Riot Reflections, 50 years later

Had the riots at Dixie M. Hollins High School in St. Petersburg, Florida happened today, I would probably be writing about a body count, who the shooter was, and what weapons he used.

But it was 1971, and what happened at Dixie M. Hollins High School resulted in fighting, injuries, multiple arrests, and at least one stabbing.

I was seven years old in September of 1971, the first school year when court-ordered busing went into effect in an effort to achieve racial integration. One of the school districting lines went down my street. Had I lived on the other side of the street, I would have gone to Northwest Elementary. Instead, I was able to walk four blocks to Westgate Elementary. 

I didn't understand the controversy about busing.  That first year, I mainly remember the "bus students" listed on the roll in my third grade class.  They were Tonetta, Rita, Lolita, and Valarie, they were placed at the end of the roll and called out separately. 

But during September and October of 1971, Dixie M. Hollins High School was embroiled in controversy, a controversy that would end up making national news.  

In December, 2015, Tampa Bay Times reporter John Romano looked back on those days. He described the students who lived through them as "kids who fought with fists and wounded with words . . . who saw cops on the school's rooftop with rifles and saw adults inciting violence from across the street . . . who saw football games and school days canceled for fear of race riots."

It started a week after the school year began, when Dixie Hollins' principal got on the intercom and announced that the Confederate battle flag, the "Stars and Bars", would no longer be permitted on campus.  

For a school whose fight song was "Dixie" and whose athletic teams were called the "Rebels," this spelled trouble. 

The next day, angry adults, Confederate battle flags in hand, stood across the street, protesting.

For the next couple of weeks, they drove up and down the street, the Stars and Bars protruding from the backs of their cars, flapping in the breeze, as Black students arrived on campus. 

Tension built.  Fights broke out.  Students were sent home early due to fears of violence. 

The week of October 11, 1971, all hell broke loose. 

On October 12, 1971, the school had to be closed after what the St. Petersburg Times described as a "fist-swinging, rock-throwing, slogan-shouting melee." Afterwards, the school superintendent was quoted as saying, "God, I'm tired. They didn't have any courses like this in school administration." 

The next day, a 16-year-old girl brought a steak knife to school and stabbed a deputy in the chest.  Fortunately, the wound was minor.

Eventually, things settled down, though not without simmering unrest under the surface.

In 2020, although the official name of the school remains Dixie M. Hollins High School, the school decided to brand themselves as "Hollins High", and gave themselves a new nickname, the "Royals."

The irony here is that Dixie Martin Hollins, the first superintendent of schools for Pinellas County, supported education for all students, no matter what race, and he often hired people from Black colleges and universities. 

But with the first name "Dixie", the nickname "Rebels", and a mascot resembling a Confederate colonel, "we'd still be tied to a past that we needed to break free from," according to principal Bob Florio.  

This school year marks 50 years since those days of tension and rioting. I remember little about it except reading bits about it in the paper and seeing bits of it on the news. Two of the people arrested during that October week of violence were the father and sister of a girl in my sister's Girl Scout troop.

That Friday, I went with my mother and sister to drop my sister off at weekend camp. The father was there, and he and my mother had a long discussion. I heard none of it. Instead, as a seven-year-old going on eight, all I wondered were two things:  1. Why was he here and not in jail, since he'd been arrested (he was probably out on bail), and 2. Where were the marks of the handcuffs on his wrists? 

Such is the innocence of a little girl. 

I'd love to say that we've progressed in 50 years. 

But school violence? Confederate flag controversies? Racial tensions? 

Little, if anything, has changed.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Manic Monday: The Confederate battle flag, from a Southern white woman's POV . . .

I am a white woman.  I was born in southern Kentucky.  Kentucky, during the Civil War, was a border state.

One of my great-grandfathers was named after Robert E. Lee.  (I've done some pretty extensive genealogical research, and I can't find evidence of any of my ancestors being slaveowners.)

I moved to Florida at the age of four, and I was raised there.  A huge controversy rose in 1971 about the usage of the Confederate battle flag at Dixie Hollins High School in Pinellas County, Florida, where I lived.  That was the same year court-ordered busing for racial integration began.  At least one of my friends transferred to a private Christian school that year.  Several years later, I attended a school in a black neighborhood.  I was bused there due to that same court-ordered busing.

I went to college at FSU.  The Florida Panhandle is still, culturally, more of "the South" than St. Petersburg, FL.  The Kappa Alpha fraternity would hold an annual celebration of "secession" with girls in hoop skirts and boys dressed as "Southern gentlemen".

I spent seven years in Miami, which is both a melting pot and a hotbed of racial and cultural conflict.

Now, I live in the Atlanta area, where the name of William T. Sherman is still taken in vain.

I say all that to say this:

I am opposed to the Confederate battle flag.

I do believe it should be in a museum on display, where people can know what it is and understand its history.  (I believe the same about the Nazi swastika--people need to know what it is and what its significance was and is.)

But I don't believe it should be on display, as it has been in South Carolina; nor do I believe that the previous Georgia state flag--which contained the Confederate battle flag--be reinstated.

Why?  Because no matter how many times people insist that the Confederate battle flag is "heritage, not hate", I'm drawn back to these lines from Confederate Vice-President Alexander Stephens, made in a speech in Savannah, GA on March 21, 1861:

"The new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions—African slavery as it exists among us—the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. [Thomas] Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away... Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a Government built upon it—when the "storm came and the wind blew, it fell."

Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. (Emphasis mine, TAS.)

. . . look with confidence to the ultimate universal acknowledgement of the truths upon which our system rests? It is the first government ever instituted upon the principles in strict conformity to nature, and the ordination of Providence, in furnishing the materials of human society. Many governments have been founded upon the principle of the subordination and serfdom of certain classes of the same race; such were and are in violation of the laws of nature. Our system commits no such violation of nature's laws."

The above excerpt is part of what is considered the Cornerstone Speech, also known as the Cornerstone Address, given as an extemporaneous speech.  (I cut and pasted the excerpt from the Wikipedia article on the Cornerstone Speech.  A discussion about the speech can also be found here, at the blog Big Think.)

The Big Think article contends that Stephens' attitude towards African-Americans was more "paternalistic".  Perhaps "paternalistic" can be defined as an attitude of, "we must take care of you because you are inferior."

That (minus the attitude of inferiority) is the attitude I have towards my son.  I do need to care for him . . . but don't I also need to teach him to care for himself?

I'm sorry, but when you put in a sentence like, "the negro is inferior to the white man" . . . THAT is what I hear and what I see when I see the Confederate battle flag.

And saying that a group of people is "inferior" is condescending, patronizing, and hateful.

And that is why the Confederate battle flag needs to be confined to museums and history books.

I admit that, as a Southern white woman, there is no way I can ever "get" a history of slavery or a history of systemic, legalized discrimination.  I don't know what it's like to be afraid that you could be lynched just for looking at someone the wrong way.  And I fear that I can be patronizing and condescending towards others who I may see as "inferior".  Right now, other than doing what John Howard Griffin (author of Black Like Me) did -- dyeing my skin and living as an African-American -- I don't know how to crawl into the skin of African-Americans and truly understand what many of them deal with on a day to day basis.

The Bible does say, in Galatians 3:28, "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (New International Version)  There is no such thing as "inferiority". 

So please, do not give me the line of "heritage, not hate" when you refer to the Confederate battle flag.  Too many people see hate and inferiority when they look at that flag.

Including me, a Southern white woman.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.