by June Dobbs Butts, EdD
I grew up hearing my father talk about “the race riot of nineteen aught six” long before I could understand his old-fashioned words. And though that unprovoked massacre of countless black people in the streets, shops, and homes of Atlanta no longer dominated our family’s dinner conversation when I came along in 1928, the detritus of racial hatred from four days of senseless and random violence remained imbedded in Dad’s peripheral vision. As a newlywed of three months, my father spent each night of the riot crouched at the front door, gun in hand, ready to defend his loved ones. My parents lived with my mom’s sister, her husband, and their young boys for several years after their marriage in that very home. And, since my dad had a gun (as a legal requirement of his job as a U.S. railway postal clerk incharge of an interracial crew) he guarded their home during those days of fury. Until his death at age seventy-nine, his fervent prayer was, “God, keep me from becoming bitter—’ cause I don’t wanna hate anyone.”
Over the decades that followed, I’ve seen many positive changes being wrought in Atlanta and throughout the South, and I’ve rejoiced in all these signs of progress—for example, the election of my nephew, Maynard Jackson, as the first black mayor of a large southern city—without the sky falling. I have rejoiced in the enormous triumphs of my dear friend, Martin Luther King Jr., who brought hope to the hopeless, just as he vowed he would accomplish back in the days of our adolescence. (I’ve also seen the unfathomable emotional power plus economic return that accrues to businesses that entrench good old southern traditions into southern mores; glorifying the Civil War is a prime example.)
I moved away from Atlanta and spent most of my adult life working in colleges and universities in the Northeast and Midwest. Later in my life, at the invitation of then-director Dr. David Satcher of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, I returned to Atlanta in 1994 to work as a visiting scientist. Taking up residence and happily tending to my own revered family roots, I became mindful of a new vitality, a type of resourcefulness that had taken root in my hometown. I found that an enrichment of new blood had become an intrinsic part of the city, changing the old Atlanta I’d known long ago, in my youth.
I became acquainted with members of the
Coalition to Remember the 1906 Atlanta Race Riot, and joined forces with them. Thus, many decades after hearing my dad talk about the massacre of “aught six,” I found a group of historians, writers, artists, ministers, students, and others who were working to acknowledge this shameful chapter in Atlanta’s past. Beyond “acknowledgement”: they were preparing a series of commemorative efforts to look as truthfully as possible at history—exposing the massacre of black people that had been camouflaged by then–city fathers, who euphemistically called it “a serious disturbance of the peace”!
As the daughter of a black man who had been directly affected by the events of 1906, I admired the coalition’s workable goals and intentions. I became especially proud of Rebecca Burns’s excellent book, Rage in the Gate City. From my experience as a teacher, I could see that more was needed than a one-time commemorative event. And because my academic background has been centered on the family in all its social, spiritual, and sexual connotations, I felt the central question facing us today is, how do we break through the emotional barriers that keep us isolated from—and fearful of our human need to live harmoniously with—each other? One way might be, very simply, to keep talking—pushing past the barriers that privileged people have erected to protect themselves from less-privileged folk. Learning how to empathize with each other is another way of learning to be a mature human being. Although the process is more effective when taught in early childhood, research has shown that great benefits may be gained at any age.
Until we reach the goals of peace and brotherhood, books like Rage in the Gate City can be useful tools to prompt honest discussion and foster understanding.
Decatur, Georgia, May 2008