#26-Proud of Where I’m From, but Not Everything We’ve Done
I grew up in a small town 15 miles south of the Alabama/Tennessee border called Athens, which means I grew up in the deep south where race has always been a complicated issue.
I was born in 1964 so I started school in the heat of the battle over segregated public schools. A federal judge issued a ruling in the summer of 1970 ordering my little county to integrate its schools. So my first day at East Limestone Elementary was the first day white kids and black kids would sit in the same classroom. Think about it, there was a time when a judge had to order white folks to allow black kids to sit next to their kids in a public school. I still have a hard time comprehending how this was possible within my lifetime.
Not only that, I can remember seeing separate water fountains, one marked “white”, the other marked “colored” at the courthouse. Again think about that, within my lifetime, there were laws that said black folks couldn’t drink out of the same water fountains as white people.
But not everything was horrible where I grew up.
There were generous men and women who volunteered as class moms.
When we needed a larger weight room my dad and a few other fathers, assisted by us football players, built one. Not raised the money to pay someone else to build, but built it after work and on weekends.
People from the First Baptist church in Athens spent hours in the blazing sun, helping us recover whatever we could after a EF5 tornado turned our two-story house into kindling on April 3, 1974.
It’s hard to believe these extreme behaviors could be true of the same patch of dirt.
“I’m proud of where I’m from, but not everything we’ve done” is a line from a song by Brad Paisley and LL Cool J called “Accidental Racist”. And it pretty much sums up my take on growing up and living in the South. I don't have to reject where I came from in order to reject the wrong things that were done there. I can honor the good while refusing to repeat the bad.
Now I’m trying to take the best of what it means to be a Southern gentleman—service to others, honesty, hard work, and living out your faith—and pass those values on to as many men as possible.
Proverbs for Men: Timeless Truths for Modern Challenges
Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves; ensure justice for those being crushed. Yes, speak up for the poor and helpless, and see that they get justice. Proverbs 31:8-9
Man Law
Being a southern gentleman never goes out of style