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Two South Carolina men seek forgiveness for Racism
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by politisite | January 23, 2009 at 10:37 pm
346 views | 18 Recommendations | 7 comments
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'The times they are a changing', is more then a Bob Dylan Lyric in Rock Hill South Carolina. After four decades, two men who were caught up in the racist south asked forgiveness of the very folks they would injure or shout racist remarks toward. The State News paper in Columbia, South Carolina tells the story
Next to a lunch counter that was segregated for so long sat a table of two white people and five black people Friday afternoon. Conversation quickly took them back to Jan. 31, 1961.
Elwin Wilson, one of those white men, had come that day to that very lunch counter four steps away from where he was now, wanting to pull one of those black men off the stool. He wanted to give a beating.
The other white man, Steve Coleman, had been just outside, among so many, wanting to scream racial epithets.
But 48 years on, Wilson, now 72, and Coleman, in his mid-60s, wanted something entirely different from these five black people.
They wanted forgiveness.
Please click on the Source link and read the wider article at The State Newspaper.
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politisite
Columbia, South Carolina, United States
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Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (7)
at 04:38 on January 24th, 2009
Thanks for this one.
at 06:23 on January 24th, 2009
You are welcome. Thank You for the Recommendation. I thought it was a nice story of coming together rather then division.
at 16:30 on January 24th, 2009
My wife is black and has Amerindian ancestors and Chinese as well. Her mother grew up in the South, but she told me after returning from the South in the last few years that it was all different.
She noticed a lot of interracial couples especially among the police, of all people. Her second husband was white, so she is part of this whole transformation personally as well.
at 19:48 on January 24th, 2009
Roy,
I am not from the south. I was born in New Jersey and moved to Southern Florida during cross busing and integration. I moved to Augusta, Georgia in 1994 following leaving the Army. The stories I heard about the south and the ingrained resentment was generational. Most of my patients were Black at the VA Hospital and I was able to understand what it was like during the riots and then many of my patients fighting for America and returning to the south following Vietnam. I lived in an Integrated community and there was no black or white issues in my community. I did see it within the VA as folks seemed to dislike me because of assumptions my patients made about me because I was white. They thought I had a silver spoon in my mouth and lived in an Ivory Tower. I actually had to explain that I was dirt poor, lived in a trailer, and was probably considered white trash. Many of my staff and patients thought that I had college paid for me and my life was easy. I learned a lot about treating folks from multiple generations and how to approach folks based upon what error they came up in. The Vietnam Vets really had a lot of trouble fighting then coming back to a segregated south. It must have been horrible to be sent off to war and come back a second class citizens.
I now live in Columbia, SC. Again I live in an integrated community by choice. There are still those who think it peculiar for me to do so, but for me it feels natural as in the military there was no black and white only green.
I see great change in the south from what I had learned. I love to share a story like this when some one has found out that we all are children of God and folks start looking at the similarities rather then the differences.
Thanks for sharing your story and your recommendation.
at 10:46 on January 25th, 2009
Thanks for your story. That is really something that you have lived through.
Class prejudice is real and sometimes class prejudice has more to do with apparent racial prejudice then it appears.
And, it goes both ways.
at 19:54 on January 24th, 2009
I missed this before.. a nice story.
at 20:59 on March 18th, 2009
Thanks for sharing this and I'm glad I caught it - two months later.