Where Are You, Class of 1976?

I was one of more than 500 students to graduate from my hometown's public high school in 1976. There was a great energy in the air as our graduation year was the same as which our nation celebrated its bicentennial. A few years earlier, the historically Black high school named after George Washington Carver had been changed to a junior high school, and all high school students attended Dothan High School, or the town's segregation academy. 

In our short lifetimes we had been shaped by the racial trauma of being born into and living in the apartheid of both Alabama and the United States. What was known as the Civil Rights Movement began in the late 1940s and continued until 1968 with significant accomplishments, but incomplete. Would we, the youth of the 1960s and in particular the Class of 1976, grow to deny racism by accepting it, or would we recognize the injustice and challenge it?

Four years before our birth, the United States Supreme Court ruled on the case of Brown vs. the Board of Education declaring that "separate is not equal." While this was to end segregation in public schools, the states, including ours, procrastinated implementing the required changes. Three years later and exactly one year before my birth, the Little Rock Nine (Minnijean Brown, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Thelma Mothershed, Melba Patillo, Gloria Ray, Terrance Roberts, Jefferson Thomas and Carlotta Walls) were prevented from entering Little Rock Central High School until President Dwight Eisenhower sent federal troops to escort them. Evenso, they were constantly harassed by segregationists.

The climate into which we were born was filled with the lingering horror of 14-year old Emmett Till's torturous murder only three years earlier. We were three-year old toddlers when the Freedom Riders faced threats and attacks as they began their integrated bus rides into the south. The climate was also kindling a centuries held hope encouraged in the same year by Rosa Parks decision to sit in the seat of her choosing on a public bus. The success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1956, less than 100 miles from our hometown, was celebrated around the world. 

The year 1963 began with Alabama Governor George C. Wallace declaring, "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." Months later, as we were preparing for kindergarten, he attempted to block the entry of James A. Hood and Vivian Malone at the University of Alabama by literally standing in the doorway of Foster Auditorium.  The following night, Medgar Evers was murdered in his driveway as he arrived home. In September of the same year, 16th Street Baptist Church was bombed and four girls were murdered. Two months later, as we continued to mourn the deaths of Addie Mae Collins, Carol Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley, President John F. Kennedy, was assassinated while riding in a parade. 

Also in 1963, Martin Luther King wrote his Letter from A Birmingham Jail from his jail cell in response to white clergy wanting him to use only the courts to address racial injustice. Months later, he led the nonviolent March on Washington where he gave his I Have A Dream Speech. While we can quote some lines, we seem to forget that he also stated, "The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom..." 

We were excited to enter the first grade when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was enacted two months before James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were murdered. The same year, Martin Luther King, Jr. a man from Georgia who had lived in Alabama, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Still in the first grade, we witnessed John Lewis almost being killed on Bloody Sunday bookended by the murders of Malcolm X and Viola Liuzzo. 

We were about to enter the second grade when President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 knowing that his actions would cause white Democrats in the south to leave the party.

Just as we finished the third grade, Richard and Mildred celebrated their ninth anniversary, and the Supreme Court ruled in Loving vs. Virginia that the the laws of states denying the validity of interracial marriages or miscegenation were unconstitutional, and overturned the couple's 1958 conviction.

Martin Luther King was assassinated as we looked forward to the end of the fourth grade. Our summer break was marred two months later by the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.

This list is not complete, but it is the tip of a seemingly indomitable iceberg of the history that influences who we are as a nation and her people. When we celebrate the United States' independence from Great Britain, we must reckon with the reality that independence did not mean freedom or liberty to many of us. Even efforts to rectify the situation such as the Emancipation Proclamation and the 14th Amendment have been inconveniences to those who deny the God-given dignity of so many. 

While many do not speak in such terms today, they remain steadfast in holding onto the privilege they deny receiving from the flawed and racially biased systems in which we live. While there are African-Americans who have prospered professionally and financially in this nation, they do not deny the persistence of racism. The racial disparities reported by healthcare and judicial sources are symptomatic of the lingering legacy of chattel slavery.  The hopeful spirit that sustained the Civil Rights Movement did not die in 1968, nor did the spirit of supremacy that resisted them.