"Long Before That..."

Harper Lee turned 89 this past Tuesday.  Because we read her classic, To Kill a Mockingbird, in sophomore English, many of us celebrated by eating too much sugar and dressing up as some of her characters.  I wore a rather old suit jacket, in fact, trying to invoke a Depression-era, Alabama lawyer but, in truth, probably looking more like Reagan-era, Miami Vice. 

In between snacks we watched a documentary on Miss Lee’s life.  A number of authors, many of them fellow southerners, read passages from her tome, offering commentary on particular phrases that touched them personally.  One such writer, journalist and memoirist Rick Bragg, read from that succinct opening paragraph in which Scout, our narrator, ruminates on how best to begin her story.

“When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them,” Scout begins, referring to her brother’s football injury, “we sometimes discussed the events leading to his accident. I maintain that the Ewells started it all, but Jem…said it started long before that.”

 “In the south,” Bragg suggested, “all of our stories begin, ‘Long before that.’”

It did seem a bit weird, celebrating the birthday of a woman who, more than half a century ago, wrote perhaps the most important novel of the Civil Rights era, while Baltimore remained on curfew.  We could also ask the question today, “When did the chaos in Baltimore truly begin?  After the funeral?  In the days leading up to it?  Right after Mr. Gray’s death?  Right after he was arrested?”

1729?

I have tried to write about American race relations before, and I will not be insulted if you put this column down or click on a different link, because, to be honest with you, I agree.  It is getting old.  It is a topic much discussed, much debated, a story that truly did begin “long before that.” 

I have also used the following analogy before, but it’s the best I have, so I’ll use it again.  I believe that slavery did brain damage to our collective American psyche.  Like an all-star quarterback clobbered by a three hundred pound lineman, America is still groggy, still throwing interceptions with blurred vision.

Granted, we have our moments, of course.  We do things like elect black Presidents and then we hear voices from the sidelines say things like, “See, it’s all better now.  That concussion don’t even bother him at all, anymore.”

Nor am I suggesting that the criminal mobs looting and burning their own city are somehow justified in their actions.  In fact, if I may borrow another phrase out of the novel, this one by Scout’s father, Atticus Finch,

“A mob’s always made up of people, no matter what…Every mob in every little Southern town is always made up of people you know—doesn’t say much for them, does it?”

No it does not.  Mr. Finch, of course, was referring to the mob who had gathered to lynch the accused black man and Finch’s client, Tom Robinson. Historically speaking, though, an angry mob is an angry mob, composed of individuals no longer thoughtful enough to stand alone.

As many of you remember, Tom was accused of raping a white woman, a capital offense.  After the jury of his white peers found him guilty of a crime he did not commit, the accused did not wait for “justice” to be handed down from the state.  Instead, less than a week after the trial, Tom tried to escape and was instead shot to death by prison guards. 

Despite Atticus’ insistence that they had a good chance with an appeal, despite leaving his family behind, Tom sprinted to his death in a fit of self-destructive hopelessness.

Self-destructive hopelessness, as we have found out in very recent history, can lead to a great deal of bad behavior.  It can lead to being shot seventeen times by prison guards, for example, or burning down your own neighborhood.

In closing, I am most likely not the right guy to pen a column about race relations in 21^st century America.  With my background, what real experience do I even have? 

What I do know, though, is that Harper Lee is a great writer.  When she was in her 30s, she wrote a tremendous story that changed the dialogue about race in this country.  She changed the conversation in a profound and positive way.

However, in less than a year she will be ninety years old, and something tells me we will still be talking about old football injuries.