by Ken Abraham
Beginning in third grade, Bill had been accepted to play clarinet in Mr. Offitt’s band. He played clarinet for three years and then moved to the trombone, which he played from sixth to eighth grade, despite the fact that the mouthpieces for woodwind and brass instruments were completely different. After eighth grade, football and basketball lured him away from the band.
The Union band—well-known in Gallatin and, indeed, most of middle Tennessee—was featured every year during the Gallatin Christmas parade. This performance was the closest any black musician ever felt to being truly accepted by the white people in town. But all too soon, the parade was over. The blacks and the whites were back to walking on separate sides of the street.
For Bill, the band represented freedom. That too could be credited to Mr. Offitt’s dedication. The bandleader arranged for his band to perform in as many parades and concerts as possible, many of which required traveling to various parts of Tennessee and even to other states. The travel associated with the Union band made it one of the most attractive extracurricular activities available to students.
But troublemakers need not apply, because everyone knew Mr. Offitt, a World War II veteran, ran a tight ship. A kind, gentle man, Mr. Offitt was a living example of the biblical definition of meekness—power under control. He rarely had to raise his voice. Because of the respect band members had for Mr. Offitt, never once were any of his student musicians the cause of any racially motivated problems or even usual teenage mischief.
Always meticulously dressed, Mr. Offitt inspired his students to aspire to excellence in performance and in their personal lives. When the band traveled, he required the students to be neatly dressed, polite, and well-mannered to one another, and especially to white strangers with whom the band members came in contact.
Bill, of course, was a model student. He had to be whether or not he wanted to, because Anna’s classroom, where she taught reading and writing, was located right across the hall from the principal’s office. If Bill was called to the principal’s office for any reason, Anna would know. And if Bill got a paddling from a teacher at school, Anna gave permission for the school principal to apply “the board of education to the seat of learning” again. Then he received another reminder when he got home. But Bill didn’t need many paddlings. Between the church members watching out for and holding him accountable and Anna’s fellow teachers keeping their eyes on him, Bill had little opportunity to get in trouble. He was also a good student and one of the more popular boys at Union Junior High.
Bill, no longer a skinny kid, had filled out physically and was growing taller every year. He loved football and played quarterback on the Union Junior High team. He had also developed into quite a basketball player, playing the forward position on the junior high squad.
During the summer, Bill earned $3 per day caddying at the Gallatin Country Club. He enjoyed being around some of the more affluent members of the community, including doctors, lawyers, and other professionals. These country club members not only opened his eyes to a broader world, but they also seemed to recognize Bill’s potential.
One day, while standing on the fifth tee waiting for some slow players in front of his foursome, Marion Barlow, a leading businessman for whom Bill often caddied, tapped the ashes from his cigar against a ball washer. “Boy, you seem pretty sharp. What are you going to do after high school?”
“I’m hoping to continue my education, sir,” Bill answered nonchalantly.
“You gonna play some ball too?”
“Oh, yes, sir. I certainly hope so.”
“That’s good.” Barlow nodded. “Are you still gonna be available to caddy for me?”
“I hope so, sir.”
“Good, that’s real good.” Barlow tapped another ash onto the ground. “You just keep your eyes off my wife, now, ya hear?”
“Of course, sir.” Bill looked down at the ground and shuffled uneasily.
“I know you see her sunbathing at the swimming pool when we take the clubs back,” Barlow said, “but I’d better never catch you giving her the eye. You understand me, boy?”
“I do, sir. I surely do.”
What Bill did not say was that he had no interest in Barlow’s white wife and couldn’t care less where she was. Nor did Bill have any interest in Barlow’s lily-white daughter, or any white girl, for that matter. He never understood why Barlow and his ilk always assumed all the black boys wanted a white girlfriend. Of course, he didn’t say that to Mr. Barlow.
Caddying for Barlow, indeed! Bill thought.
Bill recognized the dichotomy between the way Negroes and whites were treated in Gallatin. His frustration with the status quo grew ever stronger as he advanced through junior high and prepared to enter high school. Bill, an avid reader, gravitated more and more toward the teachings of Malcolm X. He devoured the radical militant’s materials, as well as those by civil rights activist Paul Robeson and other black leaders who advocated immediate change rather than gradual assimilation and acceptance of the blacks into American culture. Yet Bill himself realized that change was more likely to come slowly to Gallatin, if at all.
Bill perceived that although some people preferred pitting Malcolm X’s brash rhetoric against Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolent actions, the two leaders weren’t really all that far apart in their ultimate goals. Bill picked up on the changes in both leaders as Malcolm X became more disillusioned with the Nation of Islam’s black militancy, while Martin Luther King Jr. was becoming increasingly impatient with conservative Christians’ unwillingness to treat coloreds and whites equally.
All of that changed, of course, at a Memphis motel on April 4, 1968, when escaped convict James Earl Ray assassinated Dr. King. The gunman was a devout supporter of Alabama’s Democrat governor George C. Wallace, a staunch segregationist.
