RICHARDSON: Fifty years of change
The front page headline in the Monday, March 8, 1965 edition of The Macon Telegraph read: “Alabama State Troopers Rout Negro Marchers.” This edition followed what came to be known as “Bloody Sunday.”
The article began: “State troopers hurled tear-gas bombs and wielded night sticks Sunday to rout several hundred Negroes.”
The story started down the center of the page with a picture underneath the headline of fleeing Negroes and troopers in pursuit. “The next two hours in this west central Alabama town were bedlam,” the Associated Press reported. “Negroes were in confusion, White persons taunted and jeered. Ambulances scurried around.”
Thus was our country 50 years ago this weekend. Not ancient history as some would like to think. What Alabama Gov. George Wallace thought was a prudent and acceptable way of putting the Negro in his or her place marked the death knell to segregation in the South. Why? Newspapers and TV news brought the savagery of the South into every home in America. And what they saw, they didn’t like.
The Negro still had no power to push white politicians to do anything. In the South they couldn’t even vote. So what gave President Lyndon Johnson the political leverage to get the Voting Rights Act of 1965 passed by such an overwhelming margin? The vote in the Senate was 77-19 (only two Republican senators, John Tower, R-Texas, and Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., voted against the bill. The other 17 votes were cast by Democrats). The House voted 328-74 to approve the act that would guarantee the Negro the ability to vote.
Even some senators from Southern states supported the Voting Rights Act and they paid for it: Ross Bass and Al Gore from Tennessee; Fred Harris and Mike Monroney from Oklahoma and Ralph Yarborough from Texas. Bass would lose in the 1966 Democratic Primary. Gore lost his re-election bid in 1970. Harris chose not to run in 1972 and instead made an unsuccessful bid for the presidency. Monroney would lose his seat in 1968.
It is an unmistakable fact that, if not for white Republicans, led by Sen. Everett Dirkson, R-Ill., the Civil Rights Act of 1964 nor the Voting Rights Act of 1965 would have passed. The holdup? Southern Democrats. Just as today, when an elected politician’s constituents get fired up, they get fired up, too -- and the vast majority of those constituents the lawmakers were listening to were white. According to the 1960 census, the non-white population was only 11 percent of 179 million Americans.
So what does America look like 50 years on from Selma? Negroes have the right to vote in all 50 states. Have there been roadblocks? Certainly, but none as powerful as the troopers standing before the bridge named for Confederate general, U.S. senator and grand dragon of the Alabama KKK, Edmund Pettus.
Not only have most of the lunch counters disappeared, but so has segregated seating in all restaurants. Water fountains no longer carry signs designating who can use them, and there are no occupations where Negroes are barred. Are the races still at each other’s throats? Yes. Too many people, black and white, still live in the past. But 50 years doesn’t yet qualify as “past.”
How can we get past the past? There’s not a committee that can do it. No church or organization can lift hatred from those who allow it to squat in their hearts. As former coach Bill Curry said last week during the poverty summit, that kind of hatred can only be cured by relationships with those who look differently from us. Get to know a person, not a people -- one at a time.
I try, as best I can, to skew stereotypes and look for my own biases. We should all be grown up enough to understand that we might have a lot of work to do in that area. We can’t assault our prejudices if we don’t face up to them.
How to start if you haven’t already? We have a tendency to jump behind our racial bunkers whenever the politics of race raises its ugly head. First, let’s not jump to conclusions, one way or the other, when the beast of race awakens. What I’m asking for is a little thought. I’ll try to understand the box you’re in if you’ll do the same for me. We’ll both be better off.
Charles E. Richardson is The Telegraph’s editorial page editor. He can be reached at 478-744-4342 or via email at crichardson@macon.com. Tweet@crichard1020.
This story was originally published March 8, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "RICHARDSON: Fifty years of change ."