In the midst of Black History Month, I have heard and read a lot of folks who still like to label the USA in 2021 as a systemically racist country. Is it -- really?
I graduated from Harding University in 1975 and after getting some more post graduate hours, I was contacted by a man who was superintendent of a Christian school in Birmingham, Ala., and he wanted to hire me to coach basketball and track and teach some classes.
I thought it a great idea and agreed fairly quickly. Later on in that summer of 1976, I had an uncle who advised me to rethink my decision, telling me "you won't like what you find." While that gave me pause, I had already signed so I went.
It was a small school in Mountain Brook, in an exclusive part of Birmingham. I lived in Woodlawn, in eastern Birmingham. Neighboring Woodlawn High School would be brought to the big screen when "Woodlawn" the movie was released six years ago. It related to some events that happened not long before I arrived relative to race relations, a worthwhile film to experience.
While I was there only a year, I saw firsthand, racism that was incomprehensible to me. The average person with whom I interacted did not seem to harbor ill will towards others of different skin color, but it was quite a different story when it came to government and civic leaders.
I was in town when the Klansmen who blew up that church in Birmingham that killed those four elementary aged black children were finally brought to justice. The FBI knew fairly quickly in 1963 who perpetrated that evil deed, but no court or judge in Alabama would even indict the men. Finally in 1977, a court tried the first defendant, and I was shocked when radio and TV personalities in the city complained about "dredging up old history."
The event that led me to move back north was the night that my point guard, Kenny, could not make a game because his mom's car would not start. He lived in Gates City, a government project for African Americans on the east side of town. I told him that I would come get him, and I did. I had to stop and ask a lot of the residents where to find him as the building numbers were not lit and it was dark. Everyone I met wanted to know why I was there but when I explained I was Kenny's coach, they were uniformly polite and helpful. I got him, we won the game, and I took him home.
Two days later, I was summoned by the School Board who labeled me foolhardy to take such a chance with my life by visiting such areas of the city. I inquired as to how many white folks were getting killed on the city's east side, and they got rather angry with me, telling I did not know how things were in the south. These were supposedly Christian men. I resigned and moved back north.
I ended up in the Missouri boot heel at a school that had a lot of minority students, mostly poor but really good kids. All the kids, with a few exceptions, were great to work with. The exceptions were a small number of white kids who were mostly the children of men who were of the planter class or held high social positions. They were a problem.
I inherited a track program that had been poorly funded and managed, comprised of mostly minority students. I was warned by the athletic director that the minority kids were really lazy and not to expect too much. The "laziness" problem, however, never showed itself, and with a core of about 15 junior high and nine high school athletes we had the best year the school had ever had, sending five athletes to state, the first to ever qualify.
Two years later, I had over 50 junior high athletes and about 25 high school tracksters. The junior high boys were unbeaten in basketball, with two of them dunking, and most of them taking their track speed to the court with great effect. Their closest loss was 20 points.
The athletic director was also the basketball coach and the minority kids disliked him to no small degree. After they finished their season, this coach was eager to get them training for the following high school season, calling all the players to the gym for an organizational meeting. For a reason I was not a party to, the black kids decided to focus on football and track and retire from basketball.
I was then pressured by this coach to tell the boys they could not run track unless they played basketball. I declined getting involved in that way, as it was not my place. So the AD/coach did the next best thing -- he canceled the junior high track season -- to save money.
To say his actions riled the citizenry would be an understatement. Hundreds of people offered to donate, but most just wanted to know why. The School Board and the AD decided to state that I did not want to coach them anymore.
I was visited by representatives of the aforementioned who told me I needed to go along as they "put food on my table" and I was obligated to do as told, even if it meant lying to the public. I disagreed and then I was told the "n" people weren't worth losing my job.
They went ahead and published a letter to the community informing the public that I wanted out of the junior high program and they had to cancel the season. I answered back the following week that while I had no control over what programs the school did or did not have, I did not ask to be relieved. I was fired a few weeks later by the School Board for being insubordinate. Most of the board members were large land owners.
There were "friends" I had at school that told me I was stupid for risking my job for a bunch of kids. But to my surprise, there were quite a few people who were livid at the board's actions, with 2,000 coming to a board meeting held in a gym. Stories appeared in newspapers fairly distant to where I lived, and at least two TV stations ran stories about what happened.
Enter a civil rights lawyer, who offered his help and within a few months, a federal suit was filed in Cape Girardeau, Mo. It turns out there were people who were aware of the discrimination and corruption extant in the political system of that area and they saw a chance to correct it.
Instead of years waiting, the courts moved up the trial to just a few months after my termination. The two-day trial ended with the jury deliberating for about 15 minutes then finding against the board on all counts. The judge turned out to have friends in that area and he disagreed with the jury, throwing the suit out for lack of evidence in spite of the fact that there were dozens of witnesses and piles of written evidence.
A few months later, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the judge, put him off the bench and restored the original verdict because of the judge's misconduct. The AD was fired, the board members replaced, and several other racist school officials left.
That town in the 1980s, was not a racist town though in the south. The elite of the area had a lot of bona fide bad people. I was surprised at the number of people, both white and black, who had enough of this warped mentality to say something and do something. Their support encouraged those with the money and expertise to bring their power to bear on that little corner of America.
Are there racist people still in America? Of course, there always will be. Like Forrest's mom said "stupid is as stupid does."
As I was raised a Christian, this whole racist mentality was completely ignorant, and should be to anyone claiming to be a follower. Imagine my surprise when the church I attended was upset with the "shame" I brought on the congregation. I stopped attending.
Is there systemic racism? What systems? The educational system? Naw, I don't think so. Popular culture? Hardly. The media? Which ones? The political system? Generally, no. Perhaps the big cities, which are run by the politicians who are the most vocal in condemning the United States as being "systemically racist."
Here I am, living in 2021, still as white as the day I was born in 1952. Oddly enough, it has only been the past few years that there are those who would label me a racist for the color of my skin.
Martin Luther King looked forward to the day when folks would be judged by their character, not their skin color. Michael Jackson's really good song "Black or White" voiced his desire to not be reduced to a color.
People go through life making decisions that sometimes challenge them. Sometimes you get faced with doing something you know is wrong but easy to go along with, while being faced at the same time, with doing the right thing knowing it will make your life unpleasant in the instant. In this day and age, it really isn't hard to be non-racist. You have to work at it to hold such views and few people do.
Life has a lot of gray areas to deal with, but sometimes it really is black and white.
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Editor's note: John McGee, an award-winning columnist, sports writer and art teacher at Pea Ridge elementary schools, writes a regular sports column for The Times. The opinions expressed are those of the writer. He can be contacted through The Times at [email protected].