Creating Community: Life and Learning at Alabama State University

2 / E Pluribus UnumDiscovering Multiculturalism

2 / E Pluribus Unum Discovering Multiculturalism Virginia M. Jones The lands around my dwelling Are more beautiful From the day When it is given to me to see Faces I have never seen before. All is more beautiful. All is more beautiful. And life is thankfulness. These guests of mine Make my home grand. –Eskimo Prayer Iwas raised in the South, but I did not know the South. I lived most of my childhood and adolescence in Birmingham, but one day in 1963 I discovered that I did not know Birmingham. My family and I were watching the evening news when the television screen was ¤lled with pictures of boys and girls being attacked by snarling German shepherds and battered by highpowered streams of water pouring from ¤re hoses. Meanwhile, I heard the most shocking words I could remember: “In Birmingham, Alabama, today . . .” Who were these people, faces twisted grotesquely by anger and hatred, attacking teenagers and children? Who were these bleeding black children? Where did they come from? What did they do that so infuriated the white people? I did not know, but I was determined to answer my questions. Almost all my life, I had seen signs that read “white” or “colored,” but I was totally unaware of the reality re®ected by them. When I ¤rst could read the word “colored” over a water fountain, I thought it contained rainbowcolored water. Although I saw “colored” people on the streets, in the stores, and on the buses, I did not know them. African Americans did not live in my neighborhood, attend my school, or worship in my church. Until I graduated from high school in 1964, I only knew two African Americans. One was a very friendly, elderly man who worked in my grandmother ’s yard in Summit, Mississippi. Everyone called him Uncle Jim; and, when I was a small child, I thought he was one of my uncles. The other African American was a very kind young woman named Catherine, who took care of my sisters and me when my mother was very ill after the birth of my youngest sister. To me, Catherine was family too. In 1963, when I watched the horrible treatment of Birmingham’s black children during the Children’s March, I wanted to meet more African Americans and to discover more about the reasons for the march, but how? So, I began a journey that in 1981 led me to Alabama State University, where I found many answers. The ¤rst stage of my journey was an emotional and intellectual roller coaster. Since I could not seek information from African Americans directly, I was forced to rely on secondary sources, mainly television reports, newspaper articles, and books. My intellectual curiosity was converted into a passionate desire for change during the summer when I watched the television coverage of the March on Washington and listened to Dr. King’s speech. Obviously, many Americans were treated unjustly, especially in the South. I glimpsed the depth and extent of the hatred and fear that fueled these injustices in the fall of 1963; four young girls in Birmingham died when their church was bombed during Sunday School. Soon after the deadly church bombing, President Kennedy was assassinated. The hopeful innocence of my youth ended; I was sixteen. Suddenly, violent activities seemed to generate even more violence. Frequently , in my South even nonviolent activities were countered with violent responses. Freedom Riders, sit-in participants, black and white marchers were cursed, beaten, threatened, and even killed. Dr. King was jailed in Birmingham , but the church bombers were not arrested. When my family traveled to Boston to visit my mother’s family in the summer of 1964, I was ashamed of the Alabama license tags on our car. I loved being a southerner, but I was beginning to hate the South. In a frustrating attempt to make sense out of this chaotic world in which I lived, I read every book I could ¤nd written by or about African Americans , but ¤nding such books was dif¤cult. One of my ¤rst discoveries was To Kill a Mockingbird. Atticus Finch was an accurate picture of the white southerners I knew. Some of the other books I read but did not truly under36 / Virginia M. Jones stand were Native Son, Invisible Man, Go Tell It on the Mountain, and A Raisin in the Sun. Almost forty years later, I’m...