No Joy For Picketing

I joined the picket line in front of a Woolworths Drugstore. Woolworths are now a thing of the past, but back then in 1961, it had a food counter that did not serve Negroes. Even though it was near a college campus, it refused to serve non-whites. As a result civil rights organizations around the country established picket lines in protest against Woolworths for its refusal to serve every one in the public.

Picketing was very difficult. Safety measures for those on the picket lines were very strict. Under no circumstances was there to be a break in the line. Being called the usual N word and other nasty names , being cursed at, spat on, urinated on and worse had to be tolerated and withstood with dignity. Most of the decent objectors would go around the line avoiding contact, eye or otherwise, but the ones that needed to make a not so nice point would break the line to threaten or otherwise attempt to frighten those on the line. And frighten they did with hateful vigor. White hatred was at its best or worst.

The one person who impacted us the most was a little white girl of about 3 or 4 years old walking with her mother who had decided to break the line to show her disdain and contempt for the young people on the picket line. She was dragging the little girl through the line crying, flailing about, screaming and yelling Mommy, Mommy look look Niggers, Niggers everywhere. The mother did not try to comfort the child or pick her up. Her effort was to show her absolute contempt for Negroes.

It was sad because we didn’t expect any better from the mother, but the little girl probably didn’t know her full name, but she already knew to hate Negro people. That child wasn’t born with that hate. Her family taught her to hate and fear us. One of the picketers started crying in defeat. She was questioning how do you combat hate in a 3year old. If hatred is started in Infancy, can we ever overcome that. The rest of us tried to comfort her and keep her on the line. We told her that there were good people who didn’t teach hate and they could be counted on to stand tall, but she was done. She felt that we were risking our lives for nothing, and she was not going to participate in what she thought was a wasted effort.

 Over the years as I have watched White hate become more and more visible. I think about that little 3year old girl who is grown up now and I wonder how many infants has she trained to hate Blacks and other people. I still hope the good people will come out of the shadows so we can combat all of this hate and cure man’s inhumanity to man.