Civil Rights

Why nobody who preaches fear will ever get my vote

Posted on May 6, 2017 Written by Carl

By Carl Carter

The one-gallon glass bottles of water were lined up across the wall of our basement, below a small window that looked out at ground level. They had once held Clorox and were covered in dust. My parents had placed them there so that we would have something to drink if the nuclear missiles from Russia or Cuba hit.

There may have been some cans of food, but I don’t remember them. My child’s mind (I was only seven or eight) raced with questions nobody wanted to answer. Why don’t we just go to the school? It was literally next door, less than 150 yards away, and it had a fallout shelter.

We knew what fallout was, vaguely. After the bombs hit, there would be dust and radiation that would make us sick. We would break out and our skin would slide off our arms, and we would soon die.

My friends told me they, too, had bottles of water stored in their basements. At school, we would have “duck-and-cover” drills when a siren went off and we walked single file to the first floor and put our hands behind our heads. I could see windows and doors from where I was ducked and covered, and I tried to imagine how the thin glass would keep out the radiation, and exactly how my little arms would protect me from the bombs. There was a big crack in the doorway. Wouldn’t the radiation seep in there?

A 17-year-old civil rights demonstrator, defying an anti-parade ordinance of Birmingham, Ala., is attacked by a police dog on May 3, 1963. On the afternoon of May 4, 1963, during a meeting at the White House with members of a political group, President Kennedy discussed this photo, which had appeared on the front page of that day’s New York Times. (AP Photo/Bill Hudson)

Not far away, there were other schools where kids were doing exactly the same thing, but one thing was different. They and their teachers were black. It was illegal for them to attend Minnie Holman Elementary, or Comer, or Gibson, or any other “white” school. Red lines on maps dictated where they could live. Presumably, they had their own dusty Clorox bottles of water stored away.

We rarely saw each other, unless it was downtown or on a city bus. My father routed the buses, primarily on an east-west trajectory, up and down First Avenue North and other roads that ran the length of the city. Every bus had a clear white line, and if you were black, you had to sit behind that line. If you were white, you stayed in front of it not only because of the law, but because heaven only knew what horrible things went on in the back of the bus. We imagined constant knifings and fights, and felt certain we might be killed if we went back there.

Because of his role as the bus scheduler, Dad got regular phone calls from the infamous commissioner, Bull Connor, who obsessed on keeping black and white from ever being in the same place at the same time.

Not that I ever saw any of that. That long seat in the back looked to me like a fun place to be. But no matter. Mother kept my sisters and me safely in the front. When we went shopping downtown, there were “White” and “Colored” signs everywhere — especially on water fountains, restrooms and doors. In theaters, blacks had to enter by their own doors and sit in their own sections, usually in the very back of the room. In restaurants — at least the ones where we ate — they weren’t allowed at all.

Whether black or white, we lived in fear. At home, it was fear of the Russians. In shops, and on buses and sidewalks, it was fear of each other, and a great deal of work went into keeping that fear stoked. Somewhere in Woodlawn, mere blocks from my home, was the local KKK chapter, to which my grandfather belonged. Nobody ever admitted James T. Harwell had robes in the closet, but it finally came out when his son (my uncle) Jack pulled them down one day while playing in the home. We certainly never heard what went on in those meetings, but apparently it wasn’t extreme enough for some members, who splintered off join others and form the Cahaba Boys, where the plans were hatched to bomb Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, which resulted in the deaths of four little girls.

I’ve been haunted for years by the question of whether my grandfather knew the bombers. I guess we’ll never know for sure.

Over the years, some of the lines keeping black and white separate began to fade. It was 1969 before I had a handful of black classmates. The world didn’t end.

In his final hours of life at East End Memorial Hospital, my grandfather became delusional, grabbed a pen from an orderly and ran up and down the halls stabbing black employees in the backside with it. Whether it was fear, hate or some mix of the two, nobody will ever know. They had to sedate him and strap him to his bed.

