Was that profiling?

I’d like to talk about something that happened on the way home from a book talk last night -- something related to our discussion that troubled me.

I was invited to speak about “The Class of ’65” at North Springs United Methodist Church in Sandy Springs, north of Atlanta. After a fine barbecue dinner in the fellowship hall, the pastor, Sara Webb Phillips (seen here), introduced me and we talked about the book and its themes of forgiveness and reconciliation. Near the end of the session, one of the members said that her children were much less race-conscious than older generations and expressed hope that the passage of time will help heal our divisions. I nodded in agreement. Then, on the way home, my wife and I encountered something that reminded me that some attitudes are so deep-seated that it takes more than time to unravel them.

Pam and I stopped by a Kroger store to pick up some milk and were approached in the parking lot by two African-American boys, maybe 12 years old, who said they were selling peanut brittle for a school fund-raiser. We found it odd that they were doing that at 8:45 p.m., but they were polite and had a clipboard to write down orders, so we came away thinking that maybe it was all legit. 

As we approached the store, two white women who looked to be college-age motioned us over and asked what those boys were doing. 

"They said they were selling peanut brittle for a school project," I said. 

"Well," one of them replied, "I had my car window broken the other night, and I just didn't want to deal with that again.

Pam and I glanced at each other knowingly and walked on.

I don’t blame the young women for being suspicious of someone selling candy in a parking lot after dark. I mean, we were. But to see two black kids like that and immediately think about your car having been vandalized -- some people would call that racial profiling. It’s a good example of the tribal assumptions we all make in our day-to-day lives. This is the hard part, people: facing our attitudes honestly and dealing with them.

Maybe we can discuss it at my next book talk. 

 

A book festival reunion

You usually run into people you know at book festivals, but the one I did this past weekend felt more like a mini-reunion.

It started when a former editor of mine invited me to speak about “The Class of ’65” at the first-ever Allatoona Book Festival in Acworth, northwest of Atlanta. Since we worked together at the AJC, Ellen Kennerly has become executive director of the Acworth Cultural Arts Center, the group that staged the event. That’s her on the right in the photo. The person on the left is another Ellen -- Ellen Ward of the FoxTale Book Shoppe in Woodstock, who was a classmate of mine at Avondale High School. 

There’s more: The picture was taken by Teresa Weaver, another editor of mine, who was also on the program because of her long tenure as book critic at the AJC. She came to the festival with Valerie Boyd, another former colleague of ours, who was on a panel to share her experiences as a successful biographer of Zora Neale Hurston.

Not done yet: The speaker before me was an old friend, author Eric Haney, who came with his wife, Dianna Edwards, another former AJCer. And when I took the podium, I looked out and saw Brian O’Shea, yet another former newspaper colleague. (Rest assured, there were many people in the audience I had not worked with or gone to school with.)

It was nice to see so many familiar faces. After my presentation, we had a lively question-and-answer session about the book’s themes of forgiveness and reconciliation -- and the limits thereof -- and we talked about the state of race relations in America. All in all, it reminded me of some of the difficult but important discussions we used to have during story meetings at the newspaper.

Thanks for inviting me, Ellen, and good luck to the Allatoona Book Festival. We need more book festivals in Georgia.

Finding forgiveness in God's country

When I was working on “The Class of ’65,” I learned about Al and Carol Henry, an outcast minister and his wife who moved to Koinonia with their family in 1965, the year Greg Wittkamper graduated from Americus High. I later heard that their youngest daughter, Cindy Henry McMahon, had completed a memoir about her family’s colorful and painful journey, “Fresh Water from Old Wells.” I had the pleasure of meeting Cindy last weekend at the Carolina Mountains Literary Festival in Burnsville, near Asheville, where we both made presentations and then did a program together. I’d like to tell you a little about her story.

Cindy was born in 1966 at Koinonia, a year after her father lost his pastorate in Birmingham because he had participated in the Selma voting rights march and other civil rights activism. The family came to Koinonia to lick its wounds and restore its spirit. Things didn’t quite work out that way. While they were living at the farm, Cindy’s father began to show signs of bipolar disorder. He became violent toward their mother and eventually abandoned the family to become something of a hobo. Carol and her daughters scraped by in Atlanta and then settled in Celo, a Quaker community in the shadow of Mount Mitchell, N.C., where they finally found peace and acceptance.

In our joint session, Cindy and I talked about the themes of forgiveness in our books: how she had to come to terms with her father, how Greg reconciled with the classmates who had shunned and harassed him in high school. Forgiveness, we agreed, does not mean forgetting or pretending that some wrong never happened. It’s something you do for you. Anger, Cindy said, paraphrasing a Buddhist proverb, is like a hot coal you clutch in your hand. It burns no one but yourself. Forgiveness is the act of putting down that stone and moving on.

I’ve done numerous talks and book festivals since “The Class of ’65” came out; this was one of the most meaningful. Thanks to Lucy Doll, Kathy Weisfeld and everyone with the Carolina Mountains Literary Festival for including me in your lovely event. Thanks to Cindy for sharing the stage and for writing such a fine memoir (available from Mercer University Press). And special thanks to her big sister Nancy Raskin (shown in the photo behind Cindy and me) for facilitating the whole thing and for taking such good care of Pam and me at the Celo Inn, which she runs with her husband, Randy. The scenery was wonderful, the conversation was lively, the coffee was good and strong -- who could ask for anything more?

 

Must read

The Georgia Center for the Book has chosen “The Class of ’65” as one of one of its Books All Georgians Should Read for 2016. Your not-quite-humble correspondent is honored to be included in this annual rite of recognition.

The list is compiled from nominations received by an advisory council made up of writers, educators, librarians, media members and others. More than 125 books about Georgia topics or by Georgia authors were considered for the latest roster. Among the 10 titles that made the cut: “Where We Want To Live” by Ryan Gravel, the man who conceived Atlanta’s Belt Line; “Blue Laws” by poet extraordinaire Kevin Young; “Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty” by Charles Leerhsen; and “How I Shed My Skin: Unlearning the Racist Lessons of a Southern Childhood” by Jim Grimsley. I was pleased to see Jim’s name on the news release; we shared a stage last September at the Decatur Book Festival.

There’s also a list of 10 Books All Young Georgians Should Read that includes the delightful “The Wheels on the Tuk Tuk” by Kabir Sehgal and Surishtha Sehgal.

The Georgia Center for the Book is the state affiliate of the Library of Congress’s Center for the Book. The center is hosted by the DeKalb County Public Library and sponsors lectures and other programs promoting Georgia’s literary tradition. One of those programs will be in August at the Decatur Library auditorium to present the latests lists of books all Georgians should read.

It’s free and open to the public. 7:30 p.m., Thursday, Aug. 18. Come by and join us if you can.