11
“HEY, EDDIE! Show ’em how you can dunk the volleyball,” Eddie’s best friend, Buddy Bruce, called to him from the bleachers on the far side of the Gallatin High School gymnasium. Although Eddie was only in eighth grade and not even five foot eight, he could jump like he had built-in springboards in his legs.
Eddie smiled at Buddy, his gentle giant of a friend. Everyone in school was afraid of Buddy because of his stocky, muscular build. Everyone but Eddie. Eddie knew better. Inside Buddy’s bulky bear of a body was a good, caring kid. But there was also the tough guy. Buddy became Eddie’s protector, his bodyguard. If a bully threatened Eddie, Buddy whipped the daylights out of that guy.
Now that Eddie was playing basketball on the junior high team, he spent most of his spare time in the gymnasium, and Buddy was his biggest fan. One day, when Eddie was just fooling around playing a game of H-O-R-S-E, someone accidentally kicked a volleyball in his direction. Eddie caught the ball on the first bounce and in one or two steps, as though he were driving the lane to shoot a layup with a basketball, he palmed the volleyball and leaped toward the basketball rim. With room to spare, he slam-dunked the volleyball through the net. Watching from the bleachers, Buddy went nuts, yelling and cheering.
So Eddie did, dunking the volleyball as easily as he had the first time.
The other players in the gym hooted and hollered as though Eddie had just scored the winning bucket in the state championship game. “Whoa, Eddie! That is fantastic!” one of Eddie’s teammates said. “How did you do that? How can you jump so high?”
“I don’t know,” Eddie responded. “I just saw the rim and jumped for it.” He smiled sheepishly. “I wasn’t tryin’ to show off.”
“Show off all you want!” another of Eddie’s teammates gushed. “We don’t mind.”
Before long, word got out about the eighth grader at Gallatin who could dunk a volleyball. By the time Eddie completed junior high, although he grew a mere two inches, he was able to dunk a full-sized basketball.
When the varsity basketball coach, Jerry Vradenburg, saw Eddie dunk the ball, he was amazed. “Tell you what, Eddie. Why don’t you do some layups before the varsity game tonight and warm up the crowd by showing them how you can dunk the ball.”
“Really, Coach?” Eddie said. “You’d let me do that?”
“Sure thing. Even though slam-dunking is not permitted during regulation play, I think the home fans will love it.” He smiled. “And I’ll keep the referees busy down in the locker room while you entertain the crowd.”
“Okay, Coach. I’ll be glad to do it. It should be fun,” Eddie said.
Tonight would be Eddie’s first official experience as part of the famed Gallatin Green Wave. The unusual school nickname was initially applied to Gallatin athletes by William Bright Hunter, a popular Gallatin teacher and coach in the early 1930s. Coach Hunter was an avid fan of Tulane University in New Orleans—known as the original Green Wave. Absent any other label, Coach Hunter co-opted the tag and it stuck.
As the Gallatin Green Wave prepared to play the Springfield Yellow Jackets that evening, Eddie dressed in his junior high uniform and jogged onto the court. He stopped near the foul line. One of the team managers tossed Eddie a basketball. Eddie took several dribbles and then leaped toward the rim, soaring through the air, his feet nearly twenty-four inches off the floor, while balancing the basketball in his hands. He allowed his left hand to drop off the ball as his right hand dunked it through the net.
The crowd of Gallatin fans roared their approval. They had rarely seen tall players able to dunk the ball, much less a player Eddie’s size. “Do it again!” someone called.
Eddie smiled toward the bleachers in the direction from which the voice had come. The manager bounced another ball to Eddie as he jogged around to the top of the key and continued on a hard-driving layup. Eddie, leaping into the air and grasping the ball with both hands, slam-dunked the ball through the net.
The crowd erupted in cheers and applause. Downstairs in the locker room, Coach Vradenburg smiled as he wrapped up his pregame pep talk. “Okay, boys, let’s go get ’em!” The varsity Green Wave players bounded out of the locker room, up the stairs, and onto the basketball court to the enthusiastic cheers of the home-team spectators.
