race matters.
i'm taking a class called 'history of recent america' and this week the lectures are focused on the civil rights movement. today my professor's lecture ended with a brief history of harrisonburg.
in the late fifties, as integration was being pushed by the federal government, most places in the south massively resisted. in virginia, the resistance to integration took a less violent approach than in alabama or mississippi. less violent; more sneaky. a federal program was giving money to cities at the time for 'urban development' programs, and harrisonburg quietly and calmly designated the african-american neighborhood 'blighted' and demolished over 63% of the homes owned by black residents in the city. these people were then displaced to the newly built projects outside of harrisonburg.
mark, my professor, went on to explain how before the destruction of the african-american neighborhood, about 12% of harrisonburg was black. the figure now hovers around 3%. there used to be a black bank, several businesses, a community center, and homes that all belonged to the "black neighborhood." since the late '50s, most of the people from that community have moved to washington d.c.
of those who stayed, a de facto segregation remained. the old school that the blacks used to go to was closed and a new one was opened in the projects. the students remaining in harrisonburg went to schools that were predominately white. mark has had students in his history classes do research papers on this before, and in looking through old yearbooks, EMU students have found that in the original black school, there were vibrant extracurriculars. a debate team, art programs, theater... and yet an interesting thing occured when these students were shunted into the majority white schools where most people supported segregation. there were no black students in any extracurriculars except sports.
i look at EMU today - my impression, and one that i know is shared by a lot of people, is that many (not quite most, but nearly) of the athletes at EMU are black, and most of the black students at EMU are athletes. the racial attitudes of the 50s are still shaping my daily reality, still affecting the lives of my peers.
and i learned this week about the way that so often today we talk about the civil rights movement and end in 1963, with Dr. King's speech in Washington. i have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. and yet things didn't end in 1963. there was malcolm x, there was the black panthers, there were race riots and mobs and civil rights workers killed in mississippi, in alabama, there are people still missing and men who walked without a trial; there was the cold war, there was the race to the moon, there were escalating protests against the vietnam war and i saw the statistics today, projected on the screen - america growing richer, the middle class growing, and the african-american population growing poorer. nationally, even though they made up less than 12% of the population, they made up over 50% of the prisoners. as mark said, 'i'm not surprised that middle schools and high schools end the civil rights movement in 1963. because after that things got complicated.'
all of this to say: race matters. and so i am happy, excited... relieved, in a way, to be able to say that this week i could listen to sehba sarwar and leymah gbowee as they talked about listening to people across divides; the power of forgiveness; the need to see other people as worthy of love. tonight i went to the screening of leymah's film pray the devil back to hell and afterword she spoke to the audience about what the war was like in liberia. the terror people lived with, the violence directed against women and children, the hunger. it was a powerful speech, challenging, and when she finished speaking we all rose to our feet. mostly caucasians, but also asians, hispanics, african-americans; we all stood together and applauded for this beautiful soul, this wonderfully crazy west african woman who believes that good people working together can push the dark back before the power of the light.
i am happy-exited-relieved. and i am hopeful. i am hopeful because an african woman with very dark skin spoke with authority in harrisonburg where less than 50 years ago people who looked very much like her were forced from their homes and called nasty names. tonight we stood for her and applauded.
we are learning to see with clearer eyes.
