My grandparents taught me that three topics should be avoided in conversation: race, religion and politics. When you remove those subjects, it does not leave very much for conversation, especially if you live in the American South.
My grandparents’ admonition has been on my mind as our long-awaited conference entitled “Faith, Freedom & Forgiveness” is held on May 20-22. It is focused on religion in the Civil War, in slavery and emancipation, and in racial reconciliation in our time.
The latter and most pertinent topic — racial reconciliation — has been a concern of mine since high school. My hometown was typical of the segregated communities of the Deep South and was targeted by Martin Luther King Jr. as a place where in the early 1960s the Movement might make an impact.
Fred Anderson
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I remember sitting on my grandparents’ front porch and watching as hundreds of young blacks passed on their way to the nightly demonstrations for civil rights. Huge crowds of curious whites also stood nearby to watch the demonstrations. Understandably, my elders forbade me from going out of the house. One day while walking past city hall, I actually saw King and his assistant, Ralph David Abernathy, as they were being led out of the jail. It was a brush with history.
I was a member of the First Baptist Church of my hometown and it was among the churches where blacks attempted to attend worship. I remember my pastor appealing to the congregation for acceptance of anyone who came for worship. The black worshippers were arrested and the pastor soon was gone.
I graduated that year from what was still a lily-white public high school and I went away to college. I came under the influence of a sociology professor who opened an entirely new perspective to me on the subject of race and about the social order in the South. She took some of her students to the Human Relations Council meetings in the college town; and for the first time, I was in the company of educated and professional men and women of a different race.
My sociology professor shared good advice. She cautioned her students not to go home at Thanksgiving break and try to convert their parents and grandparents. “They are your family and you must keep that relationship,” she explained. “But let change begin with your generation.”
In my junior year I had a small hand in that change. My private college only admitted whites; and as part of my sociology class, I conducted a survey to determine student opinion on integration. Even then, I was writing columns — these for the school newspaper — and I published the results of the survey. Surprisingly, most of the students were at least unopposed to integration. Maybe it was just coincidence but later that year the college admitted its first black students and there were no incidents.
Immediately after graduation I began teaching social studies in a large high school. It was the first year that schools were integrated in that rural county. The black students came from a small school, named for a famous African American, which had held first through 12th grades and suddenly they were placed in a large and predominately white school. In my senior government class the black students were few in number and were quiet and reserved. Nearly 50 years later, I believe at the time they felt intimidated.
The next year the students asserted themselves. When February came they were resentful that Black History Month, an annual observance in their old school, was not on the school calendar. Those quiet kids actually had a little spirited demonstration of their very own. The principal became nervous and turned to me for a solution; and as chairman of the social studies department, I suddenly had to create a black history program. For the next several years I managed to schedule some outstanding black speakers, including Andrew Young, who had been King’s lieutenant.
And that’s my own story as regards racial reconciliation. At 2:30 on Wednesday afternoon, May 22, the “Faith, Freedom & Forgiveness” conference will host a free public event at the University of Richmond which will be a panel discussion on reconciliation. John Moeser, who is with the Bonner Center for Civic Engagement at UR, will begin with a brief survey of Richmond’s history in race relations. (It will be difficult to be “brief” on a subject that stretches back to the 1600s with the first slaves, but I suspect he will focus on the more “recent” history of the last 50 or so years.) He then will pose the first question to a panel of seven: “When did you become involved in reconciliation?”
Nearly everyone has his or her own story of embracing reconciliation. Blanche Sydnor White, who led Woman’s Missionary Union of Virginia, was an old-school Southerner but she, too, had an encounter with reconciliation. In her biography the story is told of a visitor at the WMU office in 1932 who said: “I am a Baptist and proud of my denomination but I do not know my white sisters of that faith. Other white women have extended the hand of Christian fellowship. Why have you failed to extend yours?”
It was just the prodding which caused Blanche White to embrace reconciliation. She visited Maggie Walker, the noted black leader in Richmond, and sought her advice. She led white Virginia church women to engage with black Virginia church women. She employed the first black woman to serve on the WMU staff. Today a building on the campus of Virginia Union University, the historically African-American school in Richmond, is named for Blanche White. The “Faith, Freedom & Forgiveness” conference participants will pass White Hall on their way to the chapel for the Tuesday evening, May 21, program at 7:30. I hope to see some of my readers in the audience.
Fred Anderson ([email protected]) is executive director of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society and the Center for Baptist Heritage & Studies.