TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/062590/0625170.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 9.9 KB | 203 lines

                                                                                AMERICAN SCENE, Page 10

Greensboro, North Carolina

The Legacy of Segregation



A bellwether city battles a hardening color line

By MICHAEL RILEY


    The grainy black-and-white photograph, taken 30 years ago,
captures the fear in David Richmond's eyes on the day he dared
to cross the color line. He's the one on the left, the skinny
kid in the trench coat, standing beside three other young black
men. That winter day in 1960, those four college students broke
the segregation barrier by taking seats at F.W. Woolworth's
downtown lunch counter. The sit-in shook the sleepy North
Carolina city and ignited a nationwide movement to topple Jim
Crow's walls. But Richmond says all he felt that day was
"scared, scared, scared."

    Today, as he gazes at the Greensboro Historical Museum's
sit-in exhibit, complete with four original chrome-and-vinyl
stools, Richmond is not frightened. But he is troubled. All
around, Richmond sees an enduring legacy of segregation and
wonders why things have not improved. "I would've hoped that
things would've been better, but they're not getting any
better," he laments. "They're getting worse."

    Wait a minute. Aren't things much better than they were in
1960? Blacks and whites eat together at the same lunch
counters. They work side by side in offices. Black families can
buy houses in white neighborhoods. They can shop in any store,
stay in any hotel, apply for any job, run for any political
office. Since the sit-ins, the visible progress in civil rights
has been monumental. So why is Richmond troubled?

    Because Greensboro, like the rest of the nation, finds
itself face to face with a more intractable form of separation
that is insidious but not illegal. The laws that opened
restaurants and rest rooms have not changed minds, and that is
precisely where the color line is drawn these days.

    Greensboro (pop. 195,495), a prosperous town set on North
Carolina's lush Piedmont Plateau, has been a national
bellwether of race relations. It was not only the birthplace
of the sit-in movement but also the site of one of the most
horrifying episodes of racial violence since the 1960s. In 1979
five Communist Workers Party members taking part in a "Death
to the Klan" rally were gunned down in the street by American
Nazis and members of the Ku Klux Klan.

    The legacies of the two events are still entwined. Three
decades after the sit-ins, some people, black and white, wonder
if desegregation has failed. Others, of both races, contend
that integration has always been a pipe dream. Still others
favor a return to separate societies. Observes Greensboro
school superintendent John A. Eberhart, who is white: "The
question is, are we going to move apart or are we going to move
together?"

    Signs of separation persist in the city's neighborhoods,
nightclubs, gazes and words. A perspiring black man, nattily
dressed in suspenders, white shirt and a hat, pushes a mower
across a lush lawn just yards from the elite, whites-only
Greensboro Country Club. Downtown, as professionals head home
at night from glistening glass office buildings, an army of
blacks -- so-called invisible people -- arrives to empty the
trash and vacuum the floors. One leading white liberal lapses,
unconsciously perhaps, into talk about "coloreds" and "black
boys."

    Despite these fault lines, some people, such as Guilford
County Commission Chairman Chuck Forrester, think black
complaints about the divisions of race are groundless. "They're
taking back more from society than they've given," he says. "We
could be doing better, but white people nationally should know
they are doing a hell of a lot. And we shouldn't be afraid to
ask the black community, `What more do you want?'"

    The starkest separations plague the most intimate areas:
home, church and recreation. Although more black families are
moving into northwest Greensboro's nicer houses, the area
remains overwhelmingly white. Beyond the downtown underpass,
which traditionally marked the other side of the tracks,
southeast Greensboro remains almost all black. Several years
ago, Ron and Betty Crutcher, who are black and lived in a
mostly white neighborhood, put their split-level house on the
market to seek a less traffic-filled neighborhood for their
young daughter. The real-estate agent suggested the Crutchers
hide their family pictures, implying that white buyers would
be less likely to purchase a house that had been occupied by
blacks. They decided not to remove the pictures and after two
years sold the house themselves to a black family. "You have
your right to do what you want and live where you want to
live," says Betty Crutcher, who is excited about an upcoming
move to a more integrated neighborhood in Cleveland. Meanwhile,
their present house, pictures and all, is on the market. "If
we still continue to dwell on where we live and who we live next
to," she says, "that's where we're going to remain."

