Posted by Editor on January 22, 2008 12:53 PM to Career News and Resources
Career News and Resources: Forum Calls for Reconnect to Civil Rights
By Gordon Jackson
DALLAS (NNPA) - Peter Johnson remembers it like it was yesterday, a young wide-eyed 23-year old, working with the likes of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Andrew Young.
"I was like any other person at that age; I thought I knew everything," Johnson said during a forum at the African-American Museum.
Just what was it like being involved in the civil rights movement? Several local activists came together to tell their story. Audiences at a forum held at the African-American Museum were taken-a-back in time as they reflected on actual accounts in Dallas and the country, including moments with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
"Our struggle for justice is not over," Johnson said. "Just because we change laws in America does not mean we change America. Just because you do not see 'Colored' and 'White' signs anymore, do not believe that we changed the heart of White America."
The forum Johnson spoke in, The Civil Rights Movement - Past, Present and Future, signified the end of the special exhibit, 381 Days - The Story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, held at the Museum. Johnson led panelists who attempted to help the particularly younger audience members appreciate how their parents and grandparents had to vigorously fight racism. He then discussed what will it take to defeat racism today.
"Character starts at home. We need to get away from parties and functions and get back out on the streets," said forum moderator Rev. Ronald Wright. "We need to feed the sheep, not entertain the goats."
Johnson learned the importance of character when he served as the youngest man on Dr. Martin Luther King's staff, which met in the basement of Ebenezer Church in the mid 1960s. He was assigned by Young to organize a chapter of the Poor People's Campaign in Dallas. No assignment would be tougher for him, especially in his attempt to galvanize Black leaders.
"You had a handful of rich White boys in the city who thought they could either bully you or buy you," Johnson recalled. When he led a boycott against the Safeway grocery store chain, a suitcase full of money was offered to Johnson. When he and his group turned it down, Johnson said, "they took the money to Atlanta and tried to give it to Dr. Abernathy, because they were so used to buying Black leaders in this town so that they can get you to shut up." High-paying jobs were also offered.
Johnson said he constantly moved, due to threats. Warned by a Black police officer that he was going to be killed, he fled back to Atlanta, unbeknownst to associate William Stoner, who was dragged out to the streets in his underwear by hooded White men and beaten.
"When I saw Bill again, his face was swollen and black and blue," Johnson said fighting back tears.
Johnson said he would have died along with Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman had he not been visiting a girlfriend at Jackson State University in Mississippi.
He had been jailed over 100 times and beaten 14 times, once into a coma. Almost all of his incidents have been connected with the right for Blacks to vote.
Former Dallas school board member Kathlyn Gilliam and Eleanor Conrad, widow of former school board member Emmett Conrad were among those who spoke at an earlier forum. After Johnson spoke, members of the audience discussed issues challenging Blacks in the continuing struggle for civil rights.
Among them were former Dallas City Councilmember Diane Ragsdale, who said that organizing is the key to deter injustices in the community.
"Community organizing promotes power and power affects change," Ragsdale said. "Those who organize the most are respected and therefore receive the most."
Michael Phillips, author of White Metropolis: Race, Ethnicity and Religion in Dallas, said that solutions to overcome racist practices center on education.
"Students are reading fewer books. They're not reading Frederick Douglass, Richard Wright or W.E.B. DuBois. They don't know about the civil rights movement, as it existed in the 1930s and '40s. The chain of the griot has been broken," he said.
Casey Thomas, 35, President of the Dallas NAACP, represented the younger generation ready to take the baton to continue the civil right fight. But the tools are different, Thomas said.
"The future of the civil rights movement is MySpace [.com] and Facebook [.com]," he said. "It's not about when the cameras show up or when the crowd comes about. If we're serious about the civil rights struggle, we've got to stop playing games."
Thomas said he was discouraged from participating in the forum and targeted adults, not children for their disconnect with the civil rights history.
"Nobody trained me, they didn't take the time to say that these are the things you need to know if you're going to be the generation that takes responsibility," Thomas said. "We need to place the blame where blame needs to be, and that's on the parents taking more responsibility to make sure that children are equipped for the opportunity they have today the generation before them never had."
Eva Partee McMillan, formerly of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), said that priorities are out of order. An example she gave involved a Black family on the TV game show, Family Feud, who lost their contest because they failed to answer an easy American history question, missed by the family's teenage son. The mother, in trying to defend his son, said, "He didn't know the answer, but he can sure boo-ga-loo."
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