“Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight”
Racism is like a bad case of fleas on the human species, and it seems no shot, powder, pill or spray will kill off the pest. Once it appears that the infestation is under control, a whole new generation of nits hatch.
As a white man who grew up in the deep South, I saw racism up close and personal in the 1970s.
Schools had long been desegregated, and I had plenty of neighborhood chums who were Black, and together, we all ran the forests, splashed in the creeks and gathered at each other’s homes to play the newfangled Atari games on rainy days.
I will never forget when, in 1979, my father’s eyes welled up with tears as he came home and told the family that he had been fired as associate pastor from the Charleston Heights Baptist Church. I will never forget the look on his face.
What did my father do to get fired from a church? Well, the church was a White congregation that was surrounded by Black neighborhoods, some of them public housing.
My dad, Tommy Hudson, began leading a neighborhood outreach program where church members knocked on doors and invited people in the neighborhood to church.
The church leadership was none too pleased to suddenly see a bunch of Black faces in the congregation. They pulled my father aside and told him to stop the outreach; they reasoned that having Black parishioners would turn off long-standing White members who were very financially supportive of the church.
Dad ignored them and held another outreach the following Saturday, and when the deacons found out, he was fired.
My late dear friend, the Rev. Jackson Parks probably summed up best what my father was likely thinking when he told me: “Remember son, Heaven is not now, and never was segregated.”
As a young man making my way in the world, I thought that racism had pretty much ceased to exist in the mainstream; only that wasn’t true. The keel of the ship had simply gone from listing on the port side, to rolling and listing on the starboard side.
In 2006, I was sent by WGAC to cover an event that had (then) Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney and Rev. Al Sharpton as speakers.
Ironically, it was in the setting of a church that the pestilence of racism reared its ugly head at me.
As I recall, the only White people in attendance were Sylvia Cooper who worked for the Augusta Chronicle, the lady who reported for NPR at the time and myself. When McKinney finished her remarks, she invited questions from the audience, and I stood up and got in line.
When I approached the microphone, McKinney looked at me and said, “No, you can sit back down, I’m not taking a question from you.”
She then saw my press badge and asked me if I was with the media and I told her I was, but that I was also a tax paying citizen and that I only had one question.
McKinney then pointed at me and bellowed, “Sit DOWN, White Boy.” She then repeated it, trying to stir up the audience, who, with fists pumping in the air, began chanting the phrase.
Sharpton managed to calm the situation by guiding McKinney back to her seat on the dais and urging the crowd to sit back down.
I returned to my seat and noticed that the look on Sylvia’s face was one of pure shock.
“Scott, you better get out of here. I’m afraid someone is going to beat you up,” Sylvia told me.
While I was pretty shocked myself, and admittedly a little fearful, there was no way that I was going to tuck my tail between my legs and leave the building with shame that I had not earned.
When the event was over, Sharpton approached me, shook my hand and apologized for McKinneys’ and the crowd’s behavior.
“Cynthia was out of line, and I told her so. Nobody deserves to be treated like that,” Sharpton told me.
I don’t know if I was more shocked at the crowd’s reaction or the fact that Al Sharpton actually apologized to a White guy.
Unfortunately, racism has found its way back onto the nape of Augusta government’s neck.
Over the last three years, I have been told of entire departments being purged of White employees by Black directors. The overwhelming majority of people who spoke out to me would only do so off-the-record as they fear being branded racists and ostracized.
Only the former assistant director of parks and recreation, Tim Fulton, would go on the record after he won his discrimination settlement against the city and told of the abuse and humiliation that Director Maurice McDowell heaped on White employees, eventually driving them out of the department.
McDowell’s department is far from the only city department with this problem. The good old boy system of the 1940s is alive and well.
It is interesting to me that Augusta statesman Marion Williams, who lived through the segregation era and had to fight real institutional racism as Augusta’s first Black firefighter, is one of the most colorblind people I have ever met; yet some people offering themselves up for public service today, people who are far too young to have ever experienced the civil rights struggles of our fore-bearers, claim victimhood for simply having a certain genetic makeup.
In my opinion, Dr. Martin Luther King had it right, and he not only led but echoed a generation of very courageous people who understood that the content of one’s character is vastly more important than the pigment of one’s skin. My dad was one of them.
To me, it would be to the dishonor of my father’s memory if I do not attempt to start the conversation.
I will say loud and clear that both Black people and White people can be racist, and that mindset should make one a pariah among the people, not a political powerhouse. Racists of all colors should be shamed out of our midst.
They have earned it.
We should also remember that it does not matter whether a ship lists to port or starboard. A severely listing ship renders all lifeboats useless, just ask the 1,500 people who lost their lives on the RMS Lusitania.
Scott Hudson is the Senior Investigative Reporter and Editorial Page Editor for The Augusta Press. Reach him at scott@theaugustapress.com