While all this was happening, I was worshipping each week in an all-white church that posted guards to keep black people from worshipping with us — or, as my dad preferred to call it, making trouble.

Fear kept them out. Fear kept us in and sent our wealthier friends to the all-white southern suburbs of Mountain Brook, Homewood and Vestavia.

For years, starting in the late 1980s, I lived in Hoover next door to a career policeman and FBI agent, who happened to be black. We talked about the frequency of police shootings of black men. He blamed much of it on fear. A scared black man makes a sudden move interpreted by a scared cop as an effort to reach for a gun. Boom.

I think in many cases, the bullet is just the agent of death. The real cause is fear.

My vantage point of the civil rights struggle in the 1960s changed me forever. It’s the reason I have refused for years to vote for anybody who wants to make me afraid.

That doesn’t mean I am free of fear. There are very real dangers in the world around us. So we lock our doors and buy insurance and install security systems.

The problem isn’t fear per se, but those who use it to control us. Those who paint pictures of inner-city chaos, killers and drug dealers pouring across our borders, people of different religions, or people who love differently, for the purpose of getting our votes. It might surprise you that this is an attitude I inherited from my father, who felt deeply that race mixing was dangerous and yet took pride in refusing to ever vote for George Wallace.

As I write this, we are just months from very important elections. I don’t know who will get my vote yet, but I will be looking for those who invite me to be better, and believe in a better future. This is why nobody who preaches fear will ever get my vote.

A Valentine of hate, compliments of the KKK

Posted on February 15, 2017 Written by Lindsay Fernandes

Yesterday was Valentine’s Day, full of fun and all about love – tangible as the blue and purple glitter that my daughter trailed from her Valentine mailbox all day long. I will be dealing with that glitter for at least a year. But it’s okay, because it was all in the name of love.

But then, a friend texted me a picture of a Valentine and a bag of jelly beans with this message:

“Love your own RACE! Loyal White Knights KKK. Stop Homosexuality and Race mixing. God’s Laws Don’t Forget!”

A grandparent had found it on the ground, right here in suburban Birmingham. In 2017.

This is the KKK feeling safe and cozy and comfortable enough to raise its ugly face in the here and now. This is the KKK feeling emboldened and loud and proud. This is the KKK literally sending out Valentine cards to spread their venom. These words were literally printed within two lovely, small, red, interlocking hearts. Words of hatred, exclusion, and derision that somehow invoke God’s law on the national day of love.

And the only words running through my brain are a motley assortment of swear words in varying orders and inflections.

So I gave myself until today to write this post, so that the swear words might settle down and turn into something worthwhile. And here’s what I’ve come up with.

I could just look at this and roll my eyes and think it was some lone crazy lunatic and write it off. After all, I have no reason to be offended. I’m white. I’m straight. I’m Christian. Whatever, right?

So, so wrong. I have every reason in the world to be not only offended, but completely and totally horrified. Not only for myself, but for my LGBT friends, my husband of Indian heritage, and our daughters. Hate based on race, gender, sexual orientation or religion is not OK, and I won’t pretend it is.

It’s especially odious that a Valentine of hate was aimed at my girls, who at the ages of 3 and 5 already reflect the love of God that we’ve tried to pass on to them.

My parents grew up with bigotry, but they chose to leave it behind, choosing love and acceptance and inclusion. They chose to embrace a message of God’s love, and that is what they passed along to my brother and me.

So I’ve made the choice to speak, not only as a fellow human who would stand side to side with any target of such malice, but as my children’s mother. I want my girls to know, all of their lives, that their mommy never let them down. I want my gay friends, and my friends of color, to know, always, that I stand with them.

We all make our choices. And I urge you to make the choice to stand for the vulnerable, the minorities, the poor, the needy. The homosexuals. The mixed races. The targets.

Let’s join our voices in chorus, and stand up to this poison, and say it as loudly and as forcefully as we can:

NO.

