A
familiar experience for anyone whose parents have passed away is the inevitable,
and unenviable, chore of sorting through all the items they accumulated over many
decades. There are few tasks as bittersweet as clearing out your family home,
though in the process you sometimes run across little, unexpected mementos from
your life.
During
one of these episodes of sorting through stuff, I discovered, buried deep in a
cabinet packed with stacks of old Life magazines and other papers,
a yellowed newspaper clipping I’d never seen before. It told the story about
the time my parents’ house caught on fire, but revealed something else as well.
I’d
heard the tale about the house fire many times growing up. When I was still just a
baby, my parents had bought a house on the low hilltop where I would spend most
of my childhood. Before moving into the house, my parents were having it renovated,
which included adding a bathroom. Perhaps it didn’t have one already, which
wouldn’t necessarily be unusual for an older house in rural Georgia in those days. One set of my grandparents never had one.
At
some point while the work was underway, a fire broke out for some reason
and quickly got out of control. According to family lore, the only thing that
was saved was a cast-iron bath tub, which one of the workmen rescued by picking up and single-handedly throwing out the window. A least, that’s how I
remember the story.
So
naturally, it was interesting to see an actual newspaper account of this bit of
oral family history.
My
parents’ fire was only one of four fires reported in that newspaper story, recapping what must have been a very eventful week in my hometown. In addition to the three
other house fires, there was a more dramatic account of how a runaway lumber
truck had crashed into a local restaurant. I love some of the details in the
description of the damaged caused by the truck:
”The truck demolished the front of the
building and wrecked a deep freezer, television set, tables, chairs and a soft
drink cooler before finally mowing down a row of counter stools.”
“...mowing
down a row of counter stools.” Great visual, there.
Anyway, it was a quaint little window to the past and some small-town events that have now almost faded from living memory.
Turning
the clipping over, I found another little window to the past contained in
another story. Only
a part of that story was visible in the clipping, but it obviously
concerned a major issue of Georgia state politics of the day -- voter
registration.
In
particular, the story discussed a debate over proposed changes that would enforce “tougher qualifications” for citizens wanting to vote in Georgia. In other
words, changes that would make it harder for folks to exercise their right to
vote. Apparently, as part of this effort the then-governor Marvin Griffin had
proposed requiring voters to renew their registration every six months and pay
a one-dollar “poll tax”.
As
the newspaper article explained, a committee in the state legislature had come
out against those two particular changes. The committee
found the changes sought by the governor to be too restrictive. The reason, however, for the committee’s opposition is very telling (emphasis added in the passage below).
“The study
committee’s proposals provide tougher qualifications for voting in Georgia but
do not include the governor’s plan for a bi-annual re-registration and $1 poll
tax.
“There is
considerable opposition in the Legislature to Griffin’s proposal – particularly
the poll tax and re-registration requirements. The governor’s plan is designed to curb Negro voting but would apply to
white voters also.”
Just
a reminder, though to modern eyes a pretty glaring one, of how in the Georgia of the mid-1950s -- surely not unlike the Alabama that newly minted and controversial Attorney General Jeff Sessions came of age in -- politicians who wanted to keep African-Americans from voting didn’t have to be coy about it. Not
coy at all.
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