlanta University schools. We began to talk. It was the first one-on-one conversation I had ever had with a black peer. We soon discovered that the only thing different about us was the shade of our skin. Otherwise we had the same experiences, fears and follies characteristic of any collegian.
There was a change of buses in Atlanta and then the 60-mile trip to Rome. I took a taxicab out to the campus. Only a few students had returned; and when they made their way, they discovered a surprise. There had been a sudden snowstorm and the campus was covered in a deep and gloriously beautiful snow. It was dark except for the moonlight and the widely-scattered streetlights. There was a haunting silence across the place. I reflected upon the experience of having shared that bus ride with a black student and somehow I sensed that it was a new beginning.
Years later, I began to read the observations that Martin Luther King Jr., himself a fellow Baptist, had done more than free the blacks from the invisible chains of segregation. He also had freed the whites. It was a freeing from the old order and from the bonds of fear, suspicion and hatred to a new order and the tender chains of brotherhood and sisterhood.
A new beginning indeed!