The Civil Rights Movement Was Not That Long Ago

You know the story of Ruby Bridges, right?

In 1960, Ruby desegregated her New Orleans elementary school. She was only six years old at the time. I remember reading about her when I was a child. A few years ago I learned that there was a made-for-TV movie about her experience. I got my hands on it, and it was well worth the watch. My daughter Sally is around the age Bridges was when she found herself in the center of a firestorm. I’ve read her the same books my mother read me as a child, and Bridges is her hero.

Well you know what? I recently came upon this 2015 photo of Bridges:

I showed the picture to Sally. She was shocked. She’d pictured the stories we’d read about desegregation and sit-ins happening in the old, old days. I was surprised too, even though I know, intellectually, that someone born in 1954 is only 62.

Have you seen the trailer for this fall’s movie, Loving?

I showed Sally this preview, explained what happened, and told her that the case happened while her granny was a little girl like her. Again she was shocked. And in a way, so was I. It’s easy to forget how close those events really are.

Sally has black children in her classroom. Their grandparents were likely born before desegregation. I have an African American neighbor who is in her 80s whom I just realized must have been born in the 1930s. I need to taker her cookies and ask what life was like, before. Too often we think of the civil rights movement as something that happened ages ago, something that’s ancient history. It isn’t.

Of course, this means many of the segregationists who opposed the civil rights movement are still alive as well. I once overheard my husband’s grandfather, who died only two or three years ago, complain about a black family that moved into his neighborhood, decades ago, and lowered his property value. He was born in the late 1910s. He was in his forties during the civil rights movement. What had he thought of the civil rights movement, during those years? I never asked. One of my own grandmothers was a young mother during the civil rights movement. She lived in the north, and says she didn’t pay much attention to what was going on. But what of other grandmothers?

The white teens harassing the young man at this 1960 sit-in are in their 70s now. The majority of them are probably still alive today.

This stuff isn’t ancient history. It’s living memory.

Both of these pictures were taken in 1963:

How many of the young people in these pictures are still alive? Someone who was 15 in 1963 would be 68 today. All four of my grandparents are older than that, and three of them are still alive. Life expectancy in the U.S. is currently 78.

So I thought I’d look up views on interracial marriage broken down by age range. Um. Wow. Even I was surprised. It turns out that only a third of white Americans over 65 would be okay with a family member marrying someone of another race.

We need to stop pretending the civil rights movement happened that long ago, or that it’s over and done. It wasn’t and it’s not. And did you know that those over 65 vote at a higher rate than any other demographic? Well, they do.

The battles the civil rights movement fought didn’t end with the 1960s either. This picture is from an anti-busing rally in Boston in 1975:

And as you know, the latest battle of the civil rights movement revolves around police brutality. And it’s not just that. Even in school districts dedicated to providing a racially equitable education, inequalities persist.

There are two takeaways here. First, we’re a lot closer to our history of racial segregation and discrimination than we think. Second, you should take your elderly black neighbor cookies and sit down for a chat. Or maybe that’s just me.