starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking
The second semester of my freshman year of college, when I first transferred to USC, I was in a history class whose objective was to research and create historical markers for African-American history in Columbia, SC. We focused on the Civil Rights Era, specifically a neighborhood that was home to many influential blacks and a powerfully unified community. For my historical site, I chose the childhood lot (the house was destroyed a few years ago) of Judge Matthew J. Perry Jr., one of the first black federal judges in the South. He was a lawyer who argued the case which ended segregation at Clemson University, and was important in many of the key civil rights battles in South Carolina. The new courthouse in Columbia is named for him.
I interviewed him there, in a library in his private offices on the top floor of the courthouse. An eighteen-year-old, middle-class, white girl who has never had to face true hardships and who has been, to this point, incredibly lucky in life. It was difficult to sit there and ask questions about things I didn't understand of a man who'd lived through real strife and had a cross burned in his yard by the KKK. How do you possibly pose questions to understand what it was like without coming across as completely disrespectful of the magnitude of the experiences? I actually bothered asking if there was one specific instance he could recount that stuck out in his mind as a prime example of racism and segregation. It was a stupid question, and I cringe when I think back on how unprepared I was for the interview. I honestly hadn't expected to actually get the opportunity, but that hardly excuses it.
He told me that there was no answer to the question. No one experience that sticks out more than any other, no one thing that defines the period of time or gives a proper perspective because it was all-encompassing. Racism and segregation wasn't a series of events, of incidents where he was mistreated or disrespected. It was every moment of a lifetime. It was coming home from World War II in Europe, dressed in uniform and turned away from a restaurant because of his skin tone while Italian prisoners of war dined comfortably inside. It's being turned away from a local store because even though your skin is pale enough to pass as white, your address gives you away as living in a black neighborhood. It's paying a $5,000 fine or 3 months in jail for setting foot in a public park that's only for whites. It's every time someone glances at you and sees you as different, every time parents pull their children away from yours because they aren't the same color. It's looking in the mirror every day and seeing a person so many people hate for no reason at all, for something you couldn't control if you wanted to.
The culmination of the semester was a walking tour of the neighborhood and a small gathering of local politicians and the people still around from that time, the people we interviewed and recorded down as part of our history. I got in there and was told I'd have to make a speech, which I hadn't known about in advance, on heroics and what I'd learned from the experience. I don't remember what I said. I know that standing there in front of Judge Perry, the City Council and Mayor, a handful of people over 80 who only in the last decades of their lives got to enjoy the freedom we're all born with, I felt like a fraud. Little spoiled white girl trying to explain personal heroics in a time of trials. Two years later and I still don't have a clue what it's like to have the world stacked against you from birth.
What I do know is that I'm ridiculously proud to have Barack Obama sworn in as our 44th president today. It's not the panacea for our problems; racism is alive and well from all directions and there will always be bigots in the world. But it's a step forward. And maybe with hope at the helm instead of doom, we as a nation can learn to walk.
Obama's daughters stood up there with their dad as he took his oath, wearing their adorablely coordinated coats, scarves, and gloves. The world they're growing up in, the world they'll inherit, is a far cry from the one left to their parents. And I can't wait.
