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Cfjarlotte ^ost
THURSDAY, APRIL 17, 1997
9A
LIFESTYLES
Southern
immigrants
beat racism
in north
By Guy Tridgell
THE JOLIET HERALD-NEWS
BRAIDWOOD, m. - One of the
largest migrations of black peo
ple to Illinois arrived in Will
County in 1877 when blacks
were brought in by the hundreds
;■ to break a bitter coal strike.
They were probably duped,
leaving the South for promises of
rmlk and honey but arriving by
trainloads as hated scabs. Left to
fend for themselves in a commu
nity tom by labor strife, it wasn't
an ideal way to start a new life.
There was violence. Blood was
shed. Blacks were run from
Braidwood north to Wilmington.
National Guard troops were
called in.
■ Local history and the subse
quent state investigation about
the strike violence tell us that
much, but what happened to the
miners in the next few decades
is unclear.
For years those questions
dogged Coal City historian Dick
Joyce.
“I knew blacks were in
Braidwood during a strike in
1877 and had been chased out of
town. I knew that end of the
story. My question always was
what happened to them after
that,” Joyce said.
£ Joyce began digging for
[ answers in 1990. Six years later
j he uncovered a truly American
1 story told in acts of greed,
t resilience and, ultimately, har-
i mony.
i Many in the mining communi-
i ty, black and whites, left when
£ the coal mines closed. But before
■ they did, the community was
i bound by labor strife that
i crossed racial lines.
i ‘T think people learned to live
• with each other and found out
their circumstances were the
same,” Joyce said. “If they didn’t
reach complete acceptance, at
least there was toleration of
each other.”
After the strike many blacks
left Braidwood, scattering to
mining jobs in outlying towns.
But many stayed, continuing to
work the mines, accounting for
about 7 percent of the city's pop
ulation in 1880.
Coal mining was not glam
orous work. It was dangerous,
unreliable and didn't pay well. If
there was an environment that
encouraged shared misery, min
ing was it.
Blacks and whites were poor
together and had the same con
cerns of losing a loved one in a
mine accident. But when there
was a strike, or when work was
scarce, race relations strained
and violence erapted, said Joyce.
“The straggle to get a job and
keep a job is tough, and you are
going to take care of your own
people. I’m sure the blacks felt
that way. I’m sure the Enghsh
miners and the Welsh miners
and the Bohemian miners felt
that way, too.”
While the life could never be
mistaken for prejudice-free
utopia, blacks carved a produc
tive, accepted niche in mining
towns. A couple of years after
their arrival, black congrega
tions and civic groups, like the
Colored Lodge of Odd Fellows,
the Colored Elks and the
Colored Knights, were formed.
They also made political
inroads, wooing large voting
blocs of whites to win union and
city elections. The biggest
accomphshment came in 1883,
when two blacks, Elijah Roey
and George S. Bailer, were elect
ed as Braidwood alderman.
The adhesive binding workers
together was a common oppres
sor.
Blacks and others discovered
they were being played against
one another by some mine own
ers in hopes of driving the union
apart.
“I’m very impressed by the
miner's union. They always
preached solidarity,” Joyce said.
An ordinary family
Although Dorothy Counts desegregated Charlotte schools in 1957, it was until 1960 that school in the state capital finally
accepted their first black student. That student, William Campbell went on to become mayor of Atlanta. Above, Charlotte
children in integrated classroom.
Holt’s effort to integrate
Wake school focus of special
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
JACKSONVILLE, N.C. -
History books do not always
teU the whole stoiy.
Meet, for example, Joseph
Holt, whose story is one of the
missing chapters from the
annals of North Carolina histo
ry. It is about a family’s early
pioneering efforts to integrate
Raleigh’s public schools.
Deborah L. Holt, 30, knew
the story about her family
needed to be told. She did so in
the award-winning documen
tary, “Exhausted Remedies:
Joe Holt’s Story” - which she
wrote and produced. In
February she was presented
with the CINE Eagle award in
Washington, D.C. for her work.
But the prize is secondary to
the story, which began as a
project to fulfill the require
ments for her master’s thesis
at the University of Maryland.
It ended with the student serv
ing as a teacher to others and
setting the record straight for
her grandparents and father.
“What a lot of people in
Raleigh are familiar with is
the story of seven-year-old
William Campbell when he
was accepted at Murphy
Elementary in 1960,” Deborah
Holt said, referring to the first
black student admitted to a
Raleigh white public school,
and who is now the mayor of
Atlanta. ‘Well, he was the first
to go, but he wasn’t the first to
try.”
