Saturday, July 24, 1976
THE MICHIGAN DAILY
South' tune
Page Seven
,bt she decided she wanted a career
5ccnunting, and that career was not
ait:bte in Holly Springs. Another prob-
se-i: that of acceptance. "I don't think
ost1 have ever come beck and been
:epsed because people would have
me of mn as sweet little Debbie,"
e vxpained.
yip after living in an urban area for
scar, Furt convinced Debbie to move
h tle place of their birth. He gave
snale for returning: "You realize
, fnaults in the system but then
' like this is the place I'd like to
his the place you'd like your chil-
:i :_ crsv up in ... because my parents,
pisrlthers were all here before me."
Urlbic said this was her prime con-
lonsia in coming back, but that she
{}ld ist have come back unless she
sl e i continued working at her job,
restore it. In doing this the couple joined
an increasing number of young Americans
who find do-it-yourself decorating reward-
ing. But there sas another reason too.
The restoratiin prioject helps them retain
yet another attachment to the roots they
have decided are so important.
laving been vay at school and then
on their own for a -while forced Fort and
Debbie to come to a new understanding
of Holly Springs and their role in it. They
realized that many people in the town
were not very open-minded about many of
the things that occur with regularity out-
side the environment of Iolly Springs. Deb-
bie explained, "When they just live here
that's all they know. It's not that they
don't want to change, it's that they din't
know anything else .. Unless you go some-
where else and meet somebody else, you.
just can't be open-minded. They can't help
that though, they can't."
The Gholson's feel that the economic
changes occurring in their town can lead
to different social attitudes and also bet-
ter relations between the races if more
young, educated people like themselves
decide they will come home after they
finish college instead of heading for the
large cities.
(TILL RACIAL RELATIONSHIPS in Holly
Springs hinge on the time-honored prin-
ciple of "You go your way, and I'll go
mine." Margaret Sullivan, a sophomore at
the University of Mississippi - "Ole Miss"
- and a lifelong resident of the town,
defined the racial situation there "The col-
ored people who live here have their own
social class and there's no mixture," she
said. "They go their way and we go ours
and we're happy. We have an understand-
ing or something ... It's not segregation
if you're happy. We just ignore them," she
added.
Racial tensions have always remained
under the surface in Holly Springs. Only
twice have blacks there been moved to
show their feelings en masse. The first
time was at the public mourning follow-
ing the assassination of Martin Luther
King, Jr. in nearby Memphis. The second
was in the late sixties when they marched
for desegregation of the school district.
When the district was finally desegre-
gated, the white residents of the com-
munity founded a private segregationist
academy. Virtually every white student
goes there, and although the school will
accept black students, to date not a sin-
gle one has even applied. There is a re-
luctance on the part of black residents of
Daly Phot>oby PHILLIP OKOVOY
DESPITE ANY changes that have occured in Holly Springs, Miss., there is still time
to sit out in the park and reminisce - a time-honored tradition in the 'Old South'.
ich was an hour's drive away in Mem-
bis.
It's a lot better than staying home and
tching soap operas," she explained, "I
uld have been wasting so much. I gradu-
ed number one in my class ... for me to
me home and sit and do nothing after
had spent four hard years when I had
put out so much ... (just) so I could
rsw it away" would have been a waste.
NOTIIER REASON she wanted a ca-
reer was because she felt she could
have asked her children to make some-
ig of themselves when she herself hadn't.
ell how could I be so nervy as to ask
child of mine to make something of him-
if I didn't do it?"
Upon their return to Holly Springs they
rchased a home that was built before
Civil War and they have decided to
-destruction
the area to discuss the issue, and they
often ask inquirers if they're there to "stir
up trouble or something." It is a puzzling
attitude to encounter during a time when,
in the north, it is socially commendable
- not to mention chic - to wage war
against such invidious racism.
