The Grace of Silence by Michele Norris

Author:Michele Norris [Norris, Michele]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-37946-7
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2010-09-21T04:00:00+00:00

10

The War at Home

EVEN AFTER LEARNING ABOUT the incident at the Pythian Temple, I still don’t know exactly what role my father’s status as a veteran may have played in his shooting. I’m not even certain he was wearing a uniform at the time. Morris Beaton thinks he was wearing “sailor whites,” but he cautioned me that he’s not entirely sure.

Here is what I do know. My father had a violent confrontation with the policemen at a moment when two social forces were coming to a head in Alabama’s largest city. Black veterans were returning to the Jim Crow South after having undergone a profound transformation in the service of their country. They were hungry for change, willing to take risks, and keen to assert themselves as men.

At the same time, the power base in Birmingham—the elected officials, who ruled by the ballot, and the segregationists, who ruled by terror—were hell-bent on maintaining the status quo. The postwar years thrust Birmingham into uncertain political waters. On the very day of my father’s confrontation with police, the city’s two main papers, the Birmingham Age-Herald and the Birmingham News, carried stories about a sudden swell of new voters. Jefferson County was bracing for ten thousand new registrants, and veterans accounted for about 75 percent of that figure.

The editorial page of the Birmingham News applauded the veterans for doing their civic duty in its February 7 afternoon edition: “This was to be expected, but it is highly gratifying to see them responding to this responsibility of civilian citizenship. It means that these men have come back from the Army eager to take part in community life. While only a few veterans have as yet jumped into the battle for office, one may feel reasonably sure that, in this large new portion of voters, there are many potential office seekers.”

What the Birmingham News and other mainstream newspapers failed to acknowledge was the large pool of black veterans who were also eager to embrace their civic duty to vote—in the newspaper’s words, “this responsibility of civilian citizenship.”

Throughout January and February that winter, black men who had just returned from duty were descending on city hall, trying to register. My father was released from the navy on January 21, and the very week he returned to Birmingham, black veterans were defiantly parading through the downtown business district. On January 23, a group of black men made their way to the County Board of Registrar’s office.

The postwar months were a season of parades, and the black veterans’ march took place eleven days after the most memorable of the postwar processions. On January 12, the 82nd Airborne Division had led thirteen thousand men through a blinding blizzard of swirling ticker tape in downtown New York to celebrate America’s victory in World War II. An estimated four million people had lined New York’s “Canyon of Heroes” for the largest parade since General John Pershing had led the 1st Division along the same route in 1919.

Also on January 12, a

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