Her father, Joseph Holt Jr.
was.
The Holts, who have
Jacksonville ties and'a riumber
of relatives in the area, began
knocking down the door of seg
regation in 1956 when Joseph
Holt Sr. asked that his son be
admitted to an all-white
school. The family carried the
challenge all the waj' to the
U.S. Supreme Court.
The effort came at a high cost
— but to the Holts it was worth
it. Joseph Holt Sr., who died in
1995 and wife Elwyna, who
died in 1966, shared a great
love for education and realized
the importance learning would
have on black America. Joseph
Sr. had attended St.
Augustine’s College, and
Elwyna was a schoolteacher.
To the Holts, education repre
sented opportunity.
The battle, however, repre
sented four long years of work
that cost Joseph Sr. his job,
exposed his family to physical
and financial threats, and left
psychological scars on his oiJy
son.
Herman Taylor, one of the
Holts’ attorneys throughout
the case, said the family was
harassed and bullied.
“Those people suffered,” said
Taylor, an attorney for 50
years who still practices law in
Raleigh. “Blacks in Raleigh
were afraid at that time.
Nobody wanted to lose their
jobs, so people pulled away
from us. They were afraid to
say they knew the Holts.”
Joseph Jr., now 53 and a
retired Air Force lieutenant
colonel, remembers one time
being sent to stay with rela
tives in Jacksonville when
bomb threats to their home
made his parents fear for his
safety.
“They tried to keep it from
me, but a neighbor saw them
on TV and told me,” he says.
“Cars used to drive by at night,
and people would throw flash
light be: across our house,”
Joseph t ecaUed.
‘Tt ilvai ry painful to watch
my parents’ humiliation,” he
continued. “After my father
lost his job, creditors would
say, “You can afford to pay for
that lawsuit, why can’t you
pay your bUls?”
'The story began in 1956
when Joseph Holt Sr. apphed
for permission to send his son
to Daniels Junior High School
- an all-white public school in
Raleigh. A year later when
Joseph Jr. became too old for
junior high, they applied to
Needham Broughton High
School. It ended when he grad
uated from J.W. Ligon High
School an aU black school - in
1959. This was the same year
the Supreme Court of the
United States denied the Holts
a hearing and affirmed the
lower court's decision. Joe Holt
would not be admitted to the
all-white school.
In the beginning Joseph Sr;
never dreamed his son would
be denied admission to the
school. After all, two years ear
lier Thurgood Marshall had
argued Brown vs. Board of
Education before the Supreme
Court and won. With this deci
sion, the highest court in the
land had declared segregated
schools to be unlawftil, a clear
victory for black civil rights.
But Joseph Jr. was still
denied.
Claiming their application
had been submitted too late,
then School Superintendent
Jessie Sanderson offered the
Holts bus fare to commute
across town to the black school,
and asked Mrs. Holt to with
draw the application.
She would not.
“When my grandparents
applied to Daniels, a formal
procedure for applying for
transfer hadn't been developed
in Raleigh yet, but by the fol
lowing May, a statewide pupil
assignment procedure was in
place,” Deborah Holt said.
That plan allowed each local
school board to make its own
decision on how each would
integrate its schools. Although
school desegregation was the
law, states in the deep South
resisted the Brown decision,
enacting legislation designed
to circumvent the new law.
This type of legislation
became the backdrop against
See WOMAN on Page 11A
BOOK REVIEW
By Jeri Young
THE CHARLOTTE POST
Bigmama Didn’t Shop at
Woolworth’s
Sunny Nash
Texas A&M Press
1996
Southern literature has its
own timbre. It ebbs and flows
with a certainty that’s as com
fortable as your grandmother’s
quilt.
"... [Y]ou think earning a lot
of money will make you more
important than a housewife?
Feeling myself start to sweat,
I’d trapped myself...“Well, it
won’t,” she scolded. “I don’t
care what you do for a living or
how much money you make,”
she said, “you will sleep with
yom eyes closed and open your
mouth to eat just like all the
other men and women on
earth, whether they are maids,
housewives or bosses.”
Lately, most African
American authors have not
even attempted to recreate
that warmth.
We seem to be content just to
“exhale,” or listen to various
and simdty “suspect” diatribes
on inner city horrors. Rarely
does our literature make us
feel warm and fiizzy.
