My dad, who is 92, often talks about the racial progress that has occurred during his lifetime. The stories are always uplifting but sometimes come with sobering caveats.
“I remember when the first black policeman was hired in Shreveport, in 1954,” said Dad, referring to the city in Louisiana where I was born three years earlier. “But he wasn’t allowed to arrest white people.”
Or: “After World War II, black people started making enough money to buy cars in large numbers. But the police started harassing them the way they harassed black pedestrians.”
Dad was born in Dermott, Ark., in 1924 — a time when racism in America was worse than it had been since the Civil War. Historian Rayford Logan described the period from the end of Reconstruction in 1877 until well into the 20th century as the “nadir of American race relations.”
In Dad’s view, the outcome of the recent presidential election was a just variation on a historic theme. Political gains made by blacks during Reconstruction — including the election of a black governor in Louisiana and two black U.S. senators from Mississippi — had been lost in a bloody backlash by the Ku Klux Klan and other white terrorists.
Now Barack Obama, the nation’s first black president, has been succeeded by Donald Trump, a white populist who has vowed to turn back the clock on Obama’s most progressive accomplishments.
Dad had certainly seen his share of politicians who used race to stir up fear and resentment among white voters. William M. “Willie” Rainach, for instance, an arch-racist who served as a Louisiana state senator from 1940 to 1960 and led the state’s “massive resistance” movement against racial desegregation.
“Every time Rainach ran for office, he talked about [the n-word] this and [the n-word] that, creating a frenzy among poor whites,” Dad recalled. Efforts to suppress the black vote intensified — as they did during the latest presidential campaign. But instead of being required to produce voter IDs, black people back then had to pay a poll tax, show proof of “good conduct” and pass literacy tests.
One such test required the prospective voter to interpret a randomly selected clause from either the U.S. or state constitution. A white registrar would determine if the answer was correct.
I have an uncle — my mother’s brother, also 92 — who was born in Saluda County, S.C. He recalls another common voter suppression tactic.
“If you tried to vote, your house could be shot up in a Ku Klux Klan drive-by, as ours was,” he said.
Listening to both men, I am awed by what they and millions of others managed to accomplish despite the virulent racism of their day. To be sure, many others were not so fortunate. But it is a modern day miracle that so many of them survived and thrived.
In Earle, Ark., there were no high schools for blacks. Dad had to leave for St. Louis and live with an aunt while getting his high school diploma. After working several low-paying jobs, he was able to attend Tuskegee Institute, now a university, where he met my mother. Both came to Shreveport to take jobs at a newly built high school for blacks. He was a high school journalism teacher; she taught typing and shorthand. Dad also started his own business — a printing and photography company — which he ran for 40 years.
In Saluda, my uncle had to walk 14 miles to school, round trip, because blacks were not allowed to ride school buses with whites. And there were no buses for blacks. But he persevered, earning a high school diploma and also attending Tuskegee. He became a veterinarian and maintained a successful practice in Detroit before retiring.
Along with hard work and help from family and friends, both of them say several presidents didn’t hinder their achievement.
Some, they say, made a positive difference. Civil rights laws championed from Franklin Roosevelt to Lyndon Johnson cracked open many a door. But there was a caveat: Blacks still had to work twice as hard to get half as much.
Other presidents were not so admired. Both Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan used modern-day versions of the Willie Rainach racial dog whistle to win white votes. The election of Obama gave them hope that a more enlightened nation was emerging.
Instead, they got Donald Trump.
“When it comes to civil rights for black people, it’s always been three steps forward,” Dad said, adding the caveat “and two steps back.”
Courtland Milloy is a Washington Post columnist.