King had barely been laid to rest before violence and disruptive demonstrations broke out across America, especially in the South—Memphis and Atlanta—but in many northern cities, as well—Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia. Angry colored people rioted in most major cities, smashing windows and setting fire to buildings. Looting was rampant.
Ku Klux Klan crosses flared in response as far north as Akron, Ohio, where racially motivated riots and fires set downtown Akron ablaze. Police in Nashville and most of the towns surrounding the city, including Gallatin, imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew.
Every evening, police in Nashville and Gallatin patrolled the neighborhoods as well as downtown, warning residents through squawking bullhorns, “Get off the streets. Get in your homes now, and don’t come out until morning. Violators will be severely prosecuted.” Nobody knew for sure what “severely prosecuted” might mean, but everyone assumed that anyone who was foolish enough to go out after curfew risked being shot on the spot. Liquor, gasoline, guns, and ammunition sales were all restricted or banned in town for several weeks following Dr. King’s death.
Fear and anxiety gripped Gallatin. During the daylight hours, people of both races gathered in small clusters all over town, expressing their concerns. Pastors and other church leaders begged their parishioners to remain calm and refrain from violence. “Don’t you even think about repaying evil with evil!” Bishop Lula Mae Swanson cautioned the small congregation at the Original Church of God one Sunday morning. “The Good Book says, ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, and I will repay.’ Don’t you be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good.”
Pastor Daley preached a similar message to the white congregation at the First Assembly of God church during an early service. “‘Don’t let the sun go down on your anger,’” he said, quoting the Bible. “And the Scripture says to let ‘all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander and malice be put away from you.’
“Folks, what’s goin’ on around our country and right outside these doors just isn’t right.” Brother Daley stepped out from behind the pulpit and into the aisle. He was nearly in tears as he implored his congregation. “Brothers and sisters, the Bible says, ‘Be
kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.’ That’s how we Christians are to live, and that’s how we are to respond—not in hatred, but in love.”
As the Sherlin family walked to their car after the service, Eddie was deeply disturbed. “Mama, why is it like this? Why is there so much trouble between whites and coloreds? What’s so hard about being nice to one another?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Eddie,” Betty Sherlin said, as she wrapped her arm around his shoulder. “That’s just the way things have always been around these parts. Some folks want to hang on to bitterness. But just because something has always been doesn’t mean it has to remain that way. When I was a little girl, we never associated with coloreds. Now, I have some good friends who are colored, and I love ’em the same as I love white folk.”
Betty thought of Anna Ligon, to whom she had sold some encyclopedias and with whom she had maintained a casual friendship. Although sometimes Betty expressed an attitude that colored people were inferior or even dangerous, as when she warned her kids to be careful in the colored part of town, her attitude had slowly started to change.
“Truth is,” Betty said, “we know down inside that we’re all equal, and if we have a loving and forgiving spirit in our hearts, we can all get along just fine. You know, Eddie, what they say is true: ‘color is only skin deep.’ Men may look at the outward appearance but God looks on the heart.”
“I think you’re right, Mom,” Eddie said, as he thought of his friendship with Bill Ligon. He wondered how Bill’s mom would answer the question. Or how Bill himself might respond. Eddie looked at his mom and smiled. For all her inconsistencies, Eddie knew that his mom loved God and loved people, regardless of their color. What more could he ask?
All over Gallatin, people were talking about the race riots they had seen on television or heard about on the radio. Whether outside Roscoe Robinson’s barbershop for coloreds or across the street at Bob White’s barbershop for whites or inside Joey’s Place, the pool hall frequented by Negroes, or any of the local hangouts, the conversations were all intense.
“Why they burnin’ up those cities and smashin’ things downtown?” Roscoe asked a group of black men who had gathered at the barbershop. “And why we gotta be off the streets and in our homes after dark?”
“Everyone’s angry,” said Jeremiah Carter, a retired Union schoolteacher sitting in one of the chairs, scanning the newspaper and shaking his head. Mr. Carter was one of Roscoe’s regulars who came into the barbershop every morning not to get a haircut but to talk. He and his opinions were highly regarded. “Dr. King provided hope to a lot of folks. Hope that maybe things would change around here. You know it’s been almost fifteen years since Rosa Parks stood up to ’em in Montgomery.”
“Who’s Rosa Parks?” Willie Murphy, a young man in his early twenties asked.
Mr. Carter sighed and ran his hand through his hair, surprised at Willie’s question. Rosa Parks. “Well, back in 1955, Rosa Parks was a forty-two-year-old seamstress who also worked as a secretary for the Montgomery branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.”
Willie leaned closer, not wanting to miss a word.
Ever the educator, Mr. Carter spoke carefully but with great sadness. “Montgomery’s buses had seats designated with a white section up front and a colored section in the rear. The bus drivers limited the number of seats available to Negroes any time the number of whites on the bus exceeded the number of coloreds. In other words, they’d take a seat from the Negro and give it to the white person.”
“Nah,” Willie said. “They wouldn’t do that, would they?”
“Yes, they would.” Several of the colored men in the shop nodded.