Of course, there are excep
tions. Gloria, Toni, Alice and
Maya and a few others create
beauty. But for the most part,
mediocrity is the one constant.
Occasionally, a beautiful book
will slip through.
“Bigmama Didn’t Shop at
Woolworth’s” is one of those.
At times it reminds you of
childhood. It conjures images
of days spent sipping Kool-Aid,
when a cool slice of watermel
on and a piece of rope enter
tained children longer than
Nickelodeon and MTV com
bined.
Days when everyone had a
“Bigmama.”
Set in tiny Bryan, Texas, the
biography traces the early life
of author Suimy Nash and her
relationship with Bigmama,
her maternal grandmother.
Bigmama is an original.
Bom the financially well-off
daughter of people descended
from “prairie people” and
slaves, Bigmama loses her
money and land. Rather than
mire in self-pity, she makes
the best bf it, moving with
Nash’s mother to Candy Hill,
Bryan’s black neighborhood.
Nash recreates the residents
of Candy Hill, and her eccen
tric extended family which
includes singer Johnny “I Can
See Clearly Now” Nash, with
aplomb. Most of the book is
told through the eyes of a child
- Nash’s.
She reminisces about her
grandmother and her parents
in a way that is often heart
breaking. She also talks about
race and Jim Crow. No south
ern novel would be complete
without it, she says.
Born in 1949, Nash lived
through segregation. It was
entrenched in everything, she
says, from where she and her
mother sat in Bryan’s only
movie theater to the substan
dard school she attended.
At times, the book is unbear
ably sad; at others, Nash’s joy
is contagious. But Nash and
Bigmama leave you with the
feeling that there is a better
day coming.
And you can’t help but hope
there is.
NY kids
march
for
Robinson
By Catherine Crocker
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK — Every day this
month, the Jackie Robinson
Center Marching Band has
been practicing for its big
moment.
“It will be very emotional,”
says 15-year-old tuba player
Kevin LaBissiere of the band’s
performance Tuesday at the
50th anniversary celebration of
Jackie Robinson’s first game in
the major leagues. President
Clinton will attend the Mets-
Dodgers game at Shea
Stadium.
T will be thinking about what
I went through and what
(Robinson) went through,” says
LaBissiere, who credits the
band with turning his life
around.
Once a troubled special-edu
cation student, today he is a
fine tuba player and a model
pupil with dreams of starting
his own record company.
Robinson’s spirit twirls, struts
and hops in the Brooklyn
marching band, which has car
ried the name of the baseball
legend proudly since 1989.
Robinson broke the color bar
rier in the major leagues when
he played with the Brooklyn
Dodgers on April 15, 1947.
These 100 youngsters also
know something about commit
ment and perseverance. Ages 8
to 18, they have overcome
obstacles like crime-plagued
streets, poverty and broken
homes in some of New York's
roughest neighborhoods.
“He decided he wanted to play
in the major leagues, no matter
what,” said Tyrone Brown, the
19-year-old assistant director,
as the band marched in tight
formation at the head of a Little
Leaeue parade last weekend in
Prospect Park, Brooklyn.
“We are like that because we
have the same drive, dedication
and commitment. People said
we couldn't do it. They labeled
us as at-risk, unteachable,”
Brown said.
With trumpets instead of
mitts, gold-plumed hats instead
of Dodger caps, band members
shone with confidence as they
marched to such songs as “I
Believe I Can Fly” and “I Feel
Good.”
‘We all are a part of Jackie
Robinson,” said 'Tommy Evans,
16, a trumpeter who wants to
be a music teacher.
The all-black band is a pro
gram of the Jackie Robinson
Center for Physical Culture in
Crown Heights, which offers
academic instruction, counsel
ing, sports and cultural activi
ties.
It has marched for Nelson
Mandela and former Haitian
President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide, and also has played in
the city's Korean, Pakistani and
Israeli parades - in the
Robinson tradition of breaking
barriers.
“Five, 6, 7, 8!” Brown shouts.
And the band steps out - the
horn players, drummers and
cymbftists wearing black uni
forms with jaunty yellow
stripes, the flag-waving
majorettes in flirty skirts with
high-topped white boots.
No stiff-legged group is this.
With a lot of svping and rhyth
mic hips and'hops, they dance
more than march their way to
Prospect Park, all the while
making their instruments soar
with Motown and R&B
favorites.
“You feel joy. You feel excit
ed,” says Neisha McCummings,
16, a cymbalist who wants to be
a lawyer. “It feels good. It feels
really good.”