RIP Maynard Jackson
I met Maynard Jackson once, on a city street one block over from where a parade was passing on Peachtree. He was very kind and friendly, shaking my hand and engaging me without hesitation. I even managed to pull one of those great silver-throated laughs out of him when I asked him when he was going to run for Mayor again (this was during the mess that was Bill Campbell's tenure, so anything would have been an improvement.)
He was the first powerful Black man who I was able to see without using the racial filters I was raised with. I disagreed with him on just about everything, including not only his ideas but his tactics, but I'm sad that he won't be around any more.
Comments
Nice memory.
Racial filters? Interesting term, that.
Posted by: Ara Rubyan | June 29, 2003 08:44 AM
Comments
(Describing, not defending)
Perhaps, Ara. I was born in Birmingham, AL. Until I was 14, I don't think I saw (in my family) any reference to any Black person without an accompanying aside, "What's *he* doing (t)here?" I was told tales of my grandfather's membership in the Jr. KKK; and one of my grandmother's favorite stories was of witnessing a violent White Citizens' Council intervention in a sit-in at Woolworth's in Bessemer.
Sure, Poppa had a Black friend; but he was never spoken of with anything short of amazement that Poppa would permit a Black man into his life.
My father was the sole voice of dissent from this and I don't know how I would have turned out without his influence. We lived in Selma during the Civil Rights marches and (I learned later; I was only 6 at the time) Dad was the only person working in the Social Security office who did not refuse to work with the first Black field officer there. And when I was older he told me with tears of the night he went to see Nat King Cole in Birmingham, only to witness the infamous attack on Cole by members of the White Citizen's Council.
I refuse to be ashamed that I took the easy way out for a kid, playing along with the racial lessons I was being taught by hateful people. My life is not a movie of the week where the kid is the only one with any moral smarts. I thank God I was able to recognize my own hatred and bigotry and overcome it, however late in life that occurred.
So, "racial filters." Yeah, I'll use it.
Posted by: Brian Jones | June 29, 2003 02:21 PM