Gregory Freeman: Conversation Stirs Memories Of Whites Who Fought For Blacks' Rights. 6/30/1996

Headline: CONVERSATION STIRS MEMORIES OF WHITES WHO FOUGHT FOR BLACKS' RIGHTS
Reporter: By Gregory Freeman

Publication: ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Last Printed: Sun., Jun. 30, 1996
Section: WAR PAGE, Page: 4B, Edition: FIVE STAR LIFT

IN A VISIT to the doctor's office last week, I struck up a conversation with another patient, an older white gentleman with a cane.

He proceeded to tell me that he had been active in civil rights, dating back to the 1950s. As I showed interest, he began to talk about how important he felt his efforts had been.
With the pride of a war veteran, he discussed some of his trips to the South - sometimes at personal risk - to register blacks to vote or help people stand up for their rights in places where it wasn't always healthy for people to stand up for their rights. He talked of how he had been unwelcome in many places where whites felt that folks like him were just "stirring them up."
He later married a black woman. He told of one trip to the South, where they stopped in a restaurant. They prevented any trouble by telling restaurant officials that he was with the State Department and that she was a visiting African dignitary. He chuckled as he told of how the employees, who had previously been reluctant to serve them, worked double-time to make sure their visit was comfortable.

As he regaled me with colorful stories about life on the road to civil rights, he reminded me of an important part of this country's history that is in danger of being forgotten: the story of the whites who fought alongside blacks in the civil rights struggle.
   We remember the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. each year as we celebrate his birthday. He was the one who caused America to focus its eyes on segregation and racism, the nasty, virulent vestiges of slavery that plagued this country.
   We also give thought to some of King's fellow civil rights advocates, like Medgar Evers, Bayard Rustin and Andrew Young.
   We also remember many of the blacks who didn't have prominent names but who showed the courage and tenacity to keep pushing, even at times when they were being pushed back by gushing fire hoses.

But we tend to forget about those whites who took it upon themselves to fight for what was right, sometimes at tremendous personal sacrifice.
Some lost their lives, like Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner. They were killed in Meridian, Miss., along with James Earl Chaney, for participating in "Freedom Summer" in 1964. Thousands of blacks and at least 1,000 whites traveled to Mississippi to help blacks register to vote.
That year, fewer than 10,000 blacks had been allowed to register in a system that put up great obstacles, such as requiring them to interpret the state constitution.

Locally, other whites were involved in the civil rights fight.
David Goldman, a local businessman about whom I wrote a couple of years ago, was a Freedom Summer participant.
A better-known name here is that of St. Louis attorney Charles Oldham. With his wife, the late Marian Oldham, he fought for decades for equal opportunity for blacks. Charles Oldham was involved in countless civil rights measures here, including lunch counter sit-ins in the late 1940s and the now-famous Jefferson Bank demonstrations of 1963 that increased the prominence of William L. Clay, another demonstration participant and now a congressman.

In a day and age when the interest in Afrocentrism is growing, it's perhaps unpopular in some circles to acknowledge the importance of whites as part of the civil rights movement of the '50s and '60s.

But it's important to tell the complete story of the civil rights movement. That story must include the efforts of those whites who were so appalled at the injustices being faced by their fellow Americans that they felt compelled to get involved. No one forced them to participate.

But they saw the hypocrisy of a country that bragged of the freedom of its citizens while granting fewer of those freedoms to some than to others. They chose to make a difference.

These men and women - like the blacks with whom they marched - are American heroes who deserve our gratitude. Their efforts helped to make this a better nation for all of us.

Gregory Freeman's column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Friday. ... <deleted>

Daniel Schesch - Webweaver

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