It’s up to each of us to persist in standing up to bullies

Posted on February 8, 2017 Written by Lindsay Fernandes

By Lindsay Fernandes

I was a college kid at a football game. Auburn v. Ole Miss, at Ole Miss, and I was seated in their student section. I was there because a friend of mine had cousins attending the school, and they got us tickets. I did not know these cousins, and I was slightly uncomfortable because I’m an Auburn fan and I felt surrounded by drunken good ole boys.

It was the time of Carnell “Cadillac” Williams, Auburn’s nearly unstoppable running back. He is, relevant to this story, African American.

I don’t remember the play, but clearly Cadillac was making his steady way down the field, because a student directly behind me stood and shouted in my ear, “Come on boys, knock that n***** down!”

I whirled around and said as calmly as I possibly could, “Excuse me, but I don’t approve of that word and I would appreciate you never using it in my presence again.”

Drunk boy glared, and my friend’s cousin, who was a virtual stranger to me then and a total stranger to me now, said quietly, “Lindsay, sit down, do you want to get me beat up?”

I looked at him like the worthless coward he was, and stood up to face my opponent eye to eye. He immediately began evading eye contact and sat down, and, I couldn’t help but notice, didn’t use that word again. But the game was ruined for me, and that is literally the only memory of it I have.

But here’s the thing. I was warned. I was given an explanation why I should back down and be quiet. Nevertheless, I persisted.

My daughter came home from school the other day, and the teacher who helped her into the car was bursting to tell me what a wonderful friend she had been at school, and how she had stood up for a little boy whose feelings had been hurt. I asked her about it, and she told me a story of a child who took a ball from a little boy and made him cry. My five year old daughter went and found that boy the exact same ball, and then played ball with him until he stopped crying.

Because I’ve taught her, as I was taught, that standing up for others is just what you do. As a Christian, as a human, as a mother, as a friend, a neighbor, a sister, that’s just what you do.

What would history be without those who persisted in the name of goodness or equality? Those who persisted in the battle for our right to be a sovereign nation? Those who persisted in the fight to free slaves? Those who persistently fought for civil rights? Those who persisted in marching for a woman’s right to vote? Those who persistently fought Adolf Hitler?

Where would we be if we all just shrugged our shoulders and averted our eyes and said, “well, that’s just the way things are…”?

To all the women and men who stand up for the marginalized every day: PERSIST.

To all the boys and girls in schools who see a bully and stand up just because they know it’s right: PERSIST.

To all the moms and dads who teach their kids that standing up for others is just what you do: PERSIST.

To anyone who is told to be quiet, that it’s not worth speaking up because others are more powerful: PERSIST.

To the Muslims who are exhausted from defending the peace of their religion: PERSIST.

To the Christians who are disheartened by seeing their religion misused to hurt the marginalized: PERSIST.

To our government officials who are currently outnumbered and outvoiced but are speaking out anyway: PERSIST.

To those who know what’s right but they’re too afraid to say it out loud: PERSIST.

Our voices together are more powerful than any bully, and our goodness cannot be defeated. They’ve told us why we need to be quiet, they’ve given us an explanation, and nevertheless we persist. For goodness, and equality, and rights of all people, we persist. Because, as history shows us, our very persistence can change the world.

Discovering the ugliness of a magical world

Posted on January 29, 2017 Written by Lindsay Fernandes

By Lindsay Fernandes

So I was trying to figure out how to begin here, and in my jumble of thoughts I hit upon the word “raw.” For one thing, that’s how I feel. Raw. Along with millions, literally millions of others. For another thing, that’s what this blog is about. Birmingham Raw. Being open, stark and sometimes ugly. So I’m going to lay it out on the line – who I am, where I came from, and why I’m so very, very raw right now.

