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<text> <title> (Jun. 25, 1990) The Legacy Of Segregation </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1990 June 25, 1990 Who Gives A Hoot? </history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> AMERICAN SCENE, Page 10 Greensboro, North Carolina The Legacy of Segregation </hdr> <body> A bellwether city battles a hardening color line By Michael Riley The grainy black-and-white photograph, taken 30 years ago, captures the fear in David Richmond's eyes on the day he dared to cross the color line. He's the one on the left, the skinny kid in the trench coat, standing beside three other young black men. That winter day in 1960, those four college students broke the segregation barrier by taking seats at F.W. Woolworth's downtown lunch counter. The sit-in shook the sleepy North Carolina city and ignited a nationwide movement to topple Jim Crow's walls. But Richmond says all he felt that day was "scared, scared, scared." Today, as he gazes at the Greensboro Historical Museum's sit-in exhibit, complete with four original chrome-and-vinyl stools, Richmond is not frightened. But he is troubled. All around, Richmond sees an enduring legacy of segregation and wonders why things have not improved. "I would've hoped that things would've been better, but they're not getting any better," he laments. "They're getting worse." Wait a minute. Aren't things much better than they were in 1960? Blacks and whites eat together at the same lunch counters. They work side by side in offices. Black families can buy houses in white neighborhoods. They can shop in any store, stay in any hotel, apply for any job, run for any political office. Since the sit-ins, the visible progress in civil rights has been monumental. So why is Richmond troubled? Because Greensboro, like the rest of the nation, finds itself face to face with a more intractable form of separation that is insidious but not illegal. The laws that opened restaurants and rest rooms have not changed minds, and that is precisely where the color line is drawn these days. Greensboro (pop. 195,495), a prosperous town set on North Carolina's lush Piedmont Plateau, has been a national bellwether of race relations. It was not only the birthplace of the sit-in movement but also the site of one of the most horrifying episodes of racial violence since the 1960s. In 1979 five Communist Workers Party members taking part in a "Death to the Klan" rally were gunned down in the street by American Nazis and members of the Ku Klux Klan. The legacies of the two events are still entwined. Three decades after the sit-ins, some people, black and white, wonder if desegregation has failed. Others, of both races, contend that integration has always been a pipe dream. Still others favor a return to separate societies. Observes Greensboro school superintendent John A. Eberhart, who is white: "The question is, are we going to move apart or are we going to move together?" Signs of separation persist in the city's neighborhoods, nightclubs, gazes and words. A perspiring black man, nattily dressed in suspenders, white shirt and a hat, pushes a mower across a lush lawn just yards from the elite, whites-only Greensboro Country Club. Downtown, as professionals head home at night from glistening glass office buildings, an army of blacks--so-called invisible people--arrives to empty the trash and vacuum the floors. One leading white liberal lapses, unconsciously perhaps, into talk about "coloreds" and "black boys." Despite these fault lines, some people, such as Guilford County Commission Chairman Chuck Forrester, think black complaints about the divisions of race are groundless. "They're taking back more from society than they've given," he says. "We could be doing better, but white people nationally should know they are doing a hell of a lot. And we shouldn't be afraid to ask the black community, `What more do you want?'" The starkest separations plague the most intimate areas: home, church and recreation. Although more black families are moving into northwest Greensboro's nicer houses, the area remains overwhelmingly white. Beyond the downtown underpass, which traditionally marked the other side of the tracks, southeast Greensboro remains almost all black. Several years ago, Ron and Betty Crutcher, who are black and lived in a mostly white neighborhood, put their split-level house on the market to seek a less traffic-filled neighborhood for their young daughter. The real-estate agent suggested the Crutchers hide their family pictures, implying that white buyers would be less likely to purchase a house that had been occupied by blacks. They decided not to remove the pictures and after two years sold the house themselves to a black family. "You have your right to do what you want and live where you want to live," says Betty Crutcher, who is excited about an upcoming move to a more integrated neighborhood in Cleveland. Meanwhile, their present house, pictures and all, is