“Well, when a bus driver demanded that Mrs. Parks give up her seat in the black section on a crowded city bus so a white passenger could sit there, she refused. The driver called the police, who arrested her for violating the city’s segregation laws.”
“And they took her to jail for not giving up her seat on the bus?” Willie asked.
Jeremiah Carter nodded and looked to the ceiling for a few moments, as though he were reminiscing. “She was one courageous lady. Her simple action led to a campaign in which coloreds boycotted the city buses, refusing to ride until they were desegregated. Their protests lasted 381 days. A year after Ms. Parks said, ‘No more,’ a federal court declared Montgomery’s bus segregation law as unconstitutional.”
“So did things change?” Willie asked.
Jeremiah Carter raised the newspaper filled with reports of violence following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and waved it toward Willie. “Not much, but we still got hope.”
“I ain’t got no hope,” a young man told Roscoe as he stepped out of the barber’s chair where he’d been sitting. “It won’t be long till the streets are burnin’ right here in Gallatin.”
His words were prophetic. A few nights later, several Molotov cocktails were thrown into an empty building and a vacant house, and numerous windows of homes and businesses were broken near Union Elementary School. Firemen doused the flames, and the buildings suffered only minor damage. But later that same night, a large tobacco warehouse filled with equipment, straw, and dried crops on Red River Road was torched. The 144,000-square-foot structure was the largest tobacco warehouse in Gallatin, and the resulting inferno was enormous and could be seen for blocks.
Sirens screamed through the night. Firemen fought the flames but realized their efforts were futile. With no hope of saving the tobacco barn, they aimed their heavy four-inch hoses at the properties nearby in an attempt to prevent them from catching fire. A number of Gallatin’s citizens stood outside their homes and watched as the warehouse burned to the ground. Other residents cowered in fear, worried sick that the entire town might be set on fire.
“Good God! What’s happening here?” one man cried.
“Who would do something like this?” someone yelled as people ignored the curfew and ran door-to-door warning their neighbors about the fire.
“You know who,” a gruff-voiced man answered. “Those darkies are out of control, and we’d better show ’em who’s boss!”
Local police canvassed the area and quickly apprehended four Negroes, charging three of them with the crime and printing their names in the Gallatin News Examiner, the local newspaper. Although evidence was sketchy, the judge gave the men a choice: either join the army—in the midst of the Vietnam War—or go to jail. They chose the army. Most people in Gallatin thought the judge was being too easy on the troublemakers. The judge and the police felt they were being gracious.
The police sergeant who checked in the boys at the police station after their arrest put it this way, “Many people in town don’t want the darkies indicted; they want them hung by the neck until they’re dead.”
12
THE MORNING SUN lit the kitchen as Betty prepared the usual breakfast of oatmeal and toast for her family. The family moved when Eddie completed the seventh grade and was now living in a more modern home at 128 Sunset Boulevard. The small house was located on the outskirts of town not far from where the colored fair was held each year. Like Bill Ligon, his counterpart at Union High, Eddie Sherlin, who was now a senior, was doing well in high school. He was the star quarterback on the football team, the highest-scoring player on the basketball team, and the most popular fellow at Gallatin High. Despite being bashful and uncomfortable speaking to crowds of people, Eddie easily won the election to become senior class president. Eddie covered his shyness by immersing himself in sports. Unlike Bill, Eddie was a poor student, but not because he lacked intelligence. He simply couldn’t be bothered with schoolwork when he was preparing for an upcoming game. Yet Eddie somehow always received passing grades.
Bo had recovered from his accident, but he was confined to a wheelchair. He was Eddie’s biggest fan, and with the help of Jim and Betty, he attended every game his brother played. Living out his dreams vicari
ously through Eddie had become Bo’s life.
Two male voices chattered incessantly on the radio in Betty Sherlin’s kitchen. “It’s 8 a.m., and you are listening to Jesse and Al.”
Betty stirred the bubbling pot of oatmeal as Delilah and Debbie, now sixteen and fourteen, respectively, sat at the kitchen table, cutting out newspaper articles about Eddie’s sports accomplishments.
Jesse and Al enthusiastically babbled about the triumphant Gallatin High School basketball team. “And congratulations to the Gallatin High Green Wave hoopsters,” Jesse said, “who took their perfect record of twelve wins and no losses into the divisional playoffs last night and emerged victorious, defeating the Hendersonville Commandos 58–39. Quite a definitive win, wouldn’t you say, Al?”
“It certainly was, Jesse. The Green Wave looks hard to stop, especially when that Eddie Sherlin starts sinking shots from several feet outside the key.”
Delilah smiled as she trimmed around a photo of Eddie featured in the sports section of the local newspaper. The photographer had caught Eddie in the midst of a jump shot, his feet off the hardwood by more than twelve inches, his body perfectly straight in the air, his hands in complete control of the basketball. Beneath the photo, which prominently showed the number 22 on his jersey, the headline read, GREEN WAVE WINS BIG!
Debbie watched excitedly as Delilah finished cutting out the picture and carefully pasted it in the family scrapbook.
