Living through a moment of black history in America

I ran as fast as my lanky legs could go. Never before had I seen such violence.

While I ran I could still see girls ripping pierced earrings off each other’s lobes and pulling thickets of hair from each other’s heads. Guys were punching and stabbing each other with pens, steel hair picks. Anything that could be used as a weapon was, and the brutality of it all changed my life forever.

I ran as fast as my lanky legs could go. Never before had I seen such violence.

While I ran I could still see girls ripping pierced earrings off each other’s lobes and pulling thickets of hair from each other’s heads. Guys were punching and stabbing each other with pens, steel hair picks. Anything that could be used as a weapon was, and the brutality of it all changed my life forever.

It was a seventh through twelfth grade high school. It was the older kids who were fighting. Us seventh graders, just out of elementary school were scrambling to escape. Scared stiff by my blood-soaked clothes, screams of hatred and threats, I did as my mother had told me to do. I ran.

It was fall 1971, my very first day of high school and I was 12 years old. History was being made and I was clueless. Although I was 6 years old when the March from Selma to Montgomery occurred, (where I lived at the time), I have only remnants of memories of this. My friends and I had no idea about what was happening in the world around us.

After graduating sixth grade our summer was filled with playing ball in the streets or going house to house to find something to eat. Most of the time you would find us playing in the woods. We had acres to play on. We spent our days catching crawdads in the creeks, and swinging like Tarzan from large vines that grew in the trees. These things were the most important in my life. Our biggest concern was whose house we were going to gather at on Sunday night to watch “The Wonderful World of Disney.”

But this time, I was a front seat witness in the first day of forced integration of schools in Savannah, Georgia, an order that was strongly opposed by both sides.

My mother had told me to run home at the first sign of trouble. I had blown her off, believing that she was freaking out over nothing.

But because of the continuous violence, school was closed on and off for the first part of the year. We were all sent home early because of racial tension building up in the school’s common area so many times I cannot count. Our school had become a battleground, fueled by hatred.

I did not understand it either. When I was told of the forced busing from other neighborhoods, my only concern is that I did not want to leave my home to go to a school far away. I felt sorry for all of the kids who had to leave theirs. But the violence scared me. I saw nothing good in it.

Raised in the Deep South, I consider myself privileged that my parents taught me that all people are created equal. They were raised in a world that was quite the opposite. Growing up in the South during the Depression and witnessing the horrible violence that the South went through during the Civil Rights Movement had to have its effects.

Yet as far as we have come, prejudice is still in full bloom in the world today. Generations throughout history have spread the gospel of racism to their friends, family, children and grandchildren. Individuals, couples, communities and nations all over the globe are living with prejudice hanging over their heads in a shadow of hatred and intolerance. It is a circle of hatred that will not go away.

Race, religion, sexual orientation and cultural differences should be embraced and honored, not judged, mocked or victimized. Personal bigotry against any individual or group because of these differences is the real enemy that needs to be destroyed.

My parents made a conscience decision to change what they had been surrounded with all of their lives. They broke the circle of hatred with me and taught me tolerance. It is now up to me to pass it on.