On the road to the promised land

We've entered a new phase of the Civil Rights Movement.

Today, we honor Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. He shares a birthday, January 15, with my late brother, Eddie. Dr. King would have been 95. Eddie would have been 62. I’ll think about them both.

I grew up in a county that was half White and half Black. I’m old enough to have vague memories of King’s assassination and a world vastly different than the one in which we live today. The doctor’s office had Colored and White waiting rooms. The balcony of the movie theater was reserved for Black people, while Whites sat on the main floor. At one restaurant, Black customers picked up food from a window at the back of the building. I began first grade the first year schools in Anson County were fully integrated. Until I was in my twenties, a local pool hall had a sign on a bathroom door that read “White Men,” even if the sign was ignored. I came of age during a period of remarkable societal change that shaped my view of the world and still influences our politics today.

My most meaningful friendships were determined by where we went to school. Friends who went to the segregationist academy became more distant because I saw them less frequently. The adults in our lives divided themselves by those who were pro-integration and those who opposed it because the subject was so encompassing and uncomfortable. I suspect that the seeds of the division that affects us today were sown then.

My life outside of school was still largely segregated. My neighbors were all White even if they were economically diverse. Our church was mostly White, though we did have a few African American members periodically, almost all people who moved to the county from elsewhere. In summer, we went to a pool that was all White. Segregation did not just melt away, even if it largely disappeared in businesses and public spaces during my childhood.

In school, I made friends with White kids and Black ones. The impact of integration in creating a more just society cannot be understated. We learned a mutual respect and understanding that had escaped every generation before us. We went to class together, played sports together, ate lunch together, and made friendships that endured.

Still, many of the people with whom I grew up, both those who went to public schools and those who went to the segregationist academy, held onto reactionary and racist views. In certain circles, the n-word was used regularly when discussing African Americans and I suspect still is today. I remember in the 1990s, an acquaintance telling me he didn’t celebrate Martin Luther King’s birthday, he celebrated the day he was assassinated. I thought the election of Barack Obama would signal the death knell of those sentiments, but quickly learned that his presidency just inflamed those passions. Then, Trump gave permission to brazenly embrace the ugliest reactions to racial progress. We’ve become, once again, a deeply divided society.

The fault lines have really not changed much. The descendants of the people who rejected integration and the end of Jim Crow laws believe racial differences no longer exist. They reject programs designed to right the wrongs of 350 years of state sanctioned discrimination, often claiming those efforts discriminate against them. Their complaints echo those of their forebearers during the Civil Rights Movement.

On the other side of the divide, African Americans and more progressive Whites believe that we still have a ways to go to solve the problems of racial inequality. We see the inequality reflected in everything from homeownership to infant mortality rates. We see it reflected in arrests and convictions. We see it in the deaths of unarmed Black men. Systemic racism and the individual attitudes that accompany it are so entwined in our society that rooting out all of them will take generations.

Despite these persistent divisions, we have made tremendous progress on race relations in my lifetime. In cities and suburbs across America, we have integrated neighborhoods. We have a Black middle class that was much smaller prior to 1960 due to discrimination and lack of educational opportunities. We have Black CEOs and the number of Black elected officials is increasing. And, of course, we’ve elected a Black President of the United States.

But progress has always come with struggle. Today, we’re in the midst of a reckoning. Sixty years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, African Americans have achieved enough status to demand changes that extend beyond just institutional discrimination. They are addressing the roots of prejudice and want recognition of their place in the history of our country. They demand that we re-examine how the nation developed and better understand both the role they played and the price they paid. Their struggle for liberation is just as important in the evolution of our country as the westward expansion or the story of Ellis Island.

Acknowledging their role in our history can begin to reverse the damage that hundreds of years of negative stereotypes has done. This new phase in the Civil Rights Movement is addressing attitudes, not just laws. In doing so, it’s upsetting some people’s sense of self and making them re-examine attitudes and perceptions that have been accepted in families and communities for generations. The backlash is fierce.

While the divisions seem insurmountable right now, we’ve been in similar places before and not that long ago. My generation, as we entered those integrated classrooms, was the very beginning of the vision Dr. King had when he said on his final night on earth, “I’ve been to the mountaintop…And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land.” We’re still not there, but we are closer today than we were then.