To understand Macon’s progress, we must look back | Opinion
“A Change Is Gonna Come” is the title of a recent lecture in Wesleyan College’s Transforming the South lecture series. Drawing a crowd of students and interested community members, the event — presented by Mercer history professor Doug Thompson — was just one of several recent events focusing on local history.
With our country torn asunder, these events have filled audiences with a large measure of warmth and optimism. I usually go to these affairs a few minutes early, so as to get a good seat, and on this occasion I arrived clutching a copy of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community,” King’s final work, published in 1968.
The span of King’s vision aligns closely with the ground covered by a couple of other local events. During the weekend that Dr. King’s memorial is celebrated, Macon hosted a clean-up for Greenwood Bottom in the morning and screened a King film in the afternoon, after which Congressman Sanford Bishop was interviewed by Kimberly Carter on contemporary events.
Just a few weeks prior, there was a celebration marking the 50th anniversary of African Americans being elected to Macon City Council. This was not long ago: Many of these individuals are still serving the community.
This occasion was chronicled by H. Michael Harvey in “Fantasy Five,” with Mayor Lester Miller recognizing the pioneering legislation and the families in a ceremony at City Hall. This event was followed by a luncheon at the Tubman Museum that featured hard-hitting remarks by interested parties. Their words underscored the appropriate nature of the title that Harvey had selected.
If it were not for events like those and others, much local history would soon be lost. Indeed, much of it is already gone. This loss should serve as a clarion call to those who care that Macon’s rich history is vanishing.
Macon celebrated its 200th anniversary just over two years ago, and the great lesson of that event was that many citizens (in truth, most) know very little of this city’s extraordinary history, not just of the early history of the Creek Indians, the early history that brought slavery, or the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the struggle for Civil Rights. Indeed, it never ceases to astound me that so many people know very little of this history.
Why are these events of vital importance? Many of them are abhorrent, yet we must hear of them simply because they proclaim the cold hard truth. Alas, “vengeance” is the operative word today.
This week I got down my copy of “The Officers Guide.” It had not changed. It still begins with the preface by General of the Army Douglass MacArthur. It focuses on three hallowed words: duty, honor and country. Presciently, he predicts that some will soon say that these are but words.
Not so. Wise persons will learn, as have millions before them, that revenge and vengeance are anathema to those who seek fulfillment and peace. Consider the title of one of the great books of modern times, “Forgive Everyone Everything.”
Is that advice crazy? Not a bit. In a world that is predicated on the quest for “more,” the emotions of anger and rage ultimately will corrode the hearts that hold them.
As my platoon sergeant put it many years ago, after you pull the trigger on another human being, you will never be the same. And that soldier was talking about firing upon the enemy. What would he say about firing on your neighbors? Or firing round after round into that neighbor?
The current administration is opposed to the three words “diversity,” “equity” and “inclusion.” How sad. Look at the transformative progress that people — Black and white, rich and poor — have made since the Brown v. Board of Education court ruling and the passage of the Civil Rights act. Hooray for DEI.
To see the progress this region has made is to understand the social and economic growth that has propelled this region into prominence and even dominance. As the song proclaimed, a change is not only “gonna come,” the change is arriving.
Can we rest on our laurels? Not hardly. In the 1950s and 1960s many local residents opted to abandon the desegregated public school system and create private “segregation academies,” many of which still exist, to the detriment of the public school system.
Education consists not merely of literature, science and mathematics, it’s also about honesty and integrity. When the Honor System was founded at the College of William & Mary, long before this nation was conceived, these virtues were formally embraced.
Thomas Jefferson was a student there then, in an age of honor. Today there is no such animal in Washington.
Larry Fennelly can be contacted at larney_f@hotmail.com.