A Heart Divided
Page 16
Today, half of white Southerners
are descended from Confederates.
Northerners need to think—
to imagine—
a war fought in
Newark.
Chicago.
Detroit.
For Southerners
the war was fought
on a thousand battlefields
beneath our very feet
where the blood of our fathers
fed
the roots of trees
that even now
stand
on Hallowed Ground.
LUKE MATTHEW ROBERTS (R.H.S. Student)
Luke is a senior at Redford High. A straight-A student, he has elected to attend Fisk University in Nashville—a traditionally black school—rather than Harvard. Both schools offered him scholarships. Luke is tall, slender, and muscular under his baggy clothes. He taps a foot or drums his fingers impatiently throughout our conversation at the Taco Bell in Redford, and speaks in staccato bursts.
WHAT INTEGRATION MEANS
My father is a preacher.
He raised us on the
Integration Hallelujah.
(imitating his father)
WE ARE ALL EQUAL IN GOD’S SIGHT!
WE MUST LIVE TOGETHER IN A BEAUTIFUL RAINBOW
CAN I GET AN AMEN?
My parents think holding hands and singing “We Shall Overcome” will defeat racism.
Shee-it.
You think white teachers
treat a gifted brother like they
treat a gifted white boy?
Nah.
Goes against integration’s
assumption of stupidity.
Integration means
Brother’s suspected of everything.
Integration means
Brother didn’t earn it,
somebody gave it to him.
It means
Brother’s guilty until proven innocent.
Stupid until proven smart.
That’s the Holy Grail,
unholy lie,
called Integration.
Institutionalized insecurity.
Internalized inferiority.
Integration gave us Redford.
NICOLETTE MICHELLE ROBERTS
(R.H.S. Student)
She prefers to be called Nikki. She’s a senior at Redford High School, Luke Roberts’s twin sister, and Reverend Roberts’s daughter. She is tall and slender and moves with the grace of a dancer. Like her father, she is a motivator of people. Next year she’ll attend George Washington University in Washington, D.C. She plans to enter politics. We sit in the bleachers at Redford High during our lunch break. There’s a lot of background noise from PE classes and the like.
THE STUDENTS SHOULD VOTE
Our parents raised us to be color-blind.
I had black friends,
white friends,
whatever.
It wasn’t until I was in middle school
that I realized:
Everyone at our church was black.
And my white friends went to white churches.
It wasn’t until I was in middle school
that things changed:
Some black friends accused me of “acting white.”
Some white friends stopped inviting me over.
It wasn’t until I was in high school
that I got really angry
that the Confederate flag
was the emblem of my school.
That our football team
was called the Rebels.
Those symbols
didn’t represent me.
Those symbols
didn’t represent a lot of people.
People said:
“Redford High’s emblem has
always been the Confederate flag.
The football team
has always been the Rebels.”
I said:
“Wrong.
Only since 1961.
When my daddy
led the sit-in at Jimmy Mack’s.
Before that,
it was the Wranglers.”
People can be so ignorant.
They don’t even know
the history of their own town.
I thought the students
should have a chance to vote—
did we want a new team name?
A new school emblem?
The principal said
we had to gather student signatures and
if we got enough signatures
we could have our vote.
He gave us an impossible job,
and we did it.
We must have made thousands of flyers:
JUST SAY NO to the Confederate flag.
More and more students got behind it.
It was gratifying to see how social action
was leading to real change.
We knew we had the numbers.
We were going to win.
CHARLES “CHAZ” MARTIN, JR.
(R.H.S. Student)
Chaz is a senior at Redford High who will attend The Citadel next year, as his father and grandfather did before him. He has dark hair and eyes, a broad chest, and a friendly grin. He plays tight end for the Rebels football team. We sit on his front porch, in rocking chairs. His tone is straightforward and earnest.
AMERICA
I was raised to be proud
of my Southern heritage.
I’m not going to apologize for that.
Heritage.
Tradition.
These things are important.
They tell you who you are in the world—
where you belong.
It is real hurtful when people assume that
if you have a high esteem for the
Confederate flag
you must be a racist.
I think slavery was evil.
It’s always evil
for one people to enslave another people.
But it goes back to the Bible.
Blacks aren’t the only ones
who have been slaves.
I plan to enter the military
to serve my country.
I will be proud to do so.
And if my country
sends me to war
I will go.
I would give my life
to defend the United States of America.
Not white America.
All of America.
Where we believe in liberty and justice for all.
JACKSON REDFORD III (R.H.S. Student)
Jack, eighteen, is a senior at Redford High School. The town is named after his great-great-grandfather, Major General Jackson Redford, a hero of the Civil War Battle of Redford. We’re in Jack’s home, the historic landmark Redford House. An heirloom rug stained with Major General Redford’s blood lies on the floor. Jack is as classically handsome as the general for whom he was named. When he’s nervous, he runs his hand through his hair.
CHOOSE
My family and friends
have very strong feelings
about the Confederate flag.
For them, it’s a symbol
of history,
honor,
tradition.
But I know that other people
look at that same symbol and see
prejudice,
racism,
slavery.
And, I mean,
it’s exactly the same symbol.
I guess if one side is right
then the other side must be wrong.
I don’t think that,
but that’s what people think.
So they invest all this energy
into fighting over it
and to me it just seems—I always thought—
what does it accomplish?
Once—I was little—
I asked my mother why there was evil.
I have no idea where that cam
e from.
Darth Vader maybe.
(he laughs self-consciously)
And my father walked into the kitchen—
I can see him there with the coffeepot in his hand—
my father said:
“So there can be good.”