Let me tell you a story about a time I went with my dad to Home Depot to pick out a rose bush. I was young; probably lower elementary, which would mean late 80s, early 90s. And I saw a man dressed as a woman. It was obvious this was a man, and I tugged on my dad’s shirt and asked him why that man had on girl’s clothes. He didn’t miss a beat, and whispered back, “Oh, that’s a transvestite. Sometimes men feel like they should dress in women’s clothes, and we call that a transvestite.” I thought that was a little wild, but more in a “whoa, I just saw a transvestite!” kind of way, not in a “look at this disgusting spectacle of sin and depravity,” kind of way. So I went home and told my mom what we saw at Home Depot. She might have looked slightly aghast, maybe said, “Wait, where have y’all been?” but then she just shrugged and said, “Yep, that’s what it was. Everybody’s different, and some men dress like women.” And I stored that word in my psyche and processed it as a different kind of normal.

This is one small example of a childhood that left me entirely unprepared for the realities we face in America today. I grew up a white girl on a cul de sac of ethnic and religious diversity, quite literally named Strollaway Lane, and when they taught me that racism and bigotry were in the past, I believed them. I played side by side with black kids, Islamic kids, Catholic kids. I had Islamic immigrants on one side and African American FBI agents on the other. I went to Hoover High School, and there were a few openly gay kids. It was okay though, because that was when everybody watched Will & Grace, so it was sort of cool and maybe a little edgy to have “Jack” as a friend. Then I went to Millsaps College, which is just about as liberal as liberal can be, and there were gay kids everywhere. All religions, all ethnicities, all shapes and sizes and colors. During and after college I dated the man who is now my husband. He’s a natural born American citizen, but he’s first generation. His parents were immigrants.

And here’s something pretty raw and real.

It took me YEARS to realize we were an interracial couple. Which is funny, because I’m actually a pretty smart girl. But it just never occurred to me. I don’t say this to pat myself on the back for how open minded and forward thinking I am, but to highlight the intense naiveté of my childhood experience. I genuinely didn’t think it mattered. I had no idea that colors and races and religions actually mattered. The nineties, especially for me, were a time when everyone sort of politely pretended to be accepting, when people said all the right things. But I thought it was real. Because in my house, it was.

So fast forward to now, and how I’ve been so intensely blindsided by the vitriol and anger that currently permeates our culture. It was a sucker punch for me. And it hurts, and it’s scary, and it’s incredibly real in a way that I was totally unprepared for. I wept relentlessly on election night and the following day. I hid from my kids to cry in the kitchen. I commiserated with my neighbors, who happen to be incredible, awesome people that God put in my life because I need them. I said the F word a lot more than usual. I stumbled upon some new, unexpected friends who have proven an invaluable source of comfort and relief.

And I found, to my shame, that it was my African American friends who gave me that pat on the back and the brace to the spine that I needed most. It was my African American friends who shook their heads and said, “Lindsay, don’t let this get you down. We’re going to pray, and we’re going to stand up for what’s right, and we’ll get through this. We’ll be alright.” And I realized with a tremendous jolt that they were well equipped for this world, and I wasn’t. I was a sheltered white girl who thought that racism was over. At least over “out loud.” But they knew better, because their reality had been starkly different to mine all along and I just didn’t know.

This is the raw part. I was totally clueless. Completely naïve. Living in an ivory tower. A dream world. But now my eyes are open. I look at my kids and I see the grandchildren of immigrants. I look at my last name, and I know it looks “Mexican.” And then I think about that damn wall. And then I think about the millions of refugees, the millions of disenfranchised, the millions of fellow Americans who are fearful because they’re different, or dependent, or sick, or gay, or the wrong color, or the wrong religion.

And I realize that no one can afford the luxury of naiveté anymore. It’s time for eyes wide open, because that’s the only way to get things done. That’s the only way forward. Let’s own it. Let’s be raw. Let’s proclaim our truths so that we can shed them and walk into the future with free hands, no baggage.

I was a smart, clueless, happy little white girl. A product of a magical childhood. A product of fabulous parents who hoped avidly for the future they prepared me for.

Where are you raw? What is your truth? Own it. Be raw for a minute. And then get up and move.

I’m not scared of Donald Trump. Or radical Islamic terrorists. Here’s why.

