Justice is served

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My first talk of 2016 was before the Lawyers Club of Atlanta’s fiction book club -- which was a little confusing since “The Class of ’65” is nonfiction. Apparently, they read a true story every year. Lawyers should never stray too far from facts.

As we were discussing the book in a 38th-floor board room with a gorgeous view of Midtown Atlanta, I brought up a legal angle I thought might interest this group. If it hadn’t been for a federal lawsuit, the narrative I focused on in “Class” might never have happened.

The lawsuit was William Wittkamper et al. v. James Harvey et al. and the School Board of Americus, Ga. Koinonia parents filed the suit in the fall of 1960 when the city school board refused to admit three of their children because they thought having students from the communal farm would produce conflict and unrest at Americus High. Judge William Bootle (above) recognized religious persecution when he saw it and ordered the schools to admit the Koinonia children. Bootle was hanged in effigy in Americus, in part because of that ruling and and in part because of an even more controversial decision he issued a few months later, ordering the University of Georgia desegregated.

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The students who entered Americus High that fall were Jan Jordan, Lora Browne and Billy Wittkamper. A year later, Billy’s brother Greg Wittkamper -- my main character -- began at the school. All of them were treated terribly because of their unpopular beliefs, an ordeal which forms the heart of the book . And none of it would have unfolded without the strong arm of the federal judiciary.

Thanks to the Lawyers Club for inviting me, and special thanks to my friend Katie Wood for hosting the event. That’s Katie on the left, with our friend Chris Smith. We've all played poker together for years -- but that's another story.

Teachers

   "Jim," a woman asked at one of my book talks, "do you remember me?" 

   Her face seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place the name.

   “It’s Miss Neil,” she said, “from Knollwood.”

   Of course! Miss Neil, my second-grade homeroom teacher at Knollwood Elementary School in Decatur, Ga. She had come to hear me speak about “The Class of ’65” at the Atlanta Athletic Club. I’ve done many book talks this fall – and I’ll be blogging about some of them – but this was one of the best ones, in large part because someone who helped teach me to read and write came to show her support for one of her students. 

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   She’s Mary Virginia Shores now and retired from teaching. The color photo shows us together at the book club; the black-and-white one above is our class picture from 1962-’63. Miss Neil is at the back, while I’m on the front row, fourth kid from the right, trying hard to stand out with some silly pose.

   Seeing Miss Neil made me think about all the things that were going on in the South during my second-grade year – things that I had no clue about. While we were sitting in her classroom, Ole Miss erupted in violence over integration, Martin Luther King Jr. was locked up in Alabama and wrote his eloquent “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” and Bull Connor’s police dogs were unleashed on demonstrators in that city in brutal scenes that shocked America.

   Closer to home, the standoff over segregation in Albany was entering its second year and the protests were about to move up the road to Americus, where Koinonia was still being boycotted and its teenagers were still being harassed at Americus High School. Greg Wittkamper, the hero of my book, was about to begin his junior year – and things were going to get very hot for him.

   We talked about all this at the Atlanta Athletic Club, where I spoke in a room facing the impossibly green golf course, just down the hall from the trophies and mementoes of the Bobby Jones Room. Most of the 30 or so people in my audience had read the book, and they posed thoughtful questions.

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   One woman raised her hand and simply wanted everyone to know how much she admired one character from the book: Gladys Crabb (at left), Greg’s senior English teacher, who was sympathetic to him and listened to him talk about his troubles during the worst of his persecution. When Greg’s classmates wanted to reconcile with him decades later, they knew just whom to contact: Mrs. Crabb, who put them in touch with him. She was still teaching her students 40 years after they had graduated. And because of teachers like Miss Neil, I was able to tell that story.

   Thanks to the AAC Book Club and to Betty Marie Stewart, who invited me for what turned out to be a meaningful reunion of its own.

Local hero

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It’s good to see that Greg Wittkamper is finally getting some attention close to home. Greg, the main character in “The Class of ’65,” has spoken at two recent book gatherings near his nest in Sinks Grove, West Virginia. One was a party thrown on his behalf at Salt Sulphur Springs, a historic resort near the Virginia border, and the other was a book club in Lewisburg, a charming town near the famous Greenbrier Resort. (That’s Greg with some of the book club members.) There was a lively discussion about Greg’s plight as a persecuted teenager in Georgia, with one woman suggesting that he would have been better off if he had fought back against the classmates who were bullying him at Americus High for his religious and racial beliefs. Greg respectfully disagreed. As the author of the book, I’m with Greg on this one; it would have been a very different story if he had taken a swing at his tormentors -- less Gandhi than Rocky. The local attention will continue next weekend when Greg and I speak at the Lewisburg Literary Festival in an arts center called Carnegie Hall.

The forgotten Selma

Fifty years ago this week, Americus, Ga., made national news as racial unrest boiled over into violence and death. It was the final battle in the fight for the Voting Rights Act, a closing chapter in the struggle that had begun that spring in Selma, Ala. I devoted a chapter of my book, "The Class of '65," to the long hot summer that year in Americus. See that picture of a column of protesters? The white boy toward the left -- the only one in sight -- is my main character, Greg Wittkamper, who had just graduated from Americus High and was joining the marchers with his friend Collins McGee. The trouble started during a special election for justice of the peace when a candidate, a black woman, was told that she would have to stand in a separate voting line for colored people. For the next few weeks, there were daily demonstrations in Americus involving hundreds of protestors, roving bands of Klansmen, future governor Lester Maddox, future network anchorman Tom Brokaw, and civil rights leaders such as Hosea Williams, John Lewis and comedian Dick Gregory. It got ugly; one young man was killed in a drive-by shooting, and state troopers had to be summoned to keep the peace. How did it all end? You'll just have to read the book. (Thanks to Sam Mahone and the Americus-Sumter County Movement Remembered Committee, which found this photo in an old contact sheet.)