Every month of the year is dedicated to a cause, but many don’t recognize the overwhelming achievements and sacrifices people have made throughout history.
As we celebrate Black History Month, we need to remember the many African-American people who put the cause of advancing their race in times when abhorring violence was expected.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is an icon of American history. His stories are inspiring, especially if you consider what society was like in the time he lived.
Hatred spewed across racial lines in the South. African-Americans were treated despicably and in unthinkable manners, all because of the color of their skin.
It was a time when it took the bravery of men and women like Dr. King to make changes.
And while changes slowly were made, Dr. King paid with his life.
Rosa Parks, a 41-year-old at the time, refused to relinquish her seat on the bus to a white man, an act that prompted protests just four days later. I can’t imagine how fast her heart was racing and the fear in her gut as she refused to get up. She knew she was making a bold statement – one that put her in jail.
One local woman, a Cherokee County native, shared her story with me of growing up in segregated Canton. Pat Tanner candidly recounted her childhood and adult working life, when I called her out of the blue last week to get an inside look at what it was like growing up as black person in the 1950s and 1960s.
Tanner, born in July 1947 at then-Coker Hospital, provided me with a short history lesson. In the 1950s, there were three black neighborhoods in Canton: Nineteen, Pea Ridge and Stumptown. Nineteen and Pea Ridge were “across the river.” Stumptown was in the downtown area.
Tanner grew up in Stumptown and attended the black school there – she never attended an integrated school.
After sixth grade, she and other black students were bussed across the river to the Cherokee County Training School, which later, after much work by students and parents, would become Ralph J. Bunche school, named after the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. He earned the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950.
Living prior to and during the Civil Rights Movement, Tanner remembers being called names, getting looks when she ordered an ice cream at the drug store and the first time her basketball team got new uniforms.
It was the time she lived in; “coloreds” as they were known back then, couldn’t use the same entrance at the theater as white people; they had separate bathrooms, which never were clean; they didn’t go to school with white children; and they couldn’t try on clothes in the store. They had to buy them hoping they would fit.
Tanner recalled her first movie, “A Man Called Peter,” in 1955, at the Canton Theatre, then a segregated movie house with a colored entrance.
She said she had to wait until everyone else was served, and with people staring at her and snickering, she would purchase her movie ticket. After making her way through the colored entrance, she would sit in the upper decks, all the while hearing racial slurs and comments from the seats below.
Just as schools and movie houses, etc. were being integrated, Tanner saw a movie at a theater in Cartersville. It was her first time sitting on the lower level of the theater. But it didn’t come without racial tension – other patrons still threw popcorn and ice chips, making a black person’s experience at the theater uninviting.
In school, Tanner was an athlete, playing basketball and running track. She and the other students never got anything new – when white children were finished with textbooks, the books went to the colored school, no matter the books’ conditions.
Pride rose in her and her teammates’ hearts when their parents raised money to buy them new basketball uniforms and warm-up suits. “I’ll never forget, they were white with gold and blue ribbons going down the side. We walked the streets of downtown in our new warm-ups. We were so proud – we strutted like peacocks.”
That would be the prized new item her sports team got — everything else had been hand-me-downs from the white school. But Tanner’s only regret in high school sports was: “We never got to play Cherokee High School in basketball.”
After high school, Tanner boarded a bus to college – she would have to enter the bus and make her way to the back, because the color of her skin forbade her from sitting in a front seat.
A hotheaded young adult during her college years, Tanner experienced something that impacted her life “tremendously.” Without her mother’s permission or knowledge, she boarded a bus to Selma, Ala. in 1965. “I was there. I marched with Dr. King.”
She said their marching orders were specific and direct: Do not respond and no violence. She remembers the rebel flag being flown on cars and trucks, and people hanging out their windows screaming hateful names.
“I remember seeing Dr. King and what a profound moment that was. The man could mesmerize you with his words. … You knew what he stood for, and you knew what he was going through. You just wanted to be a part of it and to say ‘I was there.’”
They camped out in a field, and she vividly recalls singing the Freedom Songs while participating in an event that helped change the world she knew.
In a changing world, her strong personality and determination helped Tanner accomplish several firsts: She was the first black person ever hired by Cherokee County Department of Family and Children’s Services and the first black person to ever be elected to the Canton City Council.
Making home visits while working for DFCS was difficult.
“It’s a two-edged sword. You had blacks receiving benefits, and they were distrusting of you coming from the community then having to work those cases within the community,” she said. “Then the white community didn’t want a black person controlling what benefits they received or didn’t received.”
She recalls pulling into driveways of white families and the white children screaming to their parents that a (“n word”) was coming. “Their parents would tell them to hush up, even though they learned that from their parents.”
Making strides in the department, Tanner continued working her way up, retiring after 34 years.
Becoming the first elected black council member in Canton wasn’t something she ever thought she’d do, because she never thought she’d get into politics. She became interested when decisions were being made that affected her community, and she ran on the platform as the voice for all the people, which is something she says she stayed true to all eight years she was in office.
Tanner is an inspirational woman who faced many challenges in her almost 65 years. She was born a black female in the heart of racial oppression in the South. It wasn’t an easy road, but she made a great life for herself, through hard work and perseverance.
Racial tension, she says, still is present, although not as blunt as it was 50 years ago.
In years beyond the Civil Rights Movement, Tanner still has been called by her first name, while her colleagues were addressed with a courtesy title. When her colleague was called a lady or woman, she has been referred to as “girl.”
As generations age and new ones are born into our society, it’s important that we remember Dr. King’s words in his “I Have a Dream Speech,” that people should be judged by the “content of their character” and not by the color of their skin.
Our country has come a long way, but we still have further to go. Hate and oppression still are alive today, focusing on multiple races.
We have to be colorblind and look into the hearts of our fellow man, work together and set aside any personal differences we may have, to create a better society for those who will come behind us.
Tanner said she never appreciated as a child what others did to pave the way for her, and now, as a much wiser adult, she’s helping to ensure, through talks and literature, that today’s younger generations appreciate those who came before them.
