It was a hell of a time.  It was a complicated time.  It was the time of the civil rights movement.  It was the movement for black equality in which some white Americans were foot soldiers. 

    In this memoir, Dick J. Reavis tells us his story of being a white civil rights foot soldier during the summer of 1964. His mother and father objected.  His father said to him that yeah Dr. King wants you down there but don’t you see why; “…If white kids die, then this Dr. King will get more publicity.”  Still Dick Reavis left Texas to go South to Georgia and then Mississippi. Reavis become a worker for SCOPE (Summer Community Organizing and Political Education) a project sponsored by the SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference).

    A Texas white boy, Dick J. Reavis had a lot to learn about the civil rights movement and about interacting with African Americans.  He learned that SCOPE represented a shift in the goals of the movement:

    “Always before… the Movement had in many ways pleaded… for whites to accept blacks.  The shift towards community organizing meant that the Movement would henceforth demand not a seat next to whites in a diner, but the seat at which the whites were sitting: it was [now] a struggle to take from whites the seats of power and patronage. …the Movement was not asking for acceptance, tolerance, or love; it was demanding power.”

    That made things complicated.  But even a young and motivated white boy could find a way to wrap his mind around that. More difficult were the lessons that were to come from interpersonal interaction mistakes. One of the things that made it a hell of time was the push to transition from a racial-caste system where being white made you right, and being black meant you had to get back, to a system where black and white people would have to interact with each other on equal terms.

   Problem was the caste system still existed. That meant that even an attempt to prevent a negative racial incident could go bad interpersonally for those on the same side. 

    A movement meeting was held in the backwoods outside Demopolis, Mississippi; although a SCOPE worker and a driver, Reavis was not allowed in because he was white.  Reavis and Jerry, a black movement spokesperson, left that meeting to head back into Demopolis.  Just as they made it to town, the car lost power. Reavis pulled over and just then two uniformed white men pulled up to see “…what are you boys doing here?” Thinking only of getting both himself and Jerry out of this unharmed, Reavis acted as if Jerry was a “…boy” who worked for his dad.  As part of that act Reavis handed Jerry some money and said to Jerry, “There, boy, go get us some oil.”  The ploy worked; the two white men left, but…

    “…Jerry didn’t speak to me for the rest of the day, and I don’t believe that he ever spoke to me again, though for a month or two, we lived in the same house… It took me years to understand why.”

    Young Dick Reavis was approaching all his interactions through the lens of strategies and getting the work of the movement done.  He had never felt the negative, heavy end of the racial caste system and so had not felt how everyday that system demeaned the humanity of African Americans.  So to save him and Jerry from going to jail he used what he knew of the caste system to play out the role of a white supremacist, using the appropriate language.  What he didn’t understand was that “…Jerry would have preferred risking jail to the insult… however well-intentioned…”

    One of the points I teach in my “Interpersonal Relationships and Race” course is that racial language has a history that still carries into the present use of words.  One cannot avoid that history by saying, “I didn’t mean it like that.”

    Writing with honesty and grace, in his memoir Dick J. Reavis tells us of encountering and failing at a number of these interracial interaction dilemmas.  Here again is a small story of what was going on in the everyday march of the civil rights movement.  Whites were involved and struggled to learn how to interact racially.  At the same time, blacks were struggling to learn how to interact interracially, and making mistakes, but mistakes that were not even seen as such. 

    All those mistakes influenced the successes and failures of parts of the movement, because the movement was complicated and “…a struggle against all kinds of odds.”  Looking back Reavis says, “While we accomplished some of what we set out to do, in the main, I believe we were defeated, and that our hopes now fairly or unfairly devolve onto the generations that will come after us.”

    That is all the more reason that it is time for stories like this one, from the foot soldiers, white and black, to be told.  Reavis makes this point too.  He writes: “My only hope is that in reading this work, members of a younger generation will see what I and my peers did not accomplish, and will do what they can for the cause…”

    We must never forget that it was a hell of a time.  Today, it is still a hell of a struggle. Now we see that this was not and is not just a black and white struggle, but a struggle to find respect for our common humanity; racial, ethnic, gender, religious humanity. All who care must be forever vigilant.

   August 2005, when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, neo-diversity anxiety led to a social tragedy.  I am not talking about what happened at the New Orleans Superdome.  I am talking about what happened to a New Orleans family of longstanding; the Zeitoun family.

    I fell in love with that family reading Dave Eggers nonfiction book, Zeitoun.  If I could find a woman like Kathy, the wife of Abdulrahman Zeitoun (Zay-toon), I would find some way to sweep her off her feet and make her mine.  If I could have as a friend a man of integrity and moral strength like Abdulrahman, husband of Kathy, I would work very hard to keep that friendship strong. If I could spend time with this family, I would do so every chance I got.

