A look back. We've come a long way.
"We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice."
Martin Luther King, Jr. 1968
Republican myth-making imagines an earlier period of national greatness, a Golden Age of MAGA prosperity. There was social order. Traditions were observed. Blacks and Women knew their places. One nation under God. Democratic thought leaders have been sharing another mythic past, one that posits that unequal power between the races is a central force in American culture and politics, there from the beginning. The myth understands racism and injustice to be better hidden now, but they persist. They are systemic, hard wired into American laws and institutions.
It helps to look back. Like other Americans in their early 80s, Larry Slessler has direct personal memories of the transformation in America. Things have changed. He lived it and saw it.
Larry graduated from Medford, Oregon's one public high school in 1957. There were no Black students then, nor were there any in 1967 when I graduated as part of a class of 800. Larry's life experience widened after college and his entry into the U. S. Army.
Guest Post by Larry Slessler
In early 1962, two years before the Beatles' U.S. musical invasion, before segregation was repealed, and 6 years before Martin Luther King was assassinated, I was a brand new 2nd Lieutenant assigned to a duty posting in the Jim Crow state of South Carolina. I was 21 and my wife, Kathie, was 19. Both of us were naive “kids” from Medford, Oregon. South Carolinian culture felt like being in a foreign land.
Money was tight for us. Even adjusting for inflation, my monthly military pay of $305 did not allow for frills. My wife was pregnant with my first daughter, Jennifer, later born in May, 1962. We were lucky because the bus line ran a block from our newly rented house. Kathie could take the bus to and from appointments.
In late March Kathie waited at the bus stop for her first South Carolina bus ride and appointment with a military doctor. Kathie lived in the country growing up and school buses were her norm. Kathie climbed aboard the bus and went directly to her favorite spot, the bench seat at the very back of the bus. She paid no attention to her surroundings. After a short time the bus driver walked back to her and suggested she would be much more comfortable up front. Kathie politely replied that she preferred the back and didn’t move.
At this point there was a culture and legal problem. South Carolina buses were segregated, and this 19 year old blond, fair skinned and obvious mother-to-be was sitting in the “Colored” section of the bus. She was oblivious.
The driver, by now in a mild panic, insisted that the ride up front would be so much better. Again Kathie said she liked the back. Finally the driver said, “You can’t ride back here, it is the law.” Sunrise dawned in my wife’s mind. She noticed there were only Black folks in the back area and all of them were avoiding eye contact with the bus driver and that dumb blond girl from some other planet besides earth.The driver finally realized this crazy White girl was not going to budge. He knew what to do if a Black tried to sit in the White section. He likely had never considered what to do if a White tried to sit in the Black section.
Kathie told me that night over dinner that the bus driver rushed to the driver’s seat and attempted to break the land speed record before depositing “Crazy White girl” at the military stop. Today there would be a dozen camera phone recordings on a dozen news channels of the event. I suspect there were a number of dinner table discussions that night in 1962, in both White and Black homes, about the crazy girl.
A few weeks later Kathie went into labor. Adventures continued. About 20 minutes after my daughter Jennifer was born, another mother on the ward came down with Chicken Pox. All the moms and newborns were sent home.
A few weeks later I was assigned to a three month Intelligence School in Texas. Lt. Slessler, Kathie, and five-week-old daughter Jennifer headed to Texas. I would return to South Carolina in October, 1962 in time to deploy to Florida and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
I served in South Carolina, Texas, Florida and Alabama from late 1961 to August 1964. I got to live in and observe the segregated South, the laws, the upheaval of de-segregation, and the chaos of that early de-segregation. My early world was segregation in my civilian life and integration when on my military duty stations. I could socialize with blacks on any place that was military, but could not in the town I lived in.
I am proud that Kathie defied the color barrier in 1962. In July of 1964 Kathie, Jennifer, and I visited the closest national park to witness the desegregation in action. The park was deserted. Blacks and Whites stayed home. The next month, August 1964, came the Gulf of Tonkin event and escalation of the war in Vietnam. I was on tour in Vietnam for a year. I saw Black and White blood flow in an equality not yet achieved back home.
Peter, this story would no doubt be outlawed in Florida. It seems like you're trying to make white people feel bad about themselves - how could you??