Log In | Register
Civil rights attorney Morris S. Dees, Jr. co-founder and chief trial counsel for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)
BHM Article #3
My mother and father were born and raised in the South.
I can still remember Summers spent in Birmingham Alabama as a young girl with my grandparents. My mother passed when I was small and with 11 children to raise as a single parent, my dad had his hands full. Having his two smallest away for the Summer gave him a brief respite.
My neighborhood where I grew up on the North side of Milwaukee was made up of Blacks and Germans. I can't remember as a young person any incidents of racial strife, even though I would hear my father and older neighbors discuss racial issues. It was only when we traveled to Alabama for the Summers that I would be reminded, mine was a race that was considered second class. I was different.
My grandparents spoke with a deep southern accent - broken English, and I remember my father constantly correcting our English when we would return to Wisconsin from visits with them. We would return saying "ain't and cuz" He insisted that we use proper English, always. When down South it was very much like I would see in movies. Everything seemed slower. The air was thicker, the Honeysuckle was in bloom and the people moved as slow as the drawls in their speech. I loved visiting because I loved being on a farm with chickens and having everything homemade. Fishing in ponds and catching fire-flies at night in Mason jars. Sleeping on the enclosed porch at night and listening to the crickets.
But......along with all the good memories of Alabama were the bad. Being called a "@!$%# gal" by the old White woman that lived at the bottom of the hill near my grandparents home, when I'd walk to close to her yard. Being spit at by little White boys at the neighborhood grocery store. When we would return home to Wisconsin I would share with friends how mean White people are in the south. I'd tell them all the horrible things said and done to us when down there. Year after year I'd come home with more stories of how prejudice southern Whites were.
My father overheard me one time and it was my dad that first introduced me to a man named Morris Dees. Back then there was no video, it was all magazine articles and news clippings. He spoke of his involvement in making the lives of Blacks in the South better, and how he was fighting on our behalf to gain equality. My father, a southern Baptist minister, his life was rooted in his spiritual beliefs. He respected Morris Dees because he believed he was called by God, just as Martin Luther King Jr. had been, to change our country as it relates to race relations. My father believed Mr. Dees would be the catalyst to huge changes in how our society viewed Blacks.
One day I saw a interview with Morris Dees and I was transfixed. There on our television was a White man with a thick and heavy southern accent speaking of equality for Blacks. How could this be? It didn't compute in my mind. I had become accustomed to hearing a southern accent from a White person equating to being a bigot. There was no such thing as an open minded White person. That was the beginning of my awareness of making generalizations.
I have followed the Southern Poverty Law Center for decades now, and have seen and heard of all the good they have done. This man, who could easily be an actor plucked from a movie as a member of the KKK, is not at all the stereotype of what I paint southern Whites to be based on my earlier impressions. A thick southern drawl does not necessarily mean they are bigoted. One of my favorite movies is To Kill A Mockingbird. Gregory Peck's character in the film was an image of a Southern White man, a lawyer, that I believed did not exist in the South. I had never met anyone like that in my visits to Alabama. If anything, they ran counter to that.
However Morris Dees taught me men of that caliber do indeed exist.
So, with the new year upon us and another year acknowledging Black History Month, I give public thanks to Morris Dees. A man that taught me not to fear a southern drawl. Not to assume a southern accent equates to uneducated and narrow minded. That as my father said, the stereotype I have of southern Whites is the minority, not the majority of Whites. Mr. Dees contributed to the self esteem of countless Black men and women not just in the South, but throughout America. One of my biggest fears in life is that I will die and not leave a wide footprint. What impact will I have left on people who have entered and exited my life? Morris Dees can die knowing he had a profound impact on our society by standing up for justice in the face of those that were Hell bent on denying it to Blacks.
On behalf of every Black person in America, I thank you.
