Often when I get into discussions about history I often wonder how I would have handled things if I’d been living then. For instance if I’d been a wealthy land owner in the South around 1850 would I have been a slave owner? If I’d been living here in Winston-Salem 50 years ago how would I have handled segregation?
Today I read two pieces that prompted me to re-visit these questions. First was an editorial in the Winston-Salem Journal titled "Confronting History". The editorial is about a man named Peter Hairston who was a descendant of plantation owners. He opened up his family archives, without setting limitations, to a historian so that there would be a full understanding of his family’s past. From the editorial:
Hairston, a former
judge and legislator, was candid, too candid for some. For example, in
1991 he told the Journal that, while he hoped he wouldn’t have owned
slaves, "it was the labor system of the time, and anybody who grew up
and saw the mill villages of the early part of this century knows full
well that the slaves were far better treated … It would have been
very easy, I think, for someone now to have a guilt trip, except that
the effort, the sheer effort of looking after these people, letting
them come and go but also keeping them in very old age … has long
since bridged any gap of who owes whom what."
Yet this was the
same man who talked his local school-board members into submitting to
integration without a fight in 1969 by appealing to their sense of
practicality, Henry Wiencek writes in The Hairstons: An American Family
in Black and White.
Hairston, a central
figure in that 1999 book, freely opened his family’s history to
Wiencek, wanting nothing but the truth. "He encouraged me to dig into
it no matter where it would lead … Someone else would have just as
soon let these things stay silent," Wiencek said last week.
The result was a
groundbreaking work that eloquently chronicled the histories of the
white Hairstons, the slaveowners; and the black Hairstons, their slaves
– including their shared blood.
The second piece was an article on The Washington Post’s website about Drew Gilpin Faust the woman recently named to be Harvard’s next president. It ends up that when Faust was nine years old she wrote a letter to President Eisenhower to let him know how she felt about segragation. At the time, 1957, she lived in rural Virginia in a fairly prominent local family. Here’s an excerpt:
The child’s plea for an end to the separation of the races, so at odds
with what she heard at home and at her all-white Millwood school, was
forever fixed in her memory as she became a leading scholar on the
Civil War South and an advocate for a bigger role in national life for
minorities and women…
When, having decided as a historian that she ought to track down
that childhood letter to the president, and having found it at the
Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abilene, Kan., she
realized it was probably inspired by something about the battles over
Virginia school desegregation she had heard on the radio while being
driven home from school by her family’s black handyman, Raphael Johnson.
In
a 2003 article in Harvard Magazine, Faust said, "I asked Raphael if
what I had just understood was true, whether I would be excluded from
my school if I painted my face black. I came and wrote these very words
in my letter, not now as a question but already transformed into a
declaration of outrage to the president. ‘If I painted my face black I
wouldn’t be let in any public schools etc. My feelings haven’t changed,
just the color of my skin.’
"What I remember is that Raphael did
not answer my question. My probings about the unarticulated rules of
racial interaction made him acutely uncomfortable; he was evasive. But
his evasion was for me answer enough. How was it possible that I never
asked that question or saw those realities until I was nine years old?
How could I have not noticed before?"…
When Faust opened the copy of the letter sent from Abilene, she was
surprised at the religious arguments she used, because she did not
remember her family being such serious Episcopalians. Jesus Christ, she
informed the president, was born to save "not only white people but
black yellow red and brown."
If anything, she said, the
instruction she remembered at church seemed to reinforce the old values
with which she was so uncomfortable, in regard to both race and gender.
She remembered the Sunday her father had to substitute for her Sunday
school teacher. After a discussion of the story of Samson and Delilah,
he asked the class what was the moral of the tale. When none of the
children spoke up, he gave his view: "Never trust a woman."
What struck me about Hairston is that he was unflinchingly honest about slavery. Realistically, how many people running a large plantation in the south in 1850 would have risked their livelihood by not having slaves? If I had to be honest with myself I’d have to say I might have dealt with the situation by making sure that all of my people were treated well, but I probably wouldn’t have totally rebelled against the system. But again, I really don’t know.
The article about Faust seemed a little more relevant to my life, which makes sense since I was born just 9 years after she wrote the letter. I was too young to remember the state-sanctioned segregation, but I definitely remember the early years of de-segregation. Ironically though I think my best clue about how I might have handled segregation comes from my middle school and high school years.
In 8th grade the country was in the middle of the Iran hostage crisis. Because we lived in Arlington, VA I had a lot of international students in my school, including quite a few Iranian kids whose parents had worked for the Shah’s regime and were now essentially refugees in America. Being 13 and 14 year olds we didn’t understand the nuances of the crisis, we just knew that Iran was now our enemy. You can imagine how some of the Iranian kids were treated, but I’m happy to say that while I had no close Iranian friends I wasn’t afraid to be seen with them in the halls, working together in class or sitting together in the cafeteria. I couldn’t understand how they could be held responsible for what was going on in Iran, especially since they’d been living in the States for years. I just didn’t buy the concept of judging people by what nationality or religion they were.
On the other hand I’m no rebel. I’ll stand up for what I believe, but I don’t think I’d have been a civil rights marcher. If I’d been born in 1936 instead of 1966 I have a feeling my approach would have been to treat everyone, black or white, decently within the social context of the time. I’m pretty sure I’d have voted for anyone advocating civil rights, but I seriously doubt I’d have had the guts to risk bodily harm by standing arm in arm at a protest. I’d also have probably gone to Vietnam rather than protest. Like I said, I’m no rebel.
In today’s world I can tell you that I’m made uncomfortable by any person or institution that treats people a certain way based on their race, religion, sexual orientation, etc. People are complex and they should each be judged on their individual actions. I’ve met plenty of religious folk who I’m pretty sure are going to hell, and I’ve met atheists who might end up in heaven despite themselves. I’ve met people of all races who I’d like to call friends for life, and I’ve met people of all races who are grade-A assholes.
It’s really very simple: I ask only that I be treated with the same respect I hope that I show others. That means that I’m ashamed that I probably wouldn’t have had the gumption to buck the system in the past, but I’m awful glad I never had to confront those situations. I’m also very impressed by those who do have the gumption to stand up and fight.
In today’s world we’re confronted by issues like homelessness, renewed religious strife (anti-Muslim, anti-Christian, anti-Jew), homophobia and any number of other issues that divide people based on what they are. I find that I’m not the fighter that people like Cara Michele are, but I hope that what support I do give somehow helps.
Befuddled 