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 21st 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.
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