Posted on January 29, 2017 Written by Carl

By Carl Carter

Over the past few weeks, I’ve had conversations with a number of you, mostly in your 30s, who for some reason have looked to me for help in dealing with the likelihood of policies that do violence to both our constitution and our people.

My message in all of these conversations has been, “Hang in there. It’ll be ok.”

I don’t say that just because I’m a cockeyed optimist. I’m not wearing blinders. I’ve just seen things you haven’t. Time and again, I’ve seen one political party or the other emerge victorious, with its leaders strutting and thumping their chests while the losers retreated. And I’ve seen things reversed almost overnight. I’ve seen times of real danger — not the imagined threats we fret over these days.

Let me try to put this in perspective. When I was born, it had been a mere seven years since more than 60 million people — 3 percent of the world’s population — had been killed. Seven years isn’t much time. (Consider that we’re still wringing hands over one day of attacks that killed fewer than 3,000. And that was 16 years ago.) We flexed our muscles and invaded Afghanistan for revenge, killing about 104,000 people and injuring another 41,000, according to the Watson Institute of International & Public Affairs at Brown University. Just for good measure, we invaded Iraq as well (for reasons that were never clear), resulting in the deaths of about 165,000 Iraqi civilians.

In most contexts, you could at least call it a wash and move on. But we can’t seem to do that, because we have too many people who want us to be afraid. They use fear as a tool to manipulate us.

As a result, folks are so paranoid that someone wearing a turban might kill somebody that we are shutting out millions of children, engineers, scientists and others who are fleeing genocide. Just in case one of them should turn out to be a bad guy who wants to blow somebody up.

Guess what? We already have a lot of bad guys who want to kill people, right here among us.

But I digress.

Seven years, 60 million people. And yet, I was born into middle-class home during a time of peace and prosperity. We elected the general who led us to victory in World War II, and the warrior also knew how to make peace. He stayed clear of Viet Nam. He refused to be baited into a war over the Suez Canal. Our daddies built factories and nice homes and made babies. Our mamas made dinner.

I also lived in a city where lines were drawn on a map, showing where black people were allowed to live. We had separate restrooms, separate churches, separate schools. I’ve had friends whose homes and church were bombed simply because they were black. I’ve seen ministers chased out of their congregations because they wanted to allow black people to worship.

I watched my parents store water in the basement because they were so afraid of a nuclear attack. I participated in drills where elementary school students were sent to the basement to “duck and cover” in preparation of the bombs that were sure to come. One day, we were all required to walk (or run) home from school to get a note from our parents noting how long it took us to get there. Apparently, our nation’s leaders felt it was important to know how long it would take us all to get home to die there rather than in the school.

The threat, of course, was very real. We came very close to an all-out nuclear war at various times. But we found a way through it, like we always do. We lived moved on.

This is why I’m not afraid of Isis. It’s why I’m not afraid of Donald Trump. Sure, things look bleak right now. But they always do when you’re in the middle of one of these strange periods of history.

Excesses in one direction create counter-forces that keep things in check. We are already seeing that. As I write this, I have friends at the airport marching in support of immigrant rights. Judges are already beginning to roll back unconstitutional executive orders, and the courts will keep things tied up at least for a couple of years. Members of Congress are seeing demonstrations like we haven’t seen in decades, and they’re already starting to say, “not so fast.”

Know what happens in a couple of years? Mid-term elections. Remember that the party holding the presidency usually loses in those elections. What about the things we can’t anticipate? It wouldn’t take much. If the president goes too far, it’s not hard to imagine a handful of Republicans agreeing to caucus with Democrats — a move that, overnight, would put a stop to much of the mischief that might otherwise be done. I’ve seen stranger things.

At least 5,000 marched in Birmingham last week. It’s already making a difference.

Then there are the things we can’t even imagine. I’ve seen a lot of those over the years. Watergate and related scandals took down both the president and vice president, elevating a wise Gerald Ford to the presidency, where he began taking measures to bring about healing.

