Race

I grew up in the segregated south of the 1950s and 60s.   Nashville, Tennessee.   I remember "White Only" water fountains and restrooms.   I remember segregated restaurants.   I remember that African Americans sat in the dark balcony of our local movie theater and entered and left by an exit in the back of the building.   You just never saw them.   My elementary, junior high, and high school were all white.   Even sports were segregated.   They integrated spring sports in my senior year of high school.   The only African American I ever talked to as a child was Carl, the janitor of my elementary school.   I liked Carl.   Everybody liked Carl.

A highly anticipated annual treat was visiting the Memphis Zoo on our trips to see my grandparents in Hot Springs, Arkansas.    There were never any African Americans at the zoo.   Eventually I asked about that.   My mother, a Memphis native, advised me that black people weren't allowed to come to the zoo except on Tuesdays, which was N-word day.   I wondered if black people didn't pay taxes.   My mother seemed to miss the significance of the question.   You never saw black people on television, with the possible exception of Louis Armstrong once is a while.   Everyone seemed to love "Satchmo."   I sure did.   Later we saw a lot of Bill Cosby.   Once again, everybody seemed to like Bill.   How could you not?

When I was 11 or 12 the Civil Rights movement started to take off.   In Nashville we had lunch counter "Sit Ins" at Woolworth's and other "dime" stores downtown.   My grandmother, who I loved more than anything, said that no N-word was "good enough" to sit next to her at a lunch counter.   She didn't know what the world was coming to.   My grandfather, Big Glenn, who I loved equally as much, said that he had worked with N-words all his life and that they were all lazy and shiftless.   I don't think I made up my mind about any of this at the time, I was taking it all in.   It certainly seemed reasonable to me that people had a right to be judged "by the content of their character" as Dr. Martin Luther King said that day on television.   I listened to that speech and his later "I have been to the mountaintop" speech.   He sent chills up and down my spine.   To this day the two most powerful speeches that I have ever heard.    I was a big basketball man.    I played and I was an avid Boston Celtics fan.   I loved the battles between Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain.   Elgin Baylor was my favorite player.   I had all the sports magazines in my room.   Bill or Wilt or Elgin were usually on the cover.   My mother turned the top magazine over when she cleaned my room.   I turned it back over when I came home.

I had to get myself though college with scholarships and jobs.   As a junior I was lucky enough to get a part-time job loading trucks and trains with mailbags for the Post Office.   The job paid relatively well and was four hours a day in the afternoons, five days a week, fitting a college student's schedule very nicely.   There were lots of African Americans at the Post Office.   Some I liked.   Some not so much.   For several weeks at one point I was partnered up with a young African American college student about my same age.   As we worked, we talked.    Slowly but steadily it became apparent that we were pretty much in the same boat, with a lot of the same interests, challenges, and experiences.    We were pretty much the same kid, only different colors.   I liked him.   As time went by I met more African Americans.   They were all individuals, short and tall, quiet and outgoing, smart and not so smart.   In other words, just like everybody else.   Some I liked.   A few I didn't.   If you can be around people, you can make up your own mind about a group of people and see if stereotypes hold water.    If people are segregated, all you know is what people tell you.

I made up my mind that I believed in the cause of African Americans seeking the right to be treated like any other Americans.   I said so.   Sadly, my family members were largely beyond my ability to reason with on this subject.   Since I loved my family, I learned to just agree to disagree and avoid discussions of race.   I had to bite my tongue many times.

After graduating from law school I had a military obligation.   They put me to work right away defending court-martials.    My first client ever was African American, as were many to follow in the ensuing years.   I remember that we had an African American lady, a civilian employee, in the base legal office.   She was very cool to me for quite some time.   I was never sure why.   After a year or so, she came into my office one day and sat down.   She allowed as how she had misjudged me.   As a blond, blue-eyed young man from the South, and Tulane University in particular, she had figured me for, well--a bigot is what it boiled down to.   She said that she had seen how I had worked hard for my African American clients and she had decided that I was all right after all.    I'm not sure why she thought I would give my African American clients short shrift but that's what she seemed to have been expecting.    To me, that reflected basic professionalism more than broad mindedness or enlightenment but, whatever, I was glad that she had decided that I was a fair minded person.

As a young lawyer I came in contact with many African Americans.   Some were wearing orange jumpsuits.    I learned by experience that African Americans are judged by a different standard in the courts of  this country than white people.   Although things have certainly improved, this is still a significant problem in my experience.   It's going to take a long time for this to even out.   Somehow we have to set this right.

My son came home from elementary school one day with a note from the principal.   He had been in a fight.   I confronted him about his offense.   My seven-year-old advised me that so-and-so had called his friend Dennis the N-word and that he had proceeded to beat the [stuffing] out of him, that he had told him that if he ever did it again, he was going to beat him up all over again.   And he was, he declared, hands on hips and chin stuck out.   What could I say to that?   I was proud of him although I didn't think I really should endorse beating the [stuffing] out of the kid.   I let the incident go.   The Bradford family had come full circle.

I voted for Barack Obama because I thought he was the best candidate for President.   It was also incidentally gratifying to me to be able to vote for an African American.   I think that the vast majority of Americans took him on his merits.   There are a few holdouts, as we have all seen.    Interestingly I have read a number of books on President Theodore Roosevelt in the past few years.   He was severely criticized in 1901 for inviting Booker T. Washington, the noted African American educator, to a private dinner with he and Mrs. Roosevelt at the White House.   Things have changed for the better and rightly so.

This is America.   Either we stand up for freedom and equality or we don't.   We need to get past race and live up--finally--to the ideals our Founders espoused all those years ago in our Declaration of Independence.   People have a right to be judged on their individual merits, by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin.