Some Things Never Change
 

A friend of mine who lives in Athens, Georgia, home of our great University of Georgia, forwarded me the following piece from the local paper:
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Partisan History
Spoken Here
After 34 years of college teaching, I thought I had heard just about every imaginable student complaint. Last week, however, a freshman in my 300-seat "U.S. History Since 1865" course came in to discuss her exam with one of the graders and proceeded to work herself into a semi-hissy over the fact that we had spent four class periods (one of them consisting of a visit from MLK biographer Taylor Branch) discussing the Civil Rights Movement. "I don't know where he's getting all of this," she complained, "we never discussed any of this in high school." One might have let the matter rest here as simply an example of a high school history teacher's sins of omission being visited on the hapless old history prof had the student not informed the T.A. in an indignant postscript, "I'm not a Democrat! I don't think I should have to listen to this stuff!"----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, considering that UGA did not allow a Black student to take a college class at its institution until 1961, we should not be surprised by the above student's incredulity at having to hear about the Civil Rights Movement.
When the first Black students arrived for class in 1961, they were met by students chanting, "Two-four-six-eight, we don 't want to integrate."

http://www.wildfreshness.com/brian/archives/uga.jpg
Hamilton Holmes and Charlayne Hunter; the first Black students at the University of Georgia

WOW! The South shall rise again - or else go under if this girl's bigotry is any example of the newest generation of kids coming up in the South. Of course, I'm sure there was nothing racial in the girl's complaint. She's just a staunch Republican. :right:

To hell with Georgia!

Athens is a backwards-ass place. The only good thing to come out of it is 316.

Hey! I'm from Georgia!!

But yeah, it's got some issues. Ok, a lot of issues.

I'm constantly amazed by how, whenever there is a massive nationwide moral debate, the "Bible Belt" has been vehemently on the wrong side. Maybe because most of our nationwide moral debates have been race related, but still.

Georgia Baggage
 

Desegregation was especially threatening to most Georgians (and The South) as they needed Blacks to be "in their place" in order to help maintain their own level of self esteem. And just the idea of "race mixing" was (and often still is) a major threat. Most of that fear is from White Southern Male insecurity regarding control of their women and their own sexual performance as compared to Black men. Castration was a common post-lynching act. Very symbolic indeed.

Yep, there were whole groups of men living in poverty with 3rd grade education who felt they at least were guaranteed to have someone lower in the social pecking order.