Everyone who marched or protested or spoke or wrote, everyone who simply cared and hoped along with activists –
Back in the early days, I guess it must have seemed, not insurmountable, but a gargantuan task to bring about the kind of social change that would be necessary to do away with a hateful, hidebound paradigm of long standing. I’m sure for many folks, black and white and everyone else, there were times when it must have seemed like the situation was never going to change.
While we are not all the way there yet, it seems to me that we all have gone a long way towards how it should be; not just equal and unimpeachable rights for everyone no matter their race, but also genuine good feelings and camaraderie for each other. Many dialogues that needed to happen finally took place. Although I was little in the 1970s, I believe that in the world, in the media, in the press, I have watched a slow evolution of society’s attitude towards people of color evolving from then til now, from an uneasy detente to a comfortable and respectful relationship.
I don’t mean to seem as though I am disregarding the detestable wrongs that are still being perpetrated, we all know what they are. But apart from personal conversations I’ve had with my own black friends, I don’t think I’ve ever heard people discussing their feelings about the change they helped bring about, or that they saw brought about.
How does it make you feel, looking back at the situation in the past, going through all that struggle, and living in the world as it is now?
I was involved in civil rights in the ‘60s. I marched, picketed, participated in protests and sit ins since my mid-teens. Was a member of several organizations. But I was always somewhat on the periphery, never the one to give a speech or write a letter or lead a march. Never went to march in the South. So I don’t take credit for any success of the movement; I was just one more body in the picket line; it would have had the same effect without me.
I would have expected us to have come a lot further in all these years. I’m filled with dismay when I see the deplorable conditions in the inner cities and the brutal reality that those kids grow up with . . . and of course the ones who never have the chance to grow up. And more dismay when I see poverty passed down generation after generation, with today’s kids having little more to look forward to than those in the ‘60s. It’s ironic that a black kid has gained the right to use the same water fountain as a white kid, but he hasn’t gained hope for a future.
But on the other hand, I never ever would have guessed I’d see a black president in my lifetime. And the media certainly portrays blacks very differently than it did back then. So I like to think the attitudes we helped change back then have had some positive results.
All in all, though I recognize how much has improved in all these years, there are still so many people for whom little has changed. As it says at the top of this page, “It’s taking longer than we thought.”
Panache said it well. I grew up in the legally segregated South. That’s a thing of the past now. After we moved to the Midwest, a black family moved into the neighborhood, and for sale signs went up all around them. That still happens around here.
When I’m having a good day, I can see the progress that’s been made. When I’m having a bad day, I’m infuriated that so little progress has been made, and it’s taken so long.