Meanwhile, the Springfield team and fans, already demoralized by Eddie’s performance, sat in a subdued hush. If Gallatin had an eighth grader who could dunk the ball, they didn’t stand a chance.
Across town, over at Union High School, Bill Ligon had experienced a growth spurt. The brightest influence in Bill’s life, other than his mom, was George Randolf Offitt, the Union High School bandleader. Unusually pale for a Negro, Mr. Offitt could pass for a white person outside of Gallatin but was committed to helping black children learn music, so he taught all his life at Union. Mr. Offitt followed in the footsteps of his father, a former band director at Union, and poured his effort into developing talented young musicians throughout the Union ranks. Since the elementary school was right down the street from the high school, Mr. Offitt went out of his way to start giving the students instrument lessons when they were young. He often allowed the sixth graders and other “more mature” elementary school students to perform with the high school band, keeping the students interested as they transitioned from elementary to junior high and into their final years in the Union school system.
Beginning in third grade, Bill had been accepted to play clarinet in Mr. Offitt’s band. He played clarinet for three years and then moved to the trombone, which he played from sixth to eighth grade, despite the fact that the mouthpieces for woodwind and brass instruments were completely different. After eighth grade, football and basketball lured him away from the band.
The Union band—well-known in Gallatin and, indeed, most of middle Tennessee—was featured every year during the Gallatin Christmas parade. This performance was the closest any black musician ever felt to being truly accepted by the white people in town. But all too soon, the parade was over. The blacks and the whites were back to walking on separate sides of the street.
For Bill, the band represented freedom. That too could be credited to Mr. Offitt’s dedication. The bandleader arranged for his band to perform in as many parades and concerts as possible, many of which required traveling to various parts of Tennessee and even to other states. The travel associated with the Union band made it one of the most attractive extracurricular activities available to students.
But troublemakers need not apply, because everyone knew Mr. Offitt, a World War II veteran, ran a tight ship. A kind, gentle man, Mr. Offitt was a living example of the biblical definition of meekness—power under control. He rarely had to raise his voice. Because of the respect band members had for Mr. Offitt, never once were any of his student musicians the cause of any racially motivated problems or even usual teenage mischief.
Always meticulously dressed, Mr. Offitt inspired his students to aspire to excellence in performance and in their personal lives. When the band traveled, he required the students to be neatly dressed, polite, and well-mannered to one another, and especially to white strangers with whom the band members came in contact.
Bill, of course, was a model student. He had to be whether or not he wanted to, because Anna’s classroom, where she taught reading and writing, was located right across the hall from the principal’s office. If Bill was called to the principal’s office for any reason, Anna would know. And if Bill got a paddling from a teacher at school, Anna gave permission for the school principal to apply “the board of education to the seat of learning” again. Then he received another reminder when he got home. But Bill didn’t need many paddlings. Between the church members watching out for and holding him accountable and Anna’s fellow teachers keeping their eyes on him, Bill had little opportunity to get in trouble. He was also a good student and one of the more popular boys at Union Junior High.
Bill, no longer a skinny kid, had filled out physically and was growing taller every year. He loved football and played quarterback on the Union Junior High team. He had also developed into quite a basketball player, playing the forward position on the junior high squad.
During the summer, Bill earned $3 per day caddying at the Gallatin Country Club. He enjoyed being around some of the more affluent members of the community, including doctors, lawyers, and other professionals. These country club members not only opened his eyes to a broader world, but they also seemed to recognize Bill’s potential.
One day, while standing on the fifth tee waiting for some slow players in front of his foursome, Marion Barlow, a leading businessman for whom Bill often caddied, tapped the ashes from his cigar against a ball washer. “Boy, you seem pretty sharp. What are you going to do after high school?”
“I’m hoping to continue my education, sir,” Bill answered nonchalantly.