    The Zeitoun family’s story is part of the tragedy of our nation’s gross mishandling of Katrina.  But the brilliant move by the writer is to not rail in anger against the obvious; about the stupidity of what we allowed to happen.  Instead, with a stroke of writing genius, Dave Eggers gives us the story of the relationship between Abdulrahman and Kathy and how our mishandling of Katrina entered and almost destroyed their life together.

    That should explain how I fell in love with this family. Learning about their backgrounds, their struggles, their finding each other; she a native of Baton Rouge, a white Southern Christian convert to Islam, he born to Islam in his native Syria. In New Orleans they together have a well-respected, thriving building and construction business.  Hurricane Katrina is coming.  Kathy takes the children to Baton Rouge; Zeitoun stays in New Orleans to watch over their house and the other homes and buildings they own.

    After the storm passed and the levees broke, using his second-hand canoe, Zeitoun spends time going around to check on their various properties; he also helps rescue people and brings food to dogs trapped in houses.  Zeitoun sees and hears that much is out of sync in the city, so he is careful.  Kathy, now in Arizona with friends, is very worried and keeps trying to convince him to leave the city.  He tells her he is safe and feels like he has a purpose for being in the city at this time. Then one day, standing in one of his properties with three male acquaintances, he and those acquaintances are arrested by men who cannot be identified as belonging to any particular policing agency.

    Arrested, not read his rights, not allowed to make one phone call, forced to live for a time in a make-shift prison in the bus station, eventually moved to a real prison. Two weeks Zeitoun is unable to speak with his now frantic family. Given all the bad news and rumors coming out of New Orleans, Kathy begins to believe he is dead. Meanwhile, Zeitoun is being called a terrorist.  “You’re Taliban,” a guard sneers at him.

    That was the neo-diversity anxiety driving all that happened, from the arrest onward. Being Muslim had now become wrapped up with the military takeover of New Orleans after Katrina.  After going through what no American would ever expect to go through, Zeitoun and Kathy learned some things about the psychology of the arresting officer and the officer who took Zeitoun to the bus station prison.  Both said the same thing.  Despite the evidence that Zeitoun showed them of his identity and business, they ignored that evidence and to themselves said, “…these guys are up to no good…” “…they’re up to something.”  Where was this feeling coming from?  To the reader it becomes obvious that it came from the fact that Zeitoun and one of his companions was Muslim.  That was it… in the midst of the chaos, with the policing force scared and filled with anxiety, these Muslim guys… they had to be up to something.

    Zeitoun got out and is back to work, but it’s still not all straightened out.  Much was loss; buildings, homes, Kathy’s health and trust in government.  In her thoughts, she said:

    “…knowing that Zeitoun’s ordeal was caused… by systemic ignorance and malfunction—and perhaps long-festering paranoia on the part of the National Guard and whatever other agencies were involved—was unsettling.  It said, quite clearly, that this wasn’t a case of a bad apple or two in the barrel.  The barrel itself was rotten.”

     Yet in the face of his own ordeal, Zeitoun himself has faith.  His thoughts reflect that faith:

    “It was a test, Zeitoun thinks.  Who among us could deny that we were tested?  But now look at us, he says. Every person is stronger now. Every person who was forgotten by God or country is now louder, more defiant, and more determined. They existed before, and they exist again in the city of New Orleans and the United States of America.  And Abdulrahman Zeitoun existed before, and existed again, in the city of New Orleans and the United States of America.  He can only have faith that [he] will never again be forgotten, denied, called by a name other than his own.  He must trust, and he must have faith.  And so he builds…”

    The Zeitoun family’s story is the story of an American failure and tragedy.  But it is also more than that.  It is the story of a real relationship and a real family that we all should know about and will (if you read the book) admire, and acknowledge as real Americans.

    I love this family.

    In any downtown, sometimes getting a parking space is a hassle. So having someone cut into the space you have been waiting for can become a big deal.  But in Birmingham, Alabama in 1954, that small event became so big a deal that it set off a struggle for civil rights and racial change.

    Charles Patrick, a black man, a resident of Birmingham was downtown to buy his adopted son a Boy Scout uniform.  He had been searching for a parking space for a while and just as he went past one he saw a man about to pull out. Mr. Patrick stopped and waited for the man to pull out so that he could back into that space.  The man pulled out and immediately a white woman pulled into that very space.  Mr. Patrick got out of his car walked over to the woman’s car and the two had this interaction.

    “’Ma’am, I was waiting.  The man was pulling out and I was backing in.’ [Mr. Patrick] said the woman yelled back, ‘I’m getting this spot.  My husband is a police officer.’’…He doesn’t own the streets of Birmingham,’ [Mr. Patrick] recalled telling her.”

