The Strength of Southwest Georgia

Southwest Georgia is a predominantly African American part of the State. It includes communities like Dawson, Moultrie, Thomasville, Leesburg, and Cuthbert, with  Albany being its flagship city. It has an abundance of African American farms, landowners, and a beautiful historically black college.  SOWEGA made a name for itself during the Civil Rights Movement as it was thrust into the national spotlight. Although beset by poverty and neglected by those in leadership positions, the area survives and holds its head high.

Yesteryear

Had we been adults in the fifties and sixties, we would have fought in the Civil Rights Movement in Georgia, joined SNCC in college, and participated in the Albany Movement.

We would have ventured into the outlying areas to register voters or get them involved in the Great Society.  Our lives would have been threatened as we attended mass meetings in area churches in search of converts. We would not have feared anybody or anything because the mission was too great.  

I greatly admire what they accomplished during those days. Civil Rights workers, ranging from national figures to everyday citizens, changed the future for those like me who followed in their footsteps.

Mamie Till receives closed casket with Emmett’s body | Let the World See...

Something to Think About: President Ford and the Black Community

President Ford is remembered for his pardon of President Nixon following Watergate, which he called a national nightmare that brought down a U.S. president. He did it to heal wounds and to bring the country together during a critical time in our history.

However, what most people do not know is that President Ford forged a longstanding relationship with African Americans that often goes overlooked.

In 1976, two years after being elevated to the presidency following  President Nixon's resignation, Ford recognized February as Black History Month during the country's Bicentennial. He called upon Americans to "seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of Black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history."  President Carter and Reagan followed his lead, while in 1986, Congress passed a law making it official.

Earlier in 1975, he issued a statement in support of Black History Week, becoming the first president to do so.  It underscored a lifelong commitment to human rights.  

 

Before becoming president, Ford compiled an impressive record on civil rights while serving in Congress for nearly three decades.  He voted against the Poll Tax (1949, 1962), opposed literacy tests for those with a sixth-grade education (1963), and supported "Court-appointed referees to guarantee voting rights (1962). (1) Ford also"... favored additional enforcement powers against those trying to deprive others of their voting rights (1956, 1957, 1963, 1964," according to the Ford Presidential Library. (2)  

Also, as a young Congressman, Ford "...supported efforts to provide Federal assistance to aid in school desegregation (1956, 1963, 1964), and consistently favored the establishment, continuance, and broadening of the Commission on Civil Rights (1956, 1957, 1963, 1964)." (3) Ford also cast a vote in favor of the hotly debated Civil Rights Act of 1964, helping to push it over the finish line along with other G.O.P.

Following his election as House Minority Leader in 1965, Ford broadened his support for Civil rights. (4)  He  "Took an active part in the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965... and led Republicans in pushing for a bill that would send Federal examiners to voting districts in the country where 25 or more persons complained they had been denied the right to register or vote because of race or color...." (5) Ford also backed a fair housing policy and blocked attempts to weaken it.

Long before he went to Washington, the seeds of racial justice were planted in the future president.  While a football standout at the University of Michigan, Ford threatened not to take the field against Georgia Tech had an African American teammate and friend been barred from the game at the behest of the Yellow Jackets.  His buddy talked him out of it and encouraged the future commander-in-chief to express his hate for economic, racial, and social injustice differently.  

Sources:  The Ford Presidential Library,  The Library of Congress

Bruno Mars, Anderson .Paak, Silk Sonic - Skate [Official Music Video]

The Resistance

I have often wondered what those who stayed behind in the South or fought for Civil Rights went through, despite the books I have read, the films I have seen, or the private conversations I have had with those who lived through the struggle.

Could I have endured the beatings, lynchings, harassment, false imprisonment, and the likelihood of being ostracized by friends or those too fearful to fight?  I think about my father, who walked a fine line,  and the unsung heroes who lost their lives in inhumane ways. I think about the young World War Two African American soldier who returned home only to be denied the full benefits of the G.I. Bill and even assaulted at rest stops.  

Even whites sympathetic to the plight of blacks received backlash. Jimmy Carter's eldest son was beaten by students at his high school in a small town in Southwest Georgia because his family supported integrated schools and refused to toe the line on segregation. The abuse did not break his will, his mother's will, or that of his father,  the future governor and president,  who would one day declare an end to racial discrimination in the South.

