muddys.org

In the 60’s as we all know, Birmingham, Alabama was a hotbed of racial trouble. The church bombing, the hosing, MLK and all the rest of it has been well documented. Thankfully I don’t remember most of it. I don’t know if I was shielded from it or if I have some mental block but it’s not there. However there were two instances that will forever be etched in my mind.

We moved back from Atlanta the summer before I entered second grade. We lived within easy walking distance of Forest Hills Elementary. I was there from the 2nd to the 6th grade and I think I got a great education there. In fact I know I did. Forest Hills was attended by all white kids from the time I attended second grade through the first semester of my 6th grade year. The second semester the school was integrated. The white teacher I had was gone and was replaced by a black teacher. I don’t recall if any kids were transferred out of my class but I feel certain there were and in their place were some black kids. I guess we were about 50\50. It didn’t really bother me that much. In fact one of the black kids and I got to be pretty good buddies. The thing that was so horrible about it was that many of the parents kept their kids home in protest. I’m sure that I wasn’t the only white kid that was there while they protested but it sure felt like it. It was my last year there. After that I attended a private school in Vestavia called Alliance Christian. I don’t know this for sure (but I’m going to ask!) but I don’t think I was sent to ACHS because my parents wanted me to get away from black people but because that felt like I could get a better education than I could at Fairfield. Plus my folks were (my Mom still is, my Dad passed away) devout Christians.

The second horrible event happened when I was maybe 16 or 17 years old. My Dad had bought some land in Altedena Valley and was planning on building a house. Naturally that meant selling ours. We never thought anything about it really. We put it on the market and began to show it. One day a white lady came and looked at the house and brought along a black friend of hers. The white lady didn’t want it but the black lady did. I’m not at all sure how they found out, but the neighbors caught wind of it and they obviously didn’t like the idea. I came home one night and out in front of my house was a big crowd of people chanting and yelling at us because we were going to sell to a black. Our yard was salted, eggs thrown at our house and threats made. Some of these people I knew! The people across the street were more or less the ring leaders and it caused all of us a great deal of anguish. In the end we didn’t sell. Again, I’m not sure why but we didn’t. Turns out that one of the neighbors who sort of spearheaded the whole thing moved out themselves in the middle of the night not long after that after selling their house to, you guessed it, blacks.

Now I’m not racist in the least and never have been. I think that those events, along with great parenting, prevented that.

Next…. The beginning of the Great Fall….