
          The Cold Hard Truth
          By 
            Chestnut, J.L., Jr.J.L. Chestnut, Jr.
          Vol. 12, No. 2, 1990, p. 24
          
          Editor's Note: It has been a turbulent in Dallas County,
Alabama, where the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Voting Rights Act
was celebrated earlier this year with more than just reenactments. A
bitter controversy over white control of majority black public schools
has involved arrests, sit-ins and, as J.L. Chestnut indicates, the
reopening of long-festering wounds.
          In Selma, a white judge issued a restraining order to prevent the
arrest of six white school board members for allegedly having violated
the criminal statute against secret school board meetings. In adjacent
Lowndes County, black school board members were arrested the other day
and released on $500 bond for allegedly having violated the same
law.
          Small wonder a growing number of blacks are now as cynical and
distrustful of the Alabama judicial process as I have been for 40
years. A black teacher protested to me about a "double standard of
justice." She brought a picture of white Selma School board members
taking an official school vote in the office of their attorney. The
teacher doesn't know the half of it.
          For the first time I have some doubt that Selma will survive. As
late as 1990, this city continues to represent an extremely conformist
society as closed and narrow as was the case in 1960. Intellectual
dissent is viewed as heresy and only white mainstream positions are
acceptable. Everything else is "radical."
          Scores of white Selmians are afraid to speak the obvious truth
openly. They quietly deplore and complain to me and other selected
blacks. Not one thinks he or she could survive standing publicly for
the right if it conflicted with the "party line" established by
certain white politicians.
          That is pitiful and a guaranteed recipe for disaster.
          Many things are dreadfully wrong in black Selma and all of them
cannot be attributed to white racism. I have made that point in this
space often and in great detail. Each time white Selma reacted
predictably with an outpouring of amens and agreement.
          But, Selma cannot survive in the 1990s on that rationalizing,
almost non-nourishing diet.
          Refusing to attack the debilitating wrongs that systematically
destroyed the bodies and minds of many black youngsters while
condemning the black community for not reacting like well-behaved
ladies and gentlemen is a sick process. And, most blacks reject it.
          I recall white Selmians in the 1960s claiming they thought race
relations in Selma were fine. I remember their claims that "our
Negroes" were satisfied.
          How many whites would have been satisfied with segregation,
discrimination, no justice, no vote and no status as a human being for
white people?
          Why would any white presume to think blacks were satisfied? Why
would any white person presume blacks are satisfied with manifest
discrimination in 1990?
          We are dealing with a social cancer in Selma and in America that is
more than 100 years old.
          Nevertheless, there is no problem in Selma that cannot be solved;
however, we can't solve the problems running from them.
          I am not afraid of the truth.
          It's the lies we need to watch.
          Peace.
          
            J. L. Chestnut is an Alabama trial lawyer and
writer.
          
        