America is a beautiful thing…
My plan was to follow The Great River Road, the Blues Highway, the Highway 61 Revisited by Bob Dylan, from Minneapolis to Memphis then cut across to Birmingham for two days of NASCAR at Talladega with my son, Eli. Neither of us has ever been to a stock car race so, yeah; if you’re going to celebrate the South, NASCAR! We bought infield passes, because the “ribs are better in the infield.” That’s what they told me on the phone.
In Missouri just before Bob Dylan highway meets Interstate 64, I changed my mind and decided to cross the river to East St. Louis and ride south to Cairo, on the Illinois side. My purpose was to stop and visit with Frazier Garner, General Manager of the East St. Louis Monitor.
I met Frazier earlier this summer and I wrote about him then https://americaisabeautifulthing.com/the-east-st-louis…/. The photo I wrote about haunts me and I wanted to ask him about it. It didn’t go well.
I walked in the front door and staff called for him and he greeted me and remembered me from earlier in the summer and we shook hands. Almost no small talk, it didn’t seem to flow, and then I told Frazier that the lynching photo hanging in his office stuck with me. I was curious about how he managed the anger.
The rage he denied he directed at me, spitting the words that he was “about love” and that he had no anger in response to the photograph, that the photograph didn’t matter, that he didn’t care about the photograph, that the photograph that hung on the wall in his office in such a way that every time he walked in he had to confront it, in such a way that his every visitor had to confront it, that that picture wasn’t important. This went on for a number of minutes until he stormed out of the room. I didn’t argue, there was no point at which I could interject or clarify or make amends. After he left, his sister, a co-worker, came in, initially looking at me with suspicion but nodding with what seemed to be an annoyed understanding once I’d described the exchange.
I’m thinking about emailing him an apology and trying to set things right but I’m not sure about that. I like Frazier and I’d like to visit with him again. The problem could be that Frazier, after fifty-some years in the newspaper business writing to and about the black community, has had his fill of well-meaning white people that speak and write pretty words that change nothing for him or his readers. Or maybe the random white dude stomping in the front door of his office and asking about his feelings deserved a firm fuck off. Or maybe the man who’s been fighting the fight his entire life has the right to wonder where I, the bleeding heart liberal I imagine myself to be, have been for the last fifty years. Or maybe he was just having a bad day. Something to think about.
Last night I stayed at the Quality Inn in Cairo, Illinois, the only motel in town still open for business. They have a breakfast buffet that includes Trix breakfast cereal, waffles, scrambled eggs from powder, sausage patties from powder (I guess) and coffee. Perfect. At breakfast, I met Angela and Alijah, Alijah is Angela’s niece and has a week off from school. Angela delivers school busses for a living. They’re from Atlanta and are on their way to St. Louis. The bus has a gasoline engine and no governor and they’re doing seventy-five.
Applaud your courage and curiosity and determination to learn more. Respect Frazier but wonder how things might have gone differently. Or maybe whether you’re right that Frazier doesn’t want the likes of us sharing even very real and well-intentioned empathy. We have absolutely no idea about his lived experience. But how do we, in fact, ever bridge our divide?
There’s no question that I fucked up in my meeting with Frazier, I’m just not sure how. I was surprised and caught flatfooted by the rage. But maybe my surprise is an indication of my own naivete, of a life spent sheltered by my race. Certainly, within the context of Black history, anger should be the norm and in no way surprising. A few days later, I went to the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. It’s really well curated and what it does is remove the intellectual safe space from the history. The visitor is confronted with images and language that comes not from the writings of “historians” but instead uses language and imagery from the time (lots of horrifying quotes from both Blacks and whites, and, of course, once the camera was invented, lots of terrible, terrible photographs).
Walking through, one of the interesting things I noticed was that while black visitors seemed interactive within their groups, white visitors didn’t talk, we couldn’t even look at each other. A lot of shame there. Very powerful. (I want to write about it but I’m not sure how…). Anyway, the museum did cause me to think about the Frazier interaction and gave me, I think, a deeper understanding and context for the anger. The sad thing (for me) is that I really like the guy, this was the second time we met, and would like to have pursued a friendship with him. That’s not going to happen, although I’ve thought about sending him a note of apology. Anyway, thank you so much for your thoughtful comment. I really do appreciate your support.