Could I have also survived the segregated public school system that Carter and others fought against?  Many of my relatives, neighbors, and fellow Georgians had no choice.  Although the teachers were knowledgeable and in many instances better educated than their white counterpart, the system crippled us educationally and helped perpetuate an inferiority complex. There were dilapidated buildings,  shortages of books, lack of playgrounds, and buses to transport black kids to and from school safely, typical of black education well into the '60s in the South.  On the other hand, white students attended well-equipped schools and had access to shiny buses that dropped them off for class.  It challenged the doctrine of separate but equal!

The biased school system impacted black boys particularly hard.  Many African American boys lived on farms and spent the Fall semester harvesting crops or were required to sit out during planting season instead of in the classroom.  As a result,  the number of black males graduating from high school or attending historically black colleges lagged far behind that of black females.  Only years later did it narrow, but it widened again for other reasons.  

Aside from receiving a substandard education, many African Americans who were determined to stick it out in the South or fight for their rights did not get the best medical care.  Before the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which revolutionized healthcare for blacks across the Southern U.S,  black Americans received medical care primarily in colored hospitals,  segregated wards in white-run facilities,  or were denied service altogether,  which does not take into account the abuse of the black female reproductive system or other acts of medical malpractice heaped on people of color for generations.

This is not to say that black doctors and their clinics did not play a vital role in delivering babies,  fighting high blood pressure, or simply saving the lives of everyday black citizens. However, access to the nation's overall healthcare system is a fundamental right that should not be denied to anyone based on color,  gender,  sexual orientation,  or ability to pay. It has led to health disparities, such as infant mortality, that exist today.  

Another devastating consequence of living in the apartheid South that weighed heavily on the "souls of black folks" was poverty.  In some areas, it resembled life in so-called Third World countries, though not all blacks in the South or other parts of the country lived below the poverty line.  It was driven by low wages paid to black workers, especially in agriculture, which led to substandard housing and hunger.  For instance,  when Senator Robert Kennedy visited the Mississippi Delta in the mid-1960s, he encountered  African Americans living in homes unfit for human habitation on former plantations, with children suffering from malnutrition and too weak to stand.  The Delta and Appalachia regions became the basis for the Great Society and War on Poverty initiated by President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Blighted communities also existed in urban areas like Atlanta's Buttermilk Bottom. Like many neglected black neighborhoods of that time, it suffered from poor infrastructure, with dilapidated homes on unpaved streets, outhouses in the back, and in some instances, a lack of electricity. (1)  By the 1970s, the homes were demolished to make way for a new civic center and other developments.  Today,  a city marker bears its name in remembrance of the hardworking African Americans who called it home.  

Surviving Jim Crow not only involved finding ways to deal with a one-sided healthcare system or systematic poverty, but also crooked law enforcement.  The slave catcher gave rise to the Southern sheriff,  an imposing figure who stood in the way of voting,  arrested black protesters without due process,  and caused the death of hundreds of black men,  women, and children from Virginia to Texas that remains unsolved.  It interfered with the free travel of blacks, who had to be off the roads by sundown in isolated communities.  

Local police,  like their counterpart in the Sheriff's Office,  preyed on blacks,  especially black men,  resulting in their arrest or long-term incarceration on trumped-up charges.  As a result,  county jails,  prisons,  and work camps, like the Atlanta Brick Company, exploded with the bodies of the wrongfully convicted,  many of whom never saw justice.  It was the beginning of mass incarceration that continues today. 

Along with the horrors of law enforcement in the segregated South existed immense efforts to keep blacks from voting, notably in rural areas.  Poll taxes,  purging of voting rolls,  literacy tests, intimidation, routine violence, and other unreasonable requirements were employed to steer blacks away from the voting booth.  Attempts to fight for the right to vote by showing up to register,  holding voter registration projects, or marching in the streets could have meant the difference between life and death.  The Voting Rights Act of 1965, which has since been gutted, ended voter suppression by eliminating barriers to the ballot box.  It led to the election of the nation's first black president.  

Above all,  the worst atrocity inflicted on freed blacks in the deep South following Reconstruction included a rigid social order that lasted well into the Twentieth Century. When the Civil War ended, Union soldiers were stationed in the South to protect the former slaves. When they were pulled out due to the Compromise of 1876,  Southern States introduced the Black Codes, similar to the slave codes, that remained on the books for generations.  They were intended to control the lives of the former slaves, such as voting, where they could attend school, or whom they could love, for instance.  Local communities also enacted statutes of conduct to further intimidate blacks. 