Harper Brewer, a black Tennessee state
legislator and a teacher in the Memphis
city school system, cleared up this seeming
phenomenon for me. "Many things are be-
ing done socially and politically to main-
tain this status quo and then you sort of
glide into it unknowingly, unwittingly ... if
someone agitates something this could be
a threat (to the already meager agains),"
he said.
BREWER SEEMED to be typically mid-
dle class. He owns a comfortable home
in one of the few integrated neighborhoods
in Memphis. He grew up in the South and
was educated in the public schools under
the old "separate but equal" system. For
a brief period during elementary school
he attended a school in Detroit.
"One summer I went to McMillan (a
school near downtown Detroit). At that
time it was integrated but almost all the
teachers were white. My teacher was one
of the few blacks on the faculty, (but)
she could have passed for white. Her fam-
ily was one of three black families that
lived in Dearborn (a suburb that even to
this day has very few black residents),"
he related, "it was no different (than the
South.) It was very racist in that area."
Harper has had to fight racism every-
where in the school district. He explained
that the transition from "separate but
equal" was a difficult one because so many
of the administrators were biased against
black teachers and were reluctant to allow
them to teach white children. He had the
opportunity to observe all these changes
from the inside as a teacher during the
transition period.
"The faculties of the black schools were
exclusively black; the principal, your ad-
ministrators, all the way down. There were
no blacks teaching in the white schools.
I smile when I look back at it," he re-
membered. "The first level of integration
here was in regard to faculty members.
The way the program was sold, many of
my (black) contemporaries might not want
to remember this now, they felt that it
was because of their outstanding indi-
vidual ability they were chosen to go and
teach in the white school and some of
them indicated they would not be confront-
ed with the discipline problems of working
in the black schools where you had some
kids who had to come to school without
eating breakfast.
"THEY THOUGHT they were going to
Valhalla or heaven on earth working
in an all-white school," Brewer related,
surprisingly with no anger towards his
peers, whom he obviously felt had been
taken is.
But, added Brewer, another result of
the integration of faculties was that many
blacks whom administrators felt were quali-
fied to teach black students were fired-
now that they had to teach whites. He felt
this was an insidious type of racism.
Although some cities in the south have
had amazing success with integration and
continue to move toward a truly bi-racial
society, others have encountered dismal
failure and are moving toward an ever-
increasingly polarized situation.
In Memphis racial integration in the
schools has been a dismal failure and
Brewer feels this will be a big roadblock
to better race relations. He pointed to the
fact that after the implementation of bus-
. ing 35,000 white students (60 per cent of
total white enrollment) left the district for
private segregationist academies, "leaving
the public school system essentially black."
The major problem with this is that two
separate school systems were forming-the
private one for whites and the public one
for black - and this worried Brewer.
See DIXIE, Page 10
Phillip Bokovoy is a Daily staff writer
who recently s/eit two weeks in Tennes-
see and Mississippi iserviewing everybody
and anybody who would talk to him about
the South.
M v Rights Move-
Ci worker) and with
nor really in
51 p1 Jones got in
bJ its depiction of a
.ac > intense self-
pre stunt growth-a
e from nonviolence
ow eld begins learn-
;tin sinned wife for
at, that he has to
p his head. She is
as sometimes con-
as Iht. Should you
or based on
impressions derived from similar literature, forget it. Though
Walker shows us that events are foreordained, they are not either
what we expect. The plain and rather ugly truth she shows us is
that racism is a monster, that it turns on absolutely everyone-
those who are a part of, and those who fight it. That is the rock
bottom, the final line that no one can escape. There is no limited
happiness here.
A certain ambiguity creeps into the close. Meridian, who has
previously been a groping borderline neurotic, makes a kind of
spirual transformation to a cross between the great Earth
Mother, and a cool aloof bitch. While not entirely heartening (or
understandable), this does complete the cycle of her development.
We are, in a strange way, satisfied with the ending, for it seems
at least affirming.
Meridian is an annoying and a disturbing work. At that, it is
worth a ready,
Jef frey Selbst is the Daily Arts Editor,
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