The ugly face of hatred

I would like to tell a personal experience story concerning prejudice as an example and as a learning experience to all who haven’t had it happen to them.

I was born in Toledo, Ohio, but my folks actually lived in south Michigan. It is and was an area much like Baytown as far as blue-collar workers are concerned. We were close to Ted Nugent and Kid Rock country, if that clarifies anything. When I was in junior high, we moved down to Georgia to a little town of under 1000 when my Dad went to work for Lockheed building the C5A military jet.

Woodstock Georgia is now a modern city with multi-million dollar homes and all the accouterments of any thriving city, but in 1967 it was still in the 1930’s in some respect. Many folks did not have indoor plumbing and the anti-Yankee hatred was very much alive. To their credit, the carpetbaggers had raped the south, but that was 100 years in the past. Old prejudices die slowly.

We lived about ¾ of mile out of town on the second hill. The first hill was “nigger-town” and my three brothers and I in our naiveté played baseball with the black kids. This gave us the dual stigma of being Yankees AND “nigger-lovers”. One fall evening, one of our black friends hit the cover off our only baseball. He said he had one at home, up on the hill, so together we went to get it. Now bear in mind north Georgia gets very cold at night in the Fall and Winter and when we came close to his house, I noticed all the windows in every house was knocked out and there were blankets over them.

I asked my friend why they didn’t have windows and he told me in a lowered voice while looking at the ground “at night the bad white people drive through here and shoot the windows out”. I was shocked senseless and this has never left me. I saw many, many episodes of racism in north Georgia in the 2 years I lived there and too much of it was directed towards my brothers and I. I was eventually beaten literally senseless at school and left in the hall only to awake and see the teacher at her desk with her eyes on her paper.

I staggered to my feet and entered the class as everyone sat in total silence. I told the teacher I needed medical attention and without looking up, she passed me a permission slip. I called my mother who lived 20 miles away and she took me to the doctor’s office in our little town for attention. The only high note in the whole affair was the 19-year-old sophomore who was paid to whip a Yankee, broke his hand on my face and I in desperation had landed quite a few also and he ended up in worse shape than me. By default I actually won and this victory carried me safely along until I moved to St. Louis.

I would like to add a note to this true account. Georgia also had/has many very good people and to this day I am in touch with them on a daily basis through a mailing list I administer.