    The divisions carry into church pews. "The most segregated
time is 11 a.m. Sunday morning," says human-relations
commission executive director John Shaw. Most churches, guided
by tradition and split by culture, are black or white. But
Cathedral of His Glory, a young church whose membership is 30%
black and 70% white, is an exception. Maintaining the mixture
requires leadership from the top and constant effort to involve
blacks. "We have to explain we are prejudiced," says Pastor C.
Paul Willis. "We are not color-blind. But it's not a prejudice
of hate."

    About 35 years ago, Dr. George Simkins challenged that
prejudice when he ventured onto Gillespie Golf Course for a
historic round of golf, a match that eventually opened the
course to blacks. Today the public course is a mainstay for
black golfers, since no blacks belong to the city's private
country clubs. But no one battles that exclusion. "It's like
jumping to the moon," Simkins explains. "You know you can't do
it, so you never try."

    Even when it's not a question of race, race is always a
question. A school-merger debate is raging, with race the
stumbling block. Guilford County residents, whose school system
is 81% white, are resisting entreaties to merge with Greensboro
(51% black) and High  Point (50% black) schools. Greensboro
delayed significant desegregation and busing for years, and now
many parents -- black and white -- wonder whether the mixing
has worked. "I'm not saying integration was wrong," says
Greensboro councilwoman Alma Adams, who is black, "but it did
cause a lot of problems we didn't think about."

    In fact, some blacks even contemplate a return to
neighborhood schools. Hal Sieber, executive editor of the
Carolina Peacemaker, a black newspaper, calls it a desire for
"equal but separate" communities, a twist on the old doctrine
of segregation. Sadly, the cycle of division, passed from
parent to child, endures, as last winter's tempest at
prestigious Page High School showed. A student newspaper poll
on race relations prompted an outcry from black students, who
complained about inadequate representation on the cheerleading
squad and in advanced classes, among other things. Even a state
championship basketball team drew fire for its all-white
starting five.

    As they do across the nation, economic class divisions
further complicate racial rifts, with wealth filling the gaps
and poverty widening them. The average black family in
Greensboro makes about two-thirds of what a typical white
family brings in, and, while the city's jobless rate is only
3.4%, the unemployment rate for blacks is about three times as
high as it is for whites. "It's still a legacy of race, but
it's written about more in terms of class," says Robert Davis,
a sociology professor at North Carolina Agricultural and
Technical State University.

    Apparent progress has its limits in politics too. The city
finally implemented in 1983 a district system that would
guarantee black seats on the city council. Today two blacks sit
on the council, but since their power springs from
predominantly black districts, blacks, ironically, are boxed
in. Before districts, black voters could sometimes help defeat
a candidate like County Commission Chairman Forrester. Says the
now safe Forrester: "When guys like me start getting elected,
that's got to reflect something."

    It certainly does. And what it reflects pains Jim Schlosser,
a veteran reporter on race for the Greensboro News & Record.
"In the 1960s," says Schlosser, "when we talked about a
color-blind society, we thought we'd party together, we'd live
on the same block. But maybe our expectations were unrealistic.
Maybe we are a separate society." Perhaps whites have been too
paternalistic, too insensitive, too impatient. Maybe blacks
have been overly sensitive, too defensive, too race conscious.
Both sides are paralyzed by confusion; neither fully
understands the other.

    Until the minds meet, the perception gap will widen, and
some predict that unless festering tensions subside, violence
may again erupt in Greensboro. Even today the Klan shootings
linger like a bad dream. In 1960 the sit-ins worked, but today
the problems are too complex to solve simply.

    Back at the historical museum, the ironies hit home. Thirty
years ago, David Richmond was a radical. By now he should be
a hero. Instead, he is unemployed, ready to rake leaves or
paint houses to make ends meet. Although his two kids graduated
from college, Richmond never did. As he talks, a young man
there with his girlfriend looks up from the display. "Are you
one of the guys here?" asks Bill Fox, pointing to the life-size
photograph. "Wow." As they discuss the sit-ins, Richmond offers
some advice about the color line. "You can choose," he says.
"Legislation can't change people's hearts. It takes time." With
that, he awkwardly hugs his two new friends and turns to leave.