“You gonna play some ball too?”
“Oh, yes, sir. I certainly hope so.”
“That’s good.” Barlow nodded. “Are you still gonna be available to caddy for me?”
“I hope so, sir.”
“Good, that’s real good.” Barlow tapped another ash onto the ground. “You just keep your eyes off my wife, now, ya hear?”
“Of course, sir.” Bill looked down at the ground and shuffled uneasily.
“I know you see her sunbathing at the swimming pool when we take the clubs back,” Barlow said, “but I’d better never catch you giving her the eye. You understand me, boy?”
“I do, sir. I surely do.”
What Bill did not say was that he had no interest in Barlow’s white wife and couldn’t care less where she was. Nor did Bill have any interest in Barlow’s lily-white daughter, or any white girl, for that matter. He never understood why Barlow and his ilk always assumed all the black boys wanted a white girlfriend. Of course, he didn’t say that to Mr. Barlow.
Caddying for Barlow, indeed! Bill thought.
Bill recognized the dichotomy between the way Negroes and whites were treated in Gallatin. His frustration with the status quo grew ever stronger as he advanced through junior high and prepared to enter high school. Bill, an avid reader, gravitated more and more toward the teachings of Malcolm X. He devoured the radical militant’s materials, as well as those by civil rights activist Paul Robeson and other black leaders who advocated immediate change rather than gradual assimilation and acceptance of the blacks into American culture. Yet Bill himself realized that change was more likely to come slowly to Gallatin, if at all.
Bill perceived that although some people preferred pitting Malcolm X’s brash rhetoric against Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolent actions, the two leaders weren’t really all that far apart in their ultimate goals. Bill picked up on the changes in both leaders as Malcolm X became more disillusioned with the Nation of Islam’s black militancy, while Martin Luther King Jr. was becoming increasingly impatient with conservative Christians’ unwillingness to treat coloreds and whites equally.
All of that changed, of course, at a Memphis motel on April 4, 1968, when escaped convict James Earl Ray assassinated Dr. King. The gunman was a devout supporter of Alabama’s Democrat governor George C. Wallace, a staunch segregationist.
King had barely been laid to rest before violence and disruptive demonstrations broke out across America, especially in the South—Memphis and Atlanta—but in many northern cities, as well—Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia. Angry colored people rioted in most major cities, smashing windows and setting fire to buildings. Looting was rampant.
Ku Klux Klan crosses flared in response as far north as Akron, Ohio, where racially motivated riots and fires set downtown Akron ablaze. Police in Nashville and most of the towns surrounding the city, including Gallatin, imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew.
Every evening, police in Nashville and Gallatin patrolled the neighborhoods as well as downtown, warning residents through squawking bullhorns, “Get off the streets. Get in your homes now, and don’t come out until morning. Violators will be severely prosecuted.” Nobody knew for sure what “severely prosecuted” might mean, but everyone assumed that anyone who was foolish enough to go out after curfew risked being shot on the spot. Liquor, gasoline, guns, and ammunition sales were all restricted or banned in town for several weeks following Dr. King’s death.
Fear and anxiety gripped Gallatin. During the daylight hours, people of both races gathered in small clusters all over town, expressing their concerns. Pastors and other church leaders begged their parishioners to remain calm and refrain from violence. “Don’t you even think about repaying evil with evil!” Bishop Lula Mae Swanson cautioned the small congregation at the Original Church of God one Sunday morning. “The Good Book says, ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, and I will repay.’ Don’t you be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good.”
Pastor Daley preached a similar message to the white congregation at the First Assembly of God church during an early service. “‘Don’t let the sun go down on your anger,’” he said, quoting the Bible. “And the Scripture says to let ‘all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander and malice be put away from you.’
“Folks, what’s goin’ on around our country and right outside these doors just isn’t right.” Brother Daley stepped out from behind the pulpit and into the aisle. He was nearly in tears as he implored his congregation. “Brothers and sisters, the Bible says, ‘Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.’ That’s how we Christians are to live, and that’s how we are to respond—not in hatred, but in love.”
