My father, a civil rights lawyer, shared a secret with me in 1988, as he lay on his deathbed.
He expressed regret in filing suit to desegregate schools in South Georgia.
How odd, coming from the man who the world knew as the legendary C.B. King, Georgia’s only Black lawyer based south of Atlanta during Jim Crow.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
For him, new textbooks, improved teachers’ salaries and access to better facilities were little consolation.
He felt instead his legal victories exacted too high a price, fracturing our community and laying the groundwork for the school-to-prison pipeline we know today.
The wisdom of Dad’s worldview came into clear focus last month for me personally.
That’s when Georgia’s school superintendent pulled what can only be called “a Ron DeSantis,” leveling an attack on teaching Black history inside the classroom.
State Superintendent Richard Woods announced a ban on the use of state funds to teach an advanced placement course in African American history, setting off a political firestorm.
To their credit, Black state lawmakers forced his hand, and with a less-than-supportive governor and state attorney general looking on, the state school system’s top man reversed his decision.
Were Dad alive, his message to Black voters would be clear and unequivocal: send Mr. Woods packing, should he run for a fourth term.
But my father would also argue that Black folk must own their part in a deeper problem.
He would insist we must return to the business of teaching our own children our history.
Let’s face it: Koreans don’t rely on the Chinese to school their kids on who they are and what they’ve been through. Nor do Arabs rely on Israelis for that, or vice versa.
So, why do we as a people continue to entrust the education of our children to a system that, historically speaking, has never had our interests at heart?
It would be unreasonable, Dad would say, to expect Woods, a white Republican from Tifton who spent the bulk of his career in Ocilla schools, to appreciate what’s at stake here.
On the other hand, he’d say, Black folk should know better and do better.
In the case of his native Albany and Southwest Georgia, he’d argue, there’s plenty of content to teach.
In his eyes, his hometown was more than the site of the first major civil rights campaign after Montgomery, led in part by his client, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. It was more than the birthplace of Grammy Award-winning Ray Charles and Olympic gold medalist Alice Coachman.
He’d share the name of Illinois Rep. William Levi Dawson, an Albany native who spent nearly 30 years in office and was the only Black person in Congress between 1943 and 1945.
He’d mention Albany native Bobby Rush, who also served Chicago in the U.S. House for three decades and who was the only politician to ever beat Barack Obama.
And at the risk of appearing boastful, Dad would utter his own name, and quite deservingly.
Long before Stacey Abrams, Andrew Young and John Lewis entered politics, Dad was the first Black person in Georgia to run for Congress since Reconstruction and the first ever to run for governor. And the first federal courthouse in the former Jim Crow South named for a Black person was named for him.
He’d want Black kids to see their own promise in Albany native Osceola Macarthy Adams, co-founder of Delta Sigma Theta sorority, who performed on Broadway and directed Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte before they became household names.
He’d want them to walk a little taller, knowing Albany is the ancestral hometown of poet Nikki Giovanni, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and the Grammy Award-winning Isley Brothers.
That the bloodlines of Cissy and Whitney Houston, Dionne Warwick and Patti La Belle all lead to Southwest Georgia.
Even Denzel Washington, whose late mother, Lennis Williams Washington, was born in nearby Camilla, is a native son, one generation removed.
Echoing Dad’s sentiment, I also think it is imperative our youth know the region’s back story: namely, how Albany became Georgia’s Blackest major city.
They must grasp that America’s primary goal from the start was to be a world empire, and producing cotton and making it “king” was the means by which to achieve it.
It would explain to them why then-President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act that sent Native Americans packing, before white settlers engaged in a massive land grab.
And it would inform our kids why enslaved Black folk were then marched on foot from the tobacco, indigo and rice fields of Virginia and the Carolinas to what became the cotton fields of Southwest Georgia and beyond.
It would shed light on the plantations still in existence and the high numbers of our people who once planted, picked, hauled, ginned, baled, stored and eventually shipped this “white gold” down the Flint to the Gulf and the world market.
Why else would W.E.B. Du Bois dedicate two chapters in “The Souls of Black Folk” to Albany, the capital and the cornerstone of Southwest Georgia’s cotton kingdom?
Why else would he nickname us the “Egypt of the Confederacy?”
And why else would Dougherty County be home to the largest single sale of enslaved Africans in the state and the second-largest in the nation?
Teaching these histories, rooted in truth and love, can’t help but instill pride, self-confidence and self-love in our children, helping them contextualize white wealth and power, and the debt owed.
And what better place to enlighten them than in the Black church, with its legacy of opening doors to youth to foster community uplift and change?
That way, we are no longer putting ourselves at the mercy of outsiders, the state or the party in power.
Instead, we are celebrating our history, prioritizing our children and placing their education of self where Dad always felt it belonged: in our own hands.
Clennon L. King is a historian and award-winning filmmaker, who recently produced the five-minute documentary “How Albany Became Georgia’s Blackest Major City.” He is developing a digital Black heritage trail in his native Dougherty County.
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