Those Smoke-Filled Rooms

I was raised as a racist in a little town with separate white and black schools, with restrooms and water fountains in the local courthouse that were labeled “Whites Only” and “Colored”, and with separate white and black churches. When we white people referred to “colored people”, we believed we were being respectful. When we talked about “turpentine niggers”, we knew we weren’t. In Clinch County in the 1930s there were many white people who weren’t any better off financially or educationally than the black people were. They lived on subsistence farms, maybe sharecropping tobacco or corn with a prosperous landowner. In those days even the middle class or wealthy farmer didn’t run to the store for everything he needed like we do today. He raised his own animals for food, primarily hogs, chickens, and cattle. He cured and flavored the meat in a smokehouse. His wife and children tended a vegetable garden, putting up peas, beans, corn, squash, and other vegetables in cans or jars for the winter months. They even made their own cane syrup and soap out on the farm. When I was growing up, trapping animals for their skin or fur and meat was still a viable industry. Also, many men supplemented their farming and trapping income by making moonshine in a still hidden from the revenue agents in the woods. It was said back then that between the preachers and the moonshiners, Clinch County would never vote to be a “wet” county where the sale of liquor would be legal. Oddly enough, a business can sell wine or beer in Clinch County today, but they still can’t sell hard liquor. I’m giving you this background to illustrate how you cannot understand why we made the political decisions that we made in the 1950s and 1960s if you only look at events from a twenty-first century perspective. I’ll elaborate more on the times as we move from chapter to chapter, but I want you to begin to think about this fact. 1930 is a lot closer to 1830 than it could ever be to 2030. There is only a hundred years from 1930 each way in time, but the technological and social changes alone from 1930 to now have created a different world from the one I grew up in. For example, those jobs I listed in the turpentine business are gone now. Chemists developed chemical compounds that substitute for pine resin, and it is cheaper to make these compounds than it is to harvest the resin. The turpentine industry that helped support many families is now extinct, so those families were forced to leave the land for work in the factories outside of Clinch County until we recruited our own manufacturers in the mid 1950s. Although timber companies still harvest trees and produce refined lumber products, computers and sophisticated field equipment have drastically reduced the number of men necessary to harvest, transport, and refine the timber. As we go through my story, I’ll elaborate on these and other changes that occurred over the first half of my life. I just want to impress on you now that my colleagues and I in state government in the 1950s and 1960s were influenced by a far different society than what we know today. I’m not telling my story to attack or defend segregation or desegregation. My aim is simply to tell what happened behind the scenes as I saw and lived it. My goal is to be truthful and honest about events, even when what I say may be controversial to people, white and black. I'm going to limit this book to the first thirty-seven years of my life, from 1925 to 1962. That time period starts with my birth and ends with my work in state government. People of my age have lived in two very different Americas. Some of the vast differences have come about because of cultural changes in attitudes and beliefs, and many of the differences have been fashioned by technological advances. In my personal life, 1962 is a good dividing point between the two Americas. Before 1962 I did my political work on the local and state level, and as a state legislator my focus was on our state educational system. After 1962 I worked as the top administrative aide to Congressman Williamson S. Stuckey, Jr. and focused my attention on issues of national concern in addition to state issues. My years in Washington, D.C. with Congressman Stuckey are a story within themselves, and I will save that story for another day. I believe that 1962 is also a fitting place to end this book from the perspective of American life as it existed before and after that year. I've chosen to balance my story on the fulcrum of the fight to desegregate the American school system. A great deal of that fight occurred in Georgia when I was in the state legislature and when I was executive secretary to Governor Ernest Vandiver. It was, without a doubt, one of the most dramatic and far-reaching events in our history. Looking back over the course of my life, I feel honored to have played a part in guiding Georgia through such perilous times. In this book I'll deal honestly with the racial segregation of the first half of the twentieth century. Segregation was a part of southern American society and history that affected and still affects everyone in our nation. I realize that some of what I have to say on racial matters will not be popular with some people, but that’s okay. I think it's important for all of us to be honest about our relations with each other if we expect to understand each other and if we expect to get along within our society and culture. I like to know where I stand with other people, and I try to extend the same courtesy to them The social changes that America made from the 1920s to the 1960s are overwhelming when we reflect on them from our twenty-first century perspective. America went from courting "by the light/of the silvery moon" to walking on the silvery moon. We went from the World War I theme of the popular George M. Cohan song, “Over There” to the Vietnam era theme of what was chanted on college campuses and at demonstrations all over the country: Hell no, we won't go! Hell no, we won't go! I didn't say it's all been changes for the better, but that's life. And this is my life – a journey of the spirit, a great and abiding love for my family and friends, a life-long fascination with and participation in politics, and the strong desire to be of service to the people of my beloved Georgia. As I look back, I see that much of my time has been spent trying to create order out of chaos. At various times and often at the same time, I have been a civil engineer, a musician, a beekeeper, a funeral director, a businessman in the wholesale oil business, a state legislator, the executive secretary to a Georgia governor, a political campaign manager, a deacon, a loan officer for the Farmers Home Administration, a real estate agent, and the top administrative aide to United States Congressman Williamson (Bill) Stuckey. As I consider all these occupations, I see that they have to do with creating boundaries and making harmony. Whether it was with an engineer's transit or musical notes or legislative bills, I have enjoyed creating order where before there was chaos. Those pursuits have given my life meaning and have given me a great deal of satisfaction. Always there have been other people involved in those pursuits, helping me along the way and allowing me to help them when I could. Some people say that’s luck, but I don’t look at it that way. The good Lord has blessed me throughout my life because He gave me a genuine love and concern for people. I have thoroughly enjoyed life on this earth because of all the good people with whom I've been associated. When I tell you my life story, it doesn't seem to me like I'm bragging on myself, because I know that I couldn't have accomplished a thing without the guidance and advice and friendship and love of other people. I certainly don't intend to brag on myself, but I'm kind of like the old boy who used to say, "If you did it, it ain't bragging."