You’re scared. I get that. If you’re just looking at today’s headlines, it’s only rational to be frightened. But what happens today is only a blink in the long arc of our history. Time and again, I’ve discovered that what we’re seeing now won’t last. About the time we decide we’ve settled into a new reality, it disappears. And we rarely see that change coming.

All we can do is keep putting one foot in front of the other. Working for justice. Protecting the vulnerable. Putting our faith into practice. And believing.

Seriously, guys. It’s going to be OK.

Engaging and swapping stories about the Civil Rights Movement in Birmingham

Posted on March 15, 2015 Written by Carl

Spent a delightful couple of hours this afternoon (March 14) with a great group of 9th and 10th graders from Oakwood School in North Hollywood, California. It was the second year their teacher had invited me to join with Jeff Drew, Virginia Kelsor Jones and Bob Corley to talk about the Civil Rights Movement in Birmingham and the challenges still ahead. There were so many questions that our patient hosts with the Birmingham Library had to start blinking the lights to remind us it was closing time.

I’m indebted to Ann Jimerson and the kidsinbirmingham1963.org site for helping bring us together. There’s a lot of great reading there on what it was like to grow up in Birmingham in the 1960s, and I encourage you to visit it.

The eyes of the nation were watching on Bloody Sunday, and they’re watching again today

Posted on March 7, 2015 Written by Carl

My friend Jim Stubbs and I drove down Friday, March 6, to see how things were shaping up for the massive celebrations planned for the next day, honoring the 50th anniversary of those who marched.

Let’s not forget what they were marching for — voting rights. Today, with laws throughout the country being put in force to (let’s call it what it is) keep minorities from voting, the cause seems more relevant than ever.

The exhibit of Spider Martin’s photography shows not only his excellence and courage, but also the power of images to jar a sluggish nation to action in the name of justice. This is just a shaky phone pic of a picture (taken with permission) and is no substitute for the real thing. I encourage you to visit the exhibit, which will continue after the 50th anniversary celebrations. The Spider Martin Retrospective will be at the Carneal Building, 3 Church Street, Selma, AL from February 7 until March 28.

The National Voting Rights Museum looks great in its new home on the other side of the bridge.

It was a personally moving experience to walk across the bridge with these kids from Montgomery, as they sang “Ain’t Nobody Gonna Turn Me ‘Round”

The newsroom was already full, even before the President and the Democratic congressional leaders arrived. For reasons that escape me, Republican leaders boycotted this event.

Unlike Birmingham, Huntsville and Mobile, little Selma still has a daily newspaper. The newspaper’s editor made a courageous decision in the wake of the Bloody Sunday violence a half century ago to begin telling the truth about what was happening there.

Seemed only right for my friend Jim Stubbs to be pictured in front of Edmund Pettus Bridge.

Niggertown: How separation distorts our perceptions

Posted on January 24, 2015 Written by Carl

My buddy and I had ridden our bikes several blocks to the northwest – farther than we were supposed to. The sun was going down, and we knew it was time to head home. But we looked at the forbidden land just a hundred feet or so away.

From the Encyclopedia of Alabama, www.encyclopediaofalabama.org.

Niggertown.

That was where they lived, and it was pretty much where they stayed. From years of hearing stories, I imagined streets where chaos ruled. Where knives flickered in every direction, and people lived in ramshackle huts. Where a white man would be dead in minutes if he dared stepped over the line. In my imagination, there was an eerie glow over the neighborhood.

“You ever noticed they all have big scars down their faces? That’s from all the knife fights,” my buddy said. Darkness was coming on fast, and without saying any more, we turned our bikes around and pedaled back to our Crestwood homes.

The word wasn’t shocking in those days, and neither was the notion of having such a place as Niggertown. They had to live somewhere, after all. And they were kept there – not only by law, but by the banking practice known as “redlining,” which continued well into the 1980s and possibly beyond. The “red line” was the boundary defining where a bank would lend money, and where it wouldn’t.

