Walter Cronkite, in his biography: A Reporter’s Life, tells of his first real brush with overt racial hatred.
“Dad had been lured to Houston to teach at the dental college and share an office with a wealthy dentist, a leader of the community. I shall call him Dr. Smith because any relative who survives him today surely would be ashamed to be associated with this incident. We had been in Houston only a few days when we were invited to Dr. Smith’s for dinner. He lived in River Oaks, Houston’s first extensive, exclusive residential real estate development. After dinner we retired to the front porch for what to a ten-year-old was a welcome relief – ice cream and cake. Home freezers were still a few years away, and ice cream was ordered from the drugstore for immediate consumption.
It was pleasant out there on Dr. Smith’s wide veranda, rocking gently in the wicker chairs, the air heavy with the aroma of fresh-cut grass and early spring flowers. The Spanish moss that draped the big oaks was still a wonder to a boy from the calm of the deserted lane. A black delivery boy shined his flashlight along the curb and toward the sides of the house. Not finding an obvious path to the kitchen door and seeing us on the porch, he came up the walk from the street.
Dr. Smith stopped his monologue about the wonders of Houston for the first time that evening. He stopped rocking, too. With each step the delivery boy took up the walk, he leaned an inch farther forward in his chair. Now the tension was palpable. If this scene were being played in a film drama today, we would go to slow motion at this point. That is the way I remember it.
The delivery boy reaching the first step below the porch – holding out the brown sack and its carton of ice cream. Dr. Smith charging out of his chair. The boy taking one more step before Dr. Smith reaches him, a huge fist extended before him like a battering ram. The fist meets the boy’s face, square at the tip of his nose. The boy goes flying backward to the lawn. The bag tumbles to the steps. And Dr. Smith shouts: “That’ll teach you, nigger, to put your foot on a white man’s front porch!”
Never before or after did I see my father in such a seething rage. As the bloodied delivery boy scrambled to his feet and back to his motorcycle, Dad said: “Helen, Walter, we’re going now,” and he escorted us down the front steps, followed by Dr. Smith’s mystified entreaties.
Dad ignored Dr. Smith’s offer of a ride and would not pause to call a taxi. We walked. And we walked. River Oaks was at the edge of town and sparsely settled then. We were lost along its winding lanes, at each turn of which we expected to see lights with the promise of a telephone. But we walked in the dark of this strange town until we came upon a busier street and a passing car that stopped for Dad’s hail.
I did not fully understand then the import of the offense or of Dad’s courageous response to it. Although fully dependent upon Dr. Smith to launch a new practice, he broke off the relationship and struck out on his own.
I couldn’t have had a more searing example of racial injustice than this, my first brush with it. There was another confrontation not many weeks later, when my mother was warned that I should not play with a black boy who lived in a neighbor’s servants’ quarters down the block.
“You might do that up north, but that isn’t the way we do things down here,” she was admonished.
Again my father’s indignation rose: “They turn over their infants to be wet-nursed by a colored woman and their children to be raised by them and then they won’t let the children play together. Some system!”
I know many of my younger readers will find Cronkite’s story to be something from a very distant past. Actually, growing up in the segregated south (St. Mary’s County, Maryland) in the 50’s and 60’s I have equally disturbing memories. One stands out above the rest.
Little League Baseball was segregated in St. Mary’s County until I was 12 years old. Up to that point, I had no meaningful contact with people of color. Neighborhoods were segregated schools were segregated, churches were segregated . . . a way of life in the segregated South.
Quite frankly, I was as surprised as everyone else when Ralph Barbor showed up at the Hollywood Braves Little League Baseball registration. Looking back, I remember well Ralph’s quiet confidence and determination: “I ‘m here to play baseball!” And boy could he play! Our team went to win the county championship game against the Ridge Orioles, in large measure due to the outstanding play and attitude of Ralph Barbor. Who, by the way, went on to become a three letter student at Ryken Academy and was awarded a college scholarship for track and field at Bowie State University.
But that day also left hard memories as well. Bart Mattingly (not his real name) charged out on the field, grabbed his son by the arm, and launched into a tirade of racial slurs and cursing at Ralph, other players and their parents. And as he marched off the field and into his car he concluded his comments with:
No son of mine is going to play baseball on the same field with no n______! It was then I realized, maybe for the first time, how ugly and irrational racism really is.
And, of course, as time went on and I entered adulthood, I came to realize how through my own racist indoctrination was . . . and how sinful racism is. But thanks be to God, by His grace I’ve learned that love can repair one’s heart and replace the ugly and irrational with love’s beauty. One can have a close encounter of a loving kind and love will win the day.
Paul wrote: “If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do. I’m bankrupt without love. I Corinth.13:3
Has love won your heart? Or does something other than love remain?
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