My local newspaper, the Knoxville
News-Sentinel is running a year-long series, “1968 – The Year
that Transformed a Nation.” As I read the first installment today,
I couldn't help but reflect on my 1968. I turned 16 in January, 1968.
I was going to high school in an all-white, racially segregated
school in a small-town in the Mississippi Delta. We had moved to the near-by town in hopes of a better and more stable school system during the uncertainty of desegregation. My home county had
been one of the epicenters of the civil-rights movement in the
south. We were the home-town of Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer. I didn't know
much about her at the time, but my parents did. They did their best
to shelter me from what was happening all around us, but even with
our limited access to national news, I knew enough. I began that
year as a more-or-less obedient child of my conventional parents.
I grew up on a Delta cotton farm. We
weren't quite big enough to be called a plantation. My family's farm
(the Place, in local parlance), was established in the 1920's, long
after the era of slavery. However, the farm system in the 1960's
still held black people, coloreds as we said then, in virtual
bondage. I was not brought up to look down on people, but rather to
extend them Christian charity. The families who lived on our Place
were treated with respect and we maintained an attitude of “noblese
oblige” in their regard. However, they were not considered to be
socially or intellectually as our equal.
The events of 1968 made me call into
question long-held assumptions: the government knows more that we do
and they must be acting in our national interest; the state knows
best in regard to social norms such as integration; the Church is
acting in the spirit of Jesus.
At the beginning of 1968, the body
count in Vietnam was on the nightly news. How could we anything but
victorious when the reports were thousands of Viet Cong killed and
only hundreds of American boys? The war protestors were surely
unpatriotic and even furthuring the cause of the enemy. I accepted it
all without reflection. My father was cynical about the war, but he
was certainly no pacifist. I don't remember my mother expressing an
opinion, even though she was a very intelligent and opinionated in
other areas.
At the beginning of 1968, integration
of schools was the most imminent threat to my way of life. In my
area, colored (blacks, African-Americans) were in the majority.
Integration of schools would lead to black and white mixing as
social equals. We were instructed as to how we must behave if a few
blacks actually attended our schools. We were to simply ignore them,
as if they did not exist in our white world. I did that in 1968. I
blush today with shame to admit it. I had no real notion of what was
happening in the adult world behind the scenes, of the threats to
black families, their jobs, their very lives, if they dared send
their children to “our schools.” I knew there were "COFO" workers in our community - young white activists living with black families. It was a shocking thought at the time.
At the beginning of 1968, I was an
active member of my local Baptist church, part of the youth group,
and serious about being a “good Christian.”
By the end of 1968, I still had no clue
about the war. It didn't seem right to me, but the extreme anti-war
activists and the “radical” Eugene McCarthy did not resonate with
me. I simple did not have enough information to process it. I didn't
know anyone who was against the war, although I didn't know anyone
who supported it either. In Mississippi, civil rights was our front
and center issue, not the war.
By the end of 1968, so much had
happened, so much that my well-meaning parents could not shield from
me - murder, assassination, riots, political convention tragedy. None
of it fit in with my neat Christian belief. When our church ushers
stood in the door ready to block any blacks from entry, I knew that
we had it wrong. All around me, events and attitudes
were completely counter to the Christian values that I had been
taught. I knew that I could not longer accept the dichotomy
between belief and action. I knew that I would never be the same.
Yet still, I wanted to be a cheerleader
and go out with my boyfriend and have sleep-overs with my girlfriends.
I really didn't want my life to change in the ways that it must. I
wanted to believe that my parents were on the side of right and that
my church was not corrupt. At the end of 1968, I still had a little
time, but not much, to be a child. My view of the world had changed.
Written on January 21, 2018