It was part of complex system that had evolved to ensure that black people never threatened the established order in which whites were superior. If you couldn’t get a mortgage, you couldn’t build a nice home. And you couldn’t build equity and accumulate a measure of wealth to pass on to your kids.

A.G. Gaston, the brilliant businessman who happened to be black, earned a fortune by lending inside the red lines. My own grandfather, a klansman with a fourth grade education, crossed the red line in a different way – by acting as an itinerant pawn broker for black co-workers in the foundry where he worked. If you ever needed a watch, he had plenty to sell.

Everything about society in Birmingham in the 1950s and 1960s was orchestrated to keep the races separated. There were – by law – white and “negro” schools, and they didn’t play each other in football. (That would have required that they touch each other.) They didn’t enter theaters by the same door, or use the same restrooms, or sit together on the bus. Each bus had a white line that divided the white section from the “colored” section – a rule that annoyed me, because that long seat in the back of the bus looked like a really fun place to sit.

And always, there was the assumption that black people were less than human. Once, I was sitting in the car with my dad when a flamboyantly feminine black man walked across the street. Dad asked, with a puzzled look, “Can niggers be queer?”

The funny thing is, Dad refused to vote for George Wallace. Sure, as an official of the bus system, he favored and enforced the separated seating. And he worked regular shifts as a “color guard” keeping black people from invading our worship at Woodlawn Baptist Church. But Wallace’s brand of racism went into a place where my father couldn’t go. It was a strange tension between ideas, but it made sense at the time. I can’t explain it; you just had to be there.

But that’s all behind us, right?

Let’s look at it this way. Birmingham today, according to the U.S. Census (2013 estimate) is 73% black. Median household income is $31,445, and in the recent ACT Plan scores, 4.84% of Birmingham’s 10^th graders met or exceeded math standards.

Meanwhile, in the area’s wealthiest over-the-mountain community of Mountain Brook, which is only 1% black, the median household income is more than four times that — $131,281. And 73% of that white city’s students met or exceeded the state’s math standards.

Vestavia Hills, similarly, is only 3.8% black and has a median household income of $81,067. And 54% of its 10^th graders met or exceeded the standards.

This gets complicated very quickly. Do Birmingham students do poorly because nearly three-fourths of them are black? Or because they’re poor? Are they poor because black people are inferior?

Or is it, maybe, because even now – two generations later – we still have Niggertowns, where people still find it hard overcome generations of rules that were designed to keep them separated?

Perceived ‘high crime’ areas may not be, even if you’re a federal judge

Posted on March 10, 2014 Written by Carl

There was a tense dialogue on Facebook over the weekend that started with a trollish post about crime in the Railroad Park area. It brought to mind another tiff over perceptions of what areas were safe. I’m writing this from memory, but I believe it to be substantially accurate. And I believe the perspective offers a few lessons in perceptions and the way investment affects neighborhoods.

Way back in the early 1980s, when plans were being proposed for a new federal courthouse in Birmingham, there were strenuous objections to the location (the one where it’s currently located at Fifth Avenue North and 18th Street). Notably, U.S. District Judge Bill Acker especially complained, saying the western edge of Downtown was far too crime-ridden, and that he favored a location on the eastern edge instead — somewhere in the 23rd or 24th Street area.

The Birmingham News, for which I worked at the time, obtained and published crime figures for the two sites. It’s probably true that the eastern site was in an area perceived as having less crime. It was closer to the Mountain Expressway, which led to the “safer” (=whiter) communities over the mountain. The Birmingham News — which was a major downtown employer at the time — anchored the respectable eastern edge.

But here’s the tricky part: Crime was actually higher on the eastern edge, which was considered safer.

The city’s psychic memory in those days also included a period of several years in which Birmingham attracted a large number of streetwalkers, who rented rooms by the hour in the seedy old hotels along 5th Avenue. It was well known that there was a well established economy and “pecking order” on the hooker food chain, with the cheapest girls working the blocks farthest to the west and prices going up progressively as you moved east. When you got to 21st and 22nd street, the hooker population was whiter and (cops assured us) considerably more expensive.

