Today's Story
Dateline: Kalamazoo, Michigan
Racism and segregation was not confined to the South. As I stated in an earlier blog, the profiteers of slavery included northern bankers and business people as well as the garment industry in England.
Slavery made life easier and commodities cheaper for anyone who purchased goods harvested or made by slaves ... just as is true today for those who buy from suppliers of sweatshop-made merchandise.
In Dearborn, Michigan, Orville Hubbard, that city's segregationist mayor from 1942 to 1978, worked hard to keep his city all-white.
In Kalamazoo, Michigan, where I live, I've been told that deeds and titles of houses built in the Victorian Era contain provisions that the property may not be sold, leased, or rented to Negroes.
So, today's story features the stories of two African American men who live in and have contributed much to the community of Kalamazoo in spite of having experienced racism in their lives.
Moses Walker
"My mother kept telling us, 'As long as I'm in charge, none of my sons will ever set foot in Mississippi.' She had seen black men lynched there," explains Moses Walker, the eldest son of Erie Walker, who was born in Okolona, Mississippi, in 1916.
Moses, who was born in Kalamazoo in 1940, heeded his mother's warning ... until he joined the US Army in 1961.
Traveling in a large convoy from basic training in Kansas to South Carolina, Moses and his fellow solders passed through several southern states. "When we stopped at public restaurants, the black soldiers weren't allowed to go in, so some white soldiers brought food out to us," he recalls.
Even though President Harry Truman had decreed that the military be integrated 14 years earlier, in 1948, Walker experienced lingering racial discrimination. "There was a lot of racism from the top down," he says.
Walker applied for Officer Candidate School, passing qualifying exams with more than adequate scores, but was denied entrance. "I wasn't the profile of what an enlisted person was supposed to be; I was black and too smart, and that woke me up to the realities of life for African Americans at that time," he says.
In more than two years in the service, Moses was promoted only once ... to private first class.
After his discharge, Moses earned his undergraduate degree from Western Michigan University and his graduate degree in social work from Wayne State University.
He went on to become executive director of the Douglass Community Association, which serves the African American community, executive director and chief operating officer of the Borgess Health Alliance mental health center, president and CEO of Borgess DeLano Clinic, vice president of Borgess Behavioral Medicine Services, and executive director of Borgess community relations.
He also served six years on the Kalamazoo City Commission, was a policy maker for the Greater Kalamazoo United Way, the Family Health Center, the Kalamazoo Regional Chamber of Commerce, and the Kalamazoo Valley Community College Foundation. He worked on a capital campaign for the Pretty Lake Vacation Camp for disadvantaged youth.
"There is an ongoing need to constantly educate young African Americans, especially young black men, about what has gone on before them," says this man of many accomplishments.
Dr. Lewis Walker
On June 5, 1966, James Meredith, the first African American to be admitted to the University of Mississippi, aka Ole Miss, started a single-person March Against Fear from Memphis, Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi, to protest racism.
When Meredith was shot by a sniper the next day, other civil rights leaders, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., continued the march in his name.
Later that month, Lewis Walker and three faculty members at Western Michigan University flew to Jackson to join that march.
Not sure where to find the marchers, they drove their rental car on rural roads, searching. Seeing two elderly black men in a yard in front of a church, they stopped and asked directions. One looked at the four and said, "Two black men, a white man and a white woman. You're going to get yourselves killed."
Frightened, they persisted and found the marchers gathered in a large tent for an evening meeting. They had to pass through numerous police officers, armed with shotguns and rifles, to enter the tent. After a while, tear gas, probably tossed under a tent flap by police, forced everyone outside.
They ran for their car. A white reporter from New York City, afraid for his life, jumped in with them and refused to get out. The five then drove to a hotel very carefully because they could have been arrested -- and who knows what else? -- for having too many people in the car: three of them black and two of them white.
Of the March Against Fear, Lewis Walker said, "Being afraid doesn't mean the absence of courage. We all had the courage to march against fear and fight against oppression."
In his career at Western Michigan University, Lewis became professor and chair emeritus of the Sociology Department. He is the author of several books and articles on racism and black history, and a consultant on South Africa land reclamation and local race relations.
He served as chair or a member of numerous Kalamazoo social service boards and is co-founder of the Lewis Walker Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnic Relations.
Next blog: "Anger Rising: Selma's Bloody Sunday"
