Healing Wounds to Tell the Story

I can still remember 42 years ago tonight, as I sat watching Gomer Pyle USMC the dreaded "special report" interruption of the conclusion of the show. One of my first clear memories is that of Walter Cronkite interrupting Momma watching As The World Turns to announce the Kennedy Assassination while I sat in front of the TV playing. Since that time, any interruption of programming -- even in this day of the 24-hour news cycle -- chillls me because of that first memory. Of course, on that night 42 years ago the announcement was the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

In light of that anniversary and the death of Rodney Seamster, I felt I needed to express a problem that has bothered me for a long time. Perhaps this is a problem I shouldn't air publicly, but clearly I've not learned yet when to shut up. That problem is preserving the local record of the Civil Rights Era from the viewpoint of the black community.

I am a child of the Civil Rights Era. I grew up during the desegregation battles -- Blaine A. Gilbert et al v. Webster Parish School Board was filed during November of my 2nd grade year. As a result, in January, two months later, Beverly Hampton came to Mrs. Hortman's room at Richardson and sat across the aisle from me as one of the eight black children to first desegregate an all-white school in Webster Parish. (I even caught the Chicken Pox from her as a present for my 8th birthday.) More than 8 years later, as my 11th grade year at MHS began, we saw the merger of Minden High and Webster High as part of the "final act" of that law suit. My chosen field in graduate studies was the Civil Rights Era. Although I have shied away from writing about it much in the newspaper -- a mixture of cowardice and not wanting to "rock the boat" for the newspaper -- I have continued the research and am still wrestling with the process of writing a "real book" on the subject. Even if I never complete that project, the notes will be available for someone else to tackle that chore after I'm gone.

During my years of research I have become more and more troubled about how we will preserve the entire story locally. The "white" side can be written easily from the newspaper stories of the day, but the other side, the side of those fighting for their rights is not as easily ascertained. Until the late 1950s, the only mention of any news from the black community was Robert Tobin's column, "Negro News" that ran periodically in the local newspaper. I was made very aware of the total vaccuum of "black" news by two different situations that took place when I worked for the Webster Parish Library. The first was the problem that arose when contacted by descendants of black local residents seeking obituaries -- they simply didn't exist in local news until the 1970s. The second involved the athletic successes of Webster High School. I had a relative of Wilbert Frazier, the star Webster High basketball player who went on to Grambling and the ABA, contact me seeking information about Webster's back-to-back appearances in what was considered the national championship game for black high schools in 1961 and 1962. Scouring the Minden and Shreveport newspapers I was disappointed to tell him the only mention was a one-paragraph article in the local paper headlined -- "Wolves lose in Houston tournament."

Beyond the news blackout is another problem. Many of the senior citizens in the black community can still not bring themselves to trust a white researcher and black researchers have not really focused on our area. I understand the roots of that distrust. Personally I have run into problems because I have not taken a strong enough stance in my newspaper columns regarding those years. That creates doubts as to whether I will give the story a "fair shake" and whether it is worth sharing with me. Along with that is the idea that the "past is the past" and leave it buried. As a historian I cannot support that idea, all history, good or bad, if told fairly and factually is useful.

The depth of the problem was really driven home to me about three years ago when a historian from San Francisco State University contacted me as he researched a tragic historic event that took place here in Minden in 1946. At that time he planned to make a book-length manuscript totally about the Minden incident. I contacted several members of the black community and got them to agree to talk with the researcher. He came to town, talked to all of them, and essentially was given nothing to work with. Minden ended up being about a two-page discussion in his eventual book.

Every time I talked with Rodney Seamster, we discussed putting the past behind us and working toward combining local black and white history to tell the whole story. But Rodney had so many projects and I was frankly too lazy to push the issue. Now Rodney is gone. I am proud to report that through the work of Schelley Brown and the Dorcheat Museum we have made great strides in this area. Dr. Roy Phillips and Mr. James Smith worked for months compiling a black history project for the museum. Part of their research has already been used in exhibits at the musuem and more is to come. That project has done much to fill the void, but there is so much more that can be done.

The part that is most troubling is that we have a success story here in Minden. I know that many have felt I was being a trouble maker by wanting to discuss the subject. But in Minden we moved from a city that saw that horrible lynching in 1946, from being a commuity at the forefront of the investigations of the United States Civil Rights Commission, from being in a parish that was one of the first to be sued by the United States government for intentional voting discrimination, to becoming a community where today we have a "majority minority" City Council in a community without a "majority minority" population. Are we color-blind? Not yet, but we have made a quantum leap just in my lifetime.

Again, as I think of Rodney's death, I can't help but chide myself for not working harder and hoping that before I go I'll be able to help make progress in preserving the stories of our past in those pivotal years before all those who know the stories are gone.