I haven’t accessed current crime statistics, but today, I’d venture a guess that today, the western edge — where the Hugo Black Courthouse was ultimately built — has a safer reputation. The fleabag hotels are long gone. The area is vibrant with such attractions as the beautiful Kelly Ingram Park, the Civil Rights Museum, and (let’s not forget) the federal courthouse.

And that “safer” corridor to the east … Um, yeah. It could use a little work.

Only problem is, crime was actually lower than a federal judge’s preferred site.

Today’s Crestwood: Building on the past, minus the baggage

Posted on February 9, 2014 Written by Carl

In the 1980s, Crestwood was a mess. Homes were becoming rundown as the generation who had built the community in the 1960s either moved away or died off. The baby boomers like me went off to college and settled into more fashionable neighborhoods, as kids from upwardly mobile families do when they grow up.

Packed house at the beautiful Woodrow Hall to hear progress report on Crestwood and plans for 2014

There is no denying that “white flight” was a major factor in the transition. The current Crestwood leaders have a great appreciation for all that our parents built, and they’re using that period as an inspiration and source of ideas. But the ugly reality is that Crestwood in the 1960s and 1970s was a strictly segregated community. Our parents and grandparents lived in fear that their block might get “busted,” and when indeed blacks began to move in, the white residents fled over the mountain to communities that were perceived as “safer” — code for “whiter.”

Those who were left behind became bitter and fearful. I know of one who would not go outside to rake the yard without carrying a pistol.

But as we know now, diversity makes a community stronger. Saturday night, Crestwood North president Darrell O’Quinn reviewed the neighborhood’s progress during the past year, speaking to a packed room in Woodrow Hall, the old Masonic Lodge in Woodlawn that has been transformed into a popular venue for events, meetings and other gatherings. The old lodge serves as a symbol of sorts for what has happened in the area, with beautifully restored and finished tile and hardwood floors from the 1960s, but a very different kind of community walking on them. The 100 who gathered (admittedly, there was free food involved) for the annual Idea Gumbo covered the full spectrum of white, black, gay, straight, old and young. The best part of this is that the diversity struck nobody as particularly remarkable.

I’m not bringing this up to beat our parents over the heads. They were a product of their own upbringing (my grandfather who lived a few blocks away was a Klansman, and that wasn’t unusual). Rather, I mention the context to point out that what the Boomer generation had was very, very good, but what’s happening now is even better.

Like our fathers, the current “grownups” in the community are building around a combination of civic efforts, businesses, churches and schools (primarily Avondale). This creates a strong foundation that allows the area to overcome obstacles. We saw this in 1962, when Comer Elementary opened and many of my friends from first grade were sent there. Ordinarily, in the small world of a bunch of seven-year-olds, this would wipe us out of each other’s lives.

But it didn’t happen that way, because we were bound by multiple strands. We still attended the same churches (the biggest being Woodlawn Baptist and Woodlawn Methodist). We scouted together. We played pee wee football at Crestwood Park and baseball at Avondale. Our parents still did business with each other. We swam together at Cascade Plunge and listened to the Swingin’ Medallions at Oporto Armory. And the geography of Crestwood itself — with plentiful sidewalks and relatively few major barriers — made it possible for us to safely mingle even on both sides of Crestwood Boulevard. To use Darrell’s metaphor, there were many ingredients to the gumbo of life we enjoyed. Many of us remain friends today, brought back together through Social Media and, occasionally, through the intersection of our lives and families outside of Crestwood.

That is all happening again. I drove through the area before the Idea Gumbo and could see the pride current residents take in their homes and community. Homes are well maintained, and newly installed Crestwood banners fly proudly from utility poles.

So much of what happened before is happening again, but without the ugly racism of our parents’ generation and even ours. It was easy to see that the people coming together at Woodrow Hall know each other and have established friendships that transcend geography, race and lifestyle.

I draw encouragement from it, and am grateful for what these folks are doing. I am glad they’re willing to share it with a geezer from the generation that got away.