On Feb. 9th in the Benson Auditorium, the American Studies Institute (ASI) hosted a panel discussion titled “Exploring Race Relations: An Honest Conversation.” This included panelists Elijah Anthony, Fred Gray and Dr. Howard Wright and was moderated by the university’s president, Dr. Bruce McLarty.
McLarty opened the program with an explanation of the panel’s theme.
“I don’t think that tonight’s program is completely comfortable for anybody in the room,” McLarty said. “There is tension in the cultural atmosphere in which we live… I don’t expect us tonight to see things all the same way or for our panelists to speak with a single voice. Different perspectives are what this evening is about. This is a conversation, an experience of trying our best, both to hear and to be heard.”
Wright was one of the first two African-American students to graduate from Harding with an undergraduate degree in 1968. Wright spoke about his childhood soccer team and the first time he experienced discrimination with his teammates.
“It impressed me as I am older that this issue of race was going to be something to be dealt with,” Wright said. “I don’t think that race is a problem because of our skin color; I think it’s a problem because we are different.”
Anthony, also a 1968 alumnus, grew up living in his grandparent’s home in Birmingham, Alabama.
“I remember standing in the alley in the rain behind a great restaurant downtown where I was living … for a hamburger because I could not go inside to order it,” Anthony said. “I remember as if it were yesterday, getting on a bus where my choices were either sit in the back or stand up, even though there were seats available at the front of the bus. I started getting this message early in life, that something was wrong with me.”
Gray was both Rosa Parks’ and Martin Luther King Jr.’s attorney in the 1950’s. He grew up in Montgomery, Alabama, and he said that he first came into contact with a white person when he went to college.
“Alabama State, the historical black school, was on the east side of town, and I lived on the west side of town and I had to use the busses to go,” Gray said. “That’s how I found out that many of our people were mistreated on buses in Montgomery. One person had even been killed as a result of an altercation on buses. I finally decided that in addition to saving souls, I felt that African-Americans were entitled to have some of the rights and privileges that all of the other citizens obtained … I was going to go to law school, finish law school, come back to Alabama, pass the Bar exam, become a lawyer and destroy everything segregated I could find.”
In response to the question about how the past influences the present race relations, Wright mentioned the “Black Lives Matter” movement and addressed the countermovement, All Lives Matter.
“Trayvon Martin was killed by a cop,” Wright said. “Somebody says ‘let’s start a movement called ‘Black Lives Matter.’ All of a sudden, white people say, ‘How dare you! All lives matter.’ … If all lives matter, why am I fearful when my teenage grandchildren, males in particular, get in a car and go down the street? Why do I have to pray that they get back home … Yes, all lives matter in theory, but in practice, we trumpet a cause that says black lives need to matter because of how they’re taken away from their parents and their families.”
Anthony said that Americans need to address racism by educating children about it.
“To me, the past is the present,” Anthony said. “The present is a reflection of what we were dealing with when I was in high school. Nothing has changed. It has taken different turns and curves, it may be more subtle than now in some ways than it was when I was growing up, but this a problem we’ve learned that we can’t legislate away. The only way this ends is to start teaching your children and maybe by the time their grandchildren learn the same, we’ll see some change.”
Gray closed out the panel discussion by urging the audience to recognize racism as an issue, develop a plan to combat it and personally get involved with executing it.
“I think what we all need to recognize first is that we have a race problem in this country, because if we don’t think we have a problem, we’ll never solve it,” Gray said. We need to come up with a plan. The Montgomery Bus Boycott, some people think that it just happened. It didn’t just happen, it was planned. The Selma to Montgomery march didn’t just happen, it was planned … We’d just like to wake up one day and all of us love one another and we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. It isn’t going to happen like that. Each one of us individually are going to have to get involved in it.”