A version of the black codes also existed in the North. Banks, for instance, instituted redlining to prevent blacks from moving into white neighborhoods. This created segregated communities and schools, known as de facto segregation. It was based on customs and attitudes and not written into law. It made life highly difficult for African Americans.

The black codes established an unequal society in the South and Midwest. For instance, it forbade mixing in schools,  parks,  restaurants,  housing, and other areas.  Other statutes were enacted to "enforce racial segregation at the level of marriage and intimate relationships by criminalizing interracial marriage and sometimes sex between members of different races" to make blacks feel less human.

The rules of racial separation dehumanized blacks in other ways, too.  My father,  who spent his life in rural Southwest Georgia,  revealed how as a young black man in the '40s and '50s,  he had to say "yes sir" and "no sir" to juvenile white males, and along with other black men and women,  were required to step off the sidewalk when whites approached as an act of further humiliation. Blacks also entered through the back door of well-to-do white homes and were confined to separate seating in clinics,  hospitals, streetcars, and city buses.  They also received second-class service in restaurants and stores and were denied accommodation in all hotels.  A high school teacher once commented that he stood in line in the rear of a white-owned establishment to get a hot meal in the 1950s in my small hometown in Georgia.

When blacks dared to buck the caste system,  the outcome was brutal.  Black men were lynched, severely beaten, or run off their land for asserting their manhood or "stepping out of line," as it was customarily called.  It robbed them of their ability to protect their women,  children, or community from a chaotic way of life that hurt them deeply.  

Black women also endured acts of terror.  They were fired from teaching jobs,  intimidated, physically harmed,  murdered, and banished from their communities, like Fannie Lou Hamer, a human rights figure in the 1960s, for desiring to be treated with respect.  Despite it all,  black women,  like black men,  rose above the hate to live successful lives.

African Americans who decided to stay in the South or forgo life elsewhere forged a path in education, economics, and Civil Rights that allows us to live lives we can be proud of in a land of opportunity called America.  They made it happen despite incredible odds.  They farmed their land,  taught in newly built segregated schools that became the center of the community,  made strides in healthcare that saved lives, and fought battles to uphold the Constitution. Although life in the North for blacks was not always ideal, and the South was downright cruel, Dixie has become a home to millions of black people, including those who longed to return, and a new generation of people of color who have discovered its great potential.

 

Re-elect Lucy McBath

 I do not live in Lucy McBath's congressional district, but I would like to see her reelected because of her compassion and determination to help others.

She entered Congress in 2019 to address gun violence, expand healthcare, and improve the economy.

The shooting death of her son in 2012  made her a "mom on a mission."  She co-sponsored the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act of 2019 and the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2019. Both have passed the House and have strong bipartisan support in the Senate. In addition, she backed the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act as a freshman Congressperson, which made it through the House of Representatives but has stalled on a technicality in the upper chamber. Lastly, she coauthored workplace violence legislation during the 116th Congress and continues to speak out on violence of any kind across the country.

Aside from promoting safety, McBath has fought for veterans, families, and students seeking higher education.  She introduced a bill on the House floor signed into law by the president, "which protects military disability benefits from going to creditors in a bankruptcy proceeding." (1)  Moreover,  she voted for the Pay Check Protection Program and Healthcare Enhancement Act that received the president's signature back in April, which lowers drug costs and helps struggling families and businesses combat the novel Corona Virus. In addition,  she and a colleague penned The Childcare is Essential Act, which awaits Senate approval. She also cast a ballot to extend eligibility to students seeking financial aid whose schools have closed or been caught up in wrongdoing. (2) Above all,  McBath and other Democrats blocked attempts to kill the Affordable Care Act and passed legislation to raise the minimum wage to $15.00 an hour that,  like many other Democratic initiatives,  sits in the Senate.

McBath has backed or been a part of other landmark legislation, such as the Commission on the Social Status of Black Men and Boys Act,  which passed the Senate in 2020, middle-class tax cuts, the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, which became law in 2020 as well,  and disaster relief for Puerto Rico.  

With a record to stand on, Congresswoman McBath enjoys widespread support in her district as she continues her journey of love,  respect,  and justice for every American citizen.

1. Congressional Voting Record

2. Congressional Voting Record