(a long pause)
Don’t know how I got off on that
or what it has to do with—
(he pauses and runs his hand through his hair)
There are kids
right here in Redford
that go to bed hungry every night.
White kids.
Black kids.
Every other color kids.
We have homelessness here.
We have poverty.
And you know, that’s evil.
And I feel like if—
if half the energy
that went into fighting over that flag
went into doing something—
doing good—
(he pauses again)
A hungry kid
doesn’t care about that flag.
He just cares that he’s hungry.
REVEREND LUCAS ROBERTS
(Pastor, Columbia Pike Baptist Church)
Reverend Roberts is fifty-nine but looks younger. He’s not a large man, but his presence and voice are powerful. He was an army chaplain in Vietnam and was very involved in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. We’re in the rear pew of his church in the late afternoon. He’s wearing a dark suit and tie. Sunlight streams through a window and dances across his crisp white shirt.
1961
My father was a preacher man right here in Redford, so you could say I went into the family business.
An incident that stays in my mind
occurred in the summer
of 1954.
Blacks—they called us Negroes then—
weren’t allowed
in the municipal swimming pool.
One night—one of those steamy ones—
my friends and I decided to sneak into that pool.
That cool water felt so good.
We got caught, but
we managed to get away.
The next day,
they drained the entire pool.
(his hands are clasped; he shakes his head at the memory)
Nn-nn-nn.
Can you imagine such a thing?
They thought three black children had
contaminated
the water.
In 1961 I was a freshman at Fisk University.
I looked up to the older students
who were fighting segregation.
Wanted to roll with the big dogs.
So I joined
the sit-ins
at Woolworth’s in Nashville.
Blacks were not allowed to sit at the lunch counter.
The segregationists fought us mightily.
A group of white teenagers attacked us.
Our morality of nonviolence
dictated that we would not fight back and
we did not.
Yet we were arrested and
the white boys went free.
In court the judge turned his back
on our attorney, Z. Alexander Looby.
That judge literally turned to the wall
during our defense.
Then Mr. Looby’s home was dynamited.
Momma wanted to drag me home after that
but Daddy said: “Leave the boy be.”
The next day
we held a silent protest march
more than two thousand strong—
black and white—to city hall.
And my father marched by my side.
When we arrived
Mayor Ben West
told the marchers and
the city of Nashville and
the South and
the United States of America
that it was immoral
to discriminate against a person
on the basis of race or color.
Six weeks later
those lunch counters
were integrated.
I guess I had proved myself, and after that
some of the older students said to me:
“What’s the name of that restaurant
in Redford you told us about?”
And I said:
“Jimmy Mack’s.”
And they said:
“Lucas, it should be next.”
And that is how the fight for equality
came to Redford.
(he pauses, his brow furrows)
Good people. Righteous people—
black and white—
shed their blood
for the rights of the black man
to be served like any other customer
at places like Jimmy Mack’s.
And now,
all these years later,
my own son hates that place.
He and his friends
go to Taco Bell.
CHRISTOPHER SULLIVAN
(Editor, Southern Partisan magazine)
I speak by phone to Mr. Sullivan in his office in South Carolina, but saw him in a videotape about the Confederate flag created by the First Amendment Center in Nashville, so I know he is in his mid-forties, of medium build, with a trim beard and glasses. When I ask what he’s wearing, his answer is precise: a tweed jacket, white shirt, blue-and-yellow striped tie, navy pants, brown shoes recently polished. He speaks passionately. On the tape I saw, he often karate-chopped the air to emphasize a point.
ALL THINGS CONFEDERATE
The key to understanding
the argument over the battle flag
is really an argument
over what the flag means.
If you say that the flag is
bad
or
evil
or
there is something
wrong
with it
because of its meaning—
whatever bad meaning is attached to it—
well then,
logically,
there’s something
bad
or
evil
about the monuments, too.
Something
bad
or
evil
about those
who served under that flag.
And so
if you agree with those premises
and you say the logical result
of that argument is that the battle flag
has to be removed from public places,
then those monuments
should be removed from public places.
It’s inescapable.
To say: “We’ve got to get rid of the battle flag”
is to say:
“We’ve got to get rid of all things Confederate.”
And that’s something that most Southerners—
and a lot of Northerners—
are not prepared to accept.
REVEREND FREDERICK DOUGLASS TAYLOR
(Political Organizer, Southern Christian Leadership Conference)
Fred Taylor is the coordinator of direct action for the SCLC, the Atlanta-based civil rights organization founded by activists including the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1957. I interviewed him by telephone. He spoke slowly, his words gaining passion as the interview continued until they achieved a sermon-like cadence. From what he told me, I know that Mr. Taylor is in his sixties, bearded, bespectacled, and balding. From a photo I saw of him, I know that he has a huge smile.
A LONG HAUL
I was thirteen years old
living in Montgomery, Alabama,
at the time of the Montgomery bus boycott.
I have a Movement history.
When I came here in ′69,
I mean, I was full of optimism.
I thought I had joined in a process—
or Movement—
that was going to change—
we were going to change the world.
But as time moved on
I discovered that has not happened.
The struggle now, it is, it is,
it is insidious,
it is computerized,
it is not as obvious as it once was.
We are in for a long haul.
What has surprised me most
in the struggle over the battle flag
is that the sons and daughters of the Confederacy
believe in maintaining those symbols
to the degree that they have
invoked a theological undergirding
for their position.
They really believe that
their position
is ordained by some
Divine Power.
They are so entrenched and so fixed
in their position
that there is no reason for compromise.
It is either
their way
or no way
at all.
But by taking down,
taking away these symbols,
it would take away
divisiveness
and usher in an era of
inclusion
and coming toward the day
when, as Dr. King often talked about—
when people
would be judged by the