on the market. "If we still continue to dwell on where we live and who we live next to," she says, "that's where we're going to remain." The divisions carry into church pews. "The most segregated time is 11 a.m. Sunday morning," says human-relations commission executive director John Shaw. Most churches, guided by tradition and split by culture, are black or white. But Cathedral of His Glory, a young church whose membership is 30% black and 70% white, is an exception. Maintaining the mixture requires leadership from the top and constant effort to involve blacks. "We have to explain we are prejudiced," says Pastor C. Paul Willis. "We are not color-blind. But it's not a prejudice of hate." About 35 years ago, Dr. George Simkins challenged that prejudice when he ventured onto Gillespie Golf Course for a historic round of golf, a match that eventually opened the course to blacks. Today the public course is a mainstay for black golfers, since no blacks belong to the city's private country clubs. But no one battles that exclusion. "It's like jumping to the moon," Simkins explains. "You know you can't do it, so you never try." Even when it's not a question of race, race is always a question. A school-merger debate is raging, with race the stumbling block. Guilford County residents, whose school system is 81% white, are resisting entreaties to merge with Greensboro (51% black) and High Point (50% black) schools. Greensboro delayed significant desegregation and busing for years, and now many parents--black and white--wonder whether the mixing has worked. "I'm not saying integration was wrong," says Greensboro councilwoman Alma Adams, who is black, "but it did cause a lot of problems we didn't think about." In fact, some blacks even contemplate a return to neighborhood schools. Hal Sieber, executive editor of the Carolina Peacemaker, a black newspaper, calls it a desire for "equal but separate" communities, a twist on the old doctrine of segregation. Sadly, the cycle of division, passed from parent to child, endures, as last winter's tempest at prestigious Page High School showed. A student newspaper poll on race relations prompted an outcry from black students, who complained about inadequate representation on the cheerleading squad and in advanced classes, among other things. Even a state championship basketball team drew fire for its all-white starting five. As they do across the nation, economic class divisions further complicate racial rifts, with wealth filling the gaps and poverty widening them. The average black family in Greensboro makes about two-thirds of what a typical white family brings in, and, while the city's jobless rate is only 3.4%, the unemployment rate for blacks is about three times as high as it is for whites. "It's still a legacy of race, but it's written about more in terms of class," says Robert Davis, a sociology professor at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. Apparent progress has its limits in politics too. The city finally implemented in 1983 a district system that would guarantee black seats on the city council. Today two blacks sit on the council, but since their power springs from predominantly black districts, blacks, ironically, are boxed in. Before districts, black voters could sometimes help defeat a candidate like County Commission Chairman Forrester. Says the now safe Forrester: "When guys like me start getting elected, that's got to reflect something." It certainly does. And what it reflects pains Jim Schlosser, a veteran reporter on race for the Greensboro News & Record. "In the 1960s," says Schlosser, "when we talked about a color-blind society, we thought we'd party together, we'd live on the same block. But maybe our expectations were unrealistic. Maybe we are a separate society." Perhaps whites have been too paternalistic, too insensitive, too impatient. Maybe blacks have been overly sensitive, too defensive, too race conscious. Both sides are paralyzed by confusion; neither fully understands the other. Until the minds meet, the perception gap will widen, and some predict that unless festering tensions subside, violence may again erupt in Greensboro. Even today the Klan shootings linger like a bad dream. In 1960 the sit-ins worked, but today the problems are too complex to solve simply. Back at the historical museum, the ironies hit home. Thirty years ago, David Richmond was a radical. By now he should be a hero. Instead, he is unemployed, ready to rake leaves or paint houses to make ends meet. Although his two kids graduated from college, Richmond never did. As he talks, a young man there with his girlfriend looks up from the display. "Are you one of the guys here?" asks Bill Fox, pointing to the life-size photograph. "Wow." As they discuss the sit-ins, Richmond offers some advice about the color line. "You can choose," he says. "Legislation can't change people's hearts. It takes time." With that, he awkwardly hugs his two new friends and turns to leave. </body> </article> </text>