    Mr. Patrick returned to his car, drove off, found a parking space, conducted his business downtown and then went home.  That evening two policemen came to his house and arrested him. That evening, while in jail, two other policemen, both white, one of whom was the husband of the white woman in the car, came in and beat Mr. Patrick with their fists and when he fell to the floor kicked him over and over again.

    From there the story takes unexpected turns.  Birmingham, Alabama in the 1950s, a black man was beaten by the police.  No surprise.  But that black man goes to court to press charges and to tell of being beaten… huh?  There was court hearing and lots of news coverage because what was happening was unusual.

    At the hearing, the judge ruled to suspend the two police officers. Days later, city commissioners met to render judgment about what to do about all this and ruled to reinstate the two police officers.  That decision brought outraged response from the white community in the form of letters to the editor of the “white” newspapers. 

    What year you ask?  1954.  Where again?  Birmingham, Alabama.  Really, you wonder.

     That is what makes this story important.  The writer is the journalist daughter of Charles Patrick. Ms. Dorsey has tracked down every news article, editorial and letter to the editor written about this event in her father’s life and in the history of the civil rights movement. Yes, she is telling this story because it happened to her father, but also because what she found surprised her:

    “The editorials and letters I read in support of my father changed my views about Birmingham.  Growing up in Los Angeles… I had… adopted beliefs that white Americans in the South would forever harbor animus toward African Americans, that white citizens applauded and embraced violence against blacks, and that white citizens in the South would never change.  But after reading the letters written in response to my father’s case, I realized that Birmingham was a mixture of nobility and treachery like any other city.”

    Yeah… but it was still Birmingham, Alabama wasn’t it.  How could it be that whites would come to support a black man in Bull Connor’s city?  Well, it turns out it wasn’t the Bull’s city at that time because Mr. Connor had not run for reelection because of an embarrassing controversy involving his infidelity.  Later he would return to power, but Ms. Dorsey writes:

    “With former Police Commissioner Eugene ‘Bull’ Connor out, it was…a four-year period when moderate, racially progressive powers spoke, however cautiously.”

    With that window of opportunity, through many steps and the help of black and white hands, her father won his court case, with the two officers being fired. Told with clear, sturdy, sometimes affecting prose, this compelling story and warm family history makes for a captivating read. Working from many sources, but especially her own interviews and conversations with her father, Ms. Dorsey tells this story with humor, anger, puzzlement, affection and new insights into the context of the event and the complexity of the civil rights struggle. Her new insights include:

    “Charles Patrick’s story is part of the civil rights story. His courageous actions laid a foundation for the movement, and dramatized for the oppressed African-Americans of Birmingham in 1954 that fortitude and truth in the face of power can prevail…Yet before any movement where people march en masse for basic civil rights denied, there are fuzzy accounts of individual courage, the details of which are often buried safely within the memories of the participants themselves.”

    That is why this is an important book.  It brings to life an important yet mostly unknown, seemingly small story from the civil rights struggle.  We have heard the big stories.  Now is the time for the small stories to be told.

People live life at the interpersonal level. Eyes light-up, smiles erupt, arms open for hugs; hands reach out to be gripped. Or, eyes are downcast, shyness takes over. Or, heated words spring forth, two people back away from each other in anger and frustration. Or for some, letters burn with “…white heat.”

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Having served in the U.S. Navy (1972-1976), I know about military justice. Having been a scholar of the different ways in which a trial can be formally set up, I know about varieties of justice systems. Having heard the old joke about the black man who is sent downtown for “justice” only to find out that in the jails it’s “just us,” I know about racial tensions in the American justice system. Knowing all that, I was still stung by The Interpreter, Alice Kaplan’s story of the history racial injustice in the American military in WW II France.

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Are secrets the story of a marriage? Andrew Sean Greer’s novel is about how some people live in their relationships with secrets.  Why is it so difficult, Greer seems to be asking, to talk to the person we say we love, the person we have married?  Is it because we begin the relationship holding back?  Is that it?

As an interpersonal psychologist that is something I rail against in my classes.  I say to my students if you feel you have to hide yourself in the very beginning of the relationship, that hiding will come back to bite you in the ass.  But this novel also seems to be saying that both people are complicit; that if one is hiding, the other is ignoring the signs of that hiding and making up a truth to help keep the secret, secret.

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A storyteller leaves you with the story. There were people who lived, who knew or came to know each other, something or some things went on that had to be, and were, dealt with, and that was the way it happened.

Percival Everett is a storyteller.  He is black, but he is not a “black storyteller.”  He does not deny his blackness.  He just tells stories. Recently those stories have been about a black author who does not find success until he starts writing “ghetto,” Erasure; about what happens when a man (who might be black) is beheaded and comes back to life, American Desert.

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