By DAVID EPPS
Pastor

I was only 7 or 8 years old when I asked my mother about the water fountain under the shade tree near the sidewalk outside of J. Fred Johnson's Department Store in downtown Kingsport, Tenn.

The year was probably 1958 or 1959, although time has clouded the memory somewhat. The summer day was hot and muggy and I was as thirsty as I had been in quite a while. I pointed at the water fountain and said I wanted a drink. My mom said that we would get a Coke at the fountain in Woolworth's.

I remember asking why the sign on the water fountain said, “Coloreds Only.” The same sign was on the entrance to the balcony at the Stand Theater on Broad Street. Most people that I knew — all the people that I knew, in fact — bought their movie ticket at the window outside the Strand and walked through the front door, gave their ticket to the usher, bought their popcorn and soft drink, and went into the theater on the main floor.

I always wished I could sit in the balcony, but, in the 1950s in eastern Tennessee, the balcony entrance was marked, “Coloreds Only.” My mother told me that it wasn't right and maybe someday it would change. But someday wasn't in the late 1950s in Tennessee.

We lived in Hillcrest, a working class area of Kingsport. One cousin lived in Highland, another in Lynn View, yet another in Sullivan Gardens. It seemed that all of us lived in an area with a nice sounding name. Black people lived in “niggertown.” I wouldn't know until high school that the area where the majority of African-Americans lived was actually called Riverview.

Everybody I knew called it by the slang name. We didn't mean anything insulting by it anymore than we meant harm when we referred to black people by the slang term that hardly anybody uses these days. That's just the way it was in the 1950s and early 1960s.

White kids went to the American Legion swimming pool during the hot summer days while black kids went to the pool in Riverview. White kids attended Dobyns-Bennett High School, black students enrolled at Frederick Douglass High School.

There were two separate societies in our community that very rarely crossed paths. It was normal. It was the way things were. It was also terribly, terribly wrong.

The Riverview community had roads full of potholes, the swimming pool was small, overcrowded and leaking. Most of the white neighborhoods had smooth, paved roads and the Legion pool was large, clean and often renovated.

While Douglass High School was always in constant need of repairs, the city fathers made plan to build a new Dobyns-Bennett. The teachers at Douglass were paid less that those at Dobyns-Bennett and class offerings were extremely limited.

Not so at D-B. It was assumed that the students at Dobyns-Bennett would go on to college. It was also assumed that the students at Douglass would not. Even those of us, as young as we were, who felt that this situation was unfair felt helpless to do anything about it. It was the way things were.

We watched the marches of blacks in Washington, D. C., led by Martin Luther King, Jr., and others, and wondered what the future would hold. We were embarrassed and horrified by the brutality inflicted on peaceful demonstrators in Birmingham and Selma. In April of 1968, Dr. King was assassinated in a Tennessee town called Memphis. The South would never be the same again.

In August 1968, the two high schools were combined as integration slowly became a way of life in Kingsport and in the South. Both white and black parents, who had seen the violence in Memphis and Selma on television, were concerned for the safety of their children, and the school administration prepared for the worst.

On the opening day of summer football practice, Tom Brixey, the head coach, walked into the tension-filled locker room and looked over the players from Douglass and Dobyns-Bennett. Quietly, he said, “Look around this room. There are two colors in this room. Those colors are maroon and gray (the school colors). If you see any other color, then get the hell out of my locker room right now!”

No one moved. The change was beginning. “The way things were” was beginning to give way to “the way things could be.”

Prior to high school, I had never met a black youth. Now I would share locker space, showers, bus rides, hotel rooms and meals with people of color. I was surprised at how much we were alike.

In town, the signs were removed from the water fountains and the movie theaters. Eventually, people began to call “Riverview” by its proper name and the term “Afro-American” (which later gave way to other designations) replaced the despised slang term. I finally got to see a movie from the balcony at the Strand Theater which, eventually, became a favorite place to take dates.

In the Marine Corps, I met a wide diversity of people and, in my last duty station, found myself the only white Marine in my unit. As Dylan sang, “The times, they are a-changing.”

The nation has come a long, long way from the 1950s. Gone are the “coloreds only” signs and the segregated schools systems. Gone is the assumption that whites are college material and blacks are not. Gone are the lily white professional athletic teams of bygone days. The nation is better for it.

Prejudice and racism isn't as blatant and unrepentant as it was in the South 40 years ago, although it still exists in tangible and insidious ways. We've come a long way since Dr. King shouted, “I have a dream...” But we still have a long way to go.

We still are all too quick to “judge a person by the color of his skin rather than by the content of his character.” We still see individuals as members of another race rather than members of a common community.

In Sunday School, we used to sing, “red and yellow, black and white, we are precious in His sight.” Until that simple children's song becomes a living reality in our own lives, we still need the words and vision of Dr. King, who believed that it was possible for all men, regardless of color, to sit at the table of brotherhood.

Dr. King gave his life in the pursuit of equality, justice, freedom and dignity. He believed that “the way it was” could be radically different. He was right.

But as long as even one person suffers deprivation, injustice, or fear because of prejudices toward race, color or sex, the quest is far from over. The dream is yet to be realized.

[Father David Epps is rector of Christ the King Charismatic Episcopal Church which meets at 10 a.m. each Sunday in the Carmichael-Hemperley building, Ga. Highway 74 in Peachtree City. He may be contacted online at FatherDavidEpps@aol.com.]

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