Been Coming through Some Hard Times: Race, History, and Memory in Western Kentucky

6. Civil Rights and Beyond

6 Civil Rights and Beyond The civil rights era created the cultural conditions under which memories divided by race would inevitably collide. As long as those memories had been located in distinct social domains, public conflict over the vernacular meanings of the past, and therefore the present, were largely avoided. Each historic memory simply reiterated the outlook of a distinctive community, secure in its unchallenged values and in the rectitude of its moral vision. But the political movements of the 1960s set out to refashion the future and in the process black historic memory, gaining a new public attention, could be pressed into the service of social change. While changes in the law since the 1960s helped to establish a common ground of shared civic participation and racial understanding, the terrain is hardly smooth. A racial division of historic memory, accordingly, is very much in evidence. The anxieties, fears, and suspicions attending integration were well placed, because white people and black people began to know each other in new ways, not only in schools but also in factories, businesses, athletics, and other venues. Social contacts unthinkable before the 1960s inevitably produced conflict, which can hardly develop when people remain socially isolated. Hopkinsville has accordingly registered an embarrassment of examples of injured feelings and damaged hopes. Although the new laws rendered discriminatory practices of the Jim Crow era illegal with the speed of a signature, they did not and could not change human attitudes and habits as easily. In other words, legal change, which made possible new and different forms of contact between the races, outpaced changes in customary ways of feeling, thinking, and acting. The sense of disappointment, however, is inevitably 190 Civil Rights and Beyond greater when expectations of improved race relations are not consistently fulfilled. It could not have been otherwise, since the new social realities of integration confronted majority beliefs rooted in nineteenth-century racial certainties. Weakened restraints on the black voice in Hopkinsville resulted in public criticism against social interactions that had encoded racial asymmetry since the days of slavery. In 1966, Louis McHenry, representing the NAACP and the Hopkinsville Progressive Citizens Committee, spoke before the Hopkinsville Human Relations Commission. The NAACP attorney and civil rights activist complained of indignity and discrimination in housing, employment, access to credit, and “the inequalities that confront our people daily.” Yet less than ten years before, the local newspaper had heralded the “unmarred race relations in the town.” That statement, of course, simply indicates that people living in the same town can inhabit very different places. McHenry condemned racial exclusion, explaining that “the young Negro wants to be heard and made a part of the nation that he is giving his life for in Vietnam.” He recounted for his listeners the continuing story of the denial of rights to black people: Each day in this community, the Negro is reminded that he is a “Second Class Citizen,” and is faced with many denials of the basic right of a citizen , but, yet we are expected to be patient and not speak out, because certain people or groups are not ready for the Negro to have all his rights. Too long have we been denied and deprived of our constitutional rights. We are the last hired, the first fired, bad housing conditions, denied all credit above a few dollars, and we are expected to be submissive and accept any condition that is thrust upon us. . . . before integration, we were told that our education was equal, since the Supreme Court decision, we are told that our children are far behind and can’t keep up with white children. . . . a white boy or girl can go on a job without experience and be taught, but our children are expected to know before they can be hired. The Negroes of Hopkinsville want equal employment opportunities. We are tired of being turned down and told we are not qualified when we readily see it is because of our color. In the field of education, it is pathetic in an “All America [sic] City” that after twelve years we have failed to implement the 1954 decision.1 McHenry also asserted that the NAACP and Hopkinsville Progressive Citizens wanted the merchants to know that the black community was well aware of its 191 Civil Rights and Beyond economic impact on the town, from the use of bank accounts, utility purchases, newspaper subscriptions, and the like...