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A friend’s daughter in college was assigned to write a comment on a poem by Rudyard Kipling. It was “White Man’s Burden,” penned by the poet laureate of his day from the locale of India where he spent and wrote most of his life. The young student was perplexed over it and emailed me to ask if it was a spoof or a satire. She could not visualize anyone being serious about the so-called white man’s burden. She’s young and doesn’t remember the days not too long ago when in America, perhaps more than any other supposedly civilized country, the white race considered itself superior and all others inferior. The stigma of slavery lingered on after more than a century. There were water fountains for “white” and for “colored.” There were rest rooms set up separately. A person of color was not allowed in some clubs, restaurants and establishments. A restaurant had separate seating for white and black. White people sat in the front of the bus and someone with darker skin had to sit in the rear. Schools were segregated. It was the way people had been brought up even in the first half of the 20th Century. White people who should have been ashamed just accepted the status quo. Black people who wanted to make a difference looked at a mountain of obstacles. It was the way everyone thought it always been and always would be. The civil rights struggle was not an easy one, and it took white and black pulling together. There was a lot of hard and dedicated work to be done, many mountains to climb. There was pain. Some even paid with their lives meeting the challenge of a fanatical attachment of old customs. Recently I researched and wrote a story for a magazine I edit on the Bessie Smith Hall in Chattanooga. She was one of the forerunners of the blues, paving the way for Louis Armstrong, Fletcher Henderson, Billie Holiday and others. She overcame by the strength of her talent the racial prejudices of the 1920s and 1930s. Her death was tragic after all she had accomplished. Injured in a motor accident in 1937 traveling out of Memphis at Clarksdale, Mississippi, she was refused admittance to the nearby white hospital and was taken to the black hospital in the area where she died. In writing the article for Commercial Network Magazine, I met her great niece who had moved to Chattanooga. Joyce Russell-Terrell made history herself as the first black to integrate schools in Northern Virginia. That was in 1961 and the walls of racial barriers were beginning to crumble. But it was years after the historic Supreme Court decision of 1954 stating that separate was not equal before real change would come. Having schools divided based on race was unconstitutional. But the fight went on in courts, schools and public places state by state, city by city and community by community. Sometimes it was individual by individual. Those who believed that being white by birth made them superior did not want to give up. Education, patience and dedication gradually wore down the opposition. Prejudice is not gone, but it is not as prevalent as it was. Going back to Rudyard Kipling, I see his poem differently than the commonly held view. Many believe he was expounding colonial expansion and demeaning persons of color. Some expound the theory that he believed the white man was there to rule over so-called inferior people. The word Eurocentric slipped into the interpretation, that civilization revolved around the European culture. Kipling is like an old friend to me. I grew up with his stories and poems. The Jungle Book is especially memorable. There were his short stories that depicted a world I would never see. His poem Tommy about a British soldier is as current today as it was then. His Gunga Din was a favorite poem and movie. I prefer to see his “white man” poem in a favorable light, that he was not talking superiority to the people of his day, but urging them to shed prejudices and help people regardless of ethnic differences to increase equality and make it a better world. Over the years, I have written thousands of columns, editorials and comments. I never insisted anyone agree that I am right on anything. All I ever asked was for a person to consider what I say and make up his or her own mind. So, you decide for yourself. The poem is repeated in our Poet’s corner for your consideration. And if you wish to read the article on the Bessie Smith Hall, it will be on the magazine web site. You can go to www.comnetmag.com.
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