As the Sherlin family walked to their car after the service, Eddie was deeply disturbed. “Mama, why is it like this? Why is there so much trouble between whites and coloreds? What’s so hard about being nice to one another?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Eddie,” Betty Sherlin said, as she wrapped her arm around his shoulder. “That’s just the way things have always been around these parts. Some folks want to hang on to bitterness. But just because something has always been doesn’t mean it has to remain that way. When I was a little girl, we never associated with coloreds. Now, I have some good friends who are colored, and I love ’em the same as I love white folk.”
Betty thought of Anna Ligon, to whom she had sold some encyclopedias and with whom she had maintained a casual friendship. Although sometimes Betty expressed an attitude that colored people were inferior or even dangerous, as when she warned her kids to be careful in the colored part of town, her attitude had slowly started to change.
“Truth is,” Betty said, “we know down inside that we’re all equal, and if we have a loving and forgiving spirit in our hearts, we can all get along just fine. You know, Eddie, what they say is true: ‘color is only skin deep.’ Men may look at the outward appearance but God looks on the heart.”
“I think you’re right, Mom,” Eddie said, as he thought of his friendship with Bill Ligon. He wondered how Bill’s mom would answer the question. Or how Bill himself might respond. Eddie looked at his mom and smiled. For all her inconsistencies, Eddie knew that his mom loved God and loved people, regardless of their color. What more could he ask?
All over Gallatin, people were talking about the race riots they had seen on television or heard about on the radio. Whether outside Roscoe Robinson’s barbershop for coloreds or across the street at Bob White’s barbershop for whites or inside Joey’s Place, the pool hall frequented by Negroes, or any of the local hangouts, the conversations were all intense.
“Why they burnin’ up those cities and smashin’ things downtown?” Roscoe asked a group of black men who had gathered at the barbershop. “And why we gotta be off the streets and in our homes after dark?”
“Everyone’s angry,” said Jeremiah Carter, a retired Union schoolteacher sitting in one of the chairs, scanning the newspaper and shaking his head. Mr. Carter was one of Roscoe’s regulars who came into the barbershop every morning not to get a haircut but to talk. He and his opinions were highly regarded. “Dr. King provided hope to a lot of folks. Hope that maybe things would change around here. You know it’s been almost fifteen years since Rosa Parks stood up to ’em in Montgomery.”
“Who’s Rosa Parks?” Willie Murphy, a young man in his early twenties asked.
Mr. Carter sighed and ran his hand through his hair, surprised at Willie’s question. Rosa Parks. “Well, back in 1955, Rosa Parks was a forty-two-year-old seamstress who also worked as a secretary for the Montgomery branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.”
Willie leaned closer, not wanting to miss a word.
Ever the educator, Mr. Carter spoke carefully but with great sadness. “Montgomery’s buses had seats designated with a white section up front and a colored section in the rear. The bus drivers limited the number of seats available to Negroes any time the number of whites on the bus exceeded the number of coloreds. In other words, they’d take a seat from the Negro and give it to the white person.”
“Nah,” Willie said. “They wouldn’t do that, would they?”
“Yes, they would.” Several of the colored men in the shop nodded.
“Well, when a bus driver demanded that Mrs. Parks give up her seat in the black section on a crowded city bus so a white passenger could sit there, she refused. The driver called the police, who arrested her for violating the city’s segregation laws.”
“And they took her to jail for not giving up her seat on the bus?” Willie asked.
Jeremiah Carter nodded and looked to the ceiling for a few moments, as though he were reminiscing. “She was one courageous lady. Her simple action led to a campaign in which coloreds boycotted the city buses, refusing to ride until they were desegregated. Their protests lasted 381 days. A year after Ms. Parks said, ‘No more,’ a federal court declared Montgomery’s bus segregation law as unconstitutional.”
“So did things change?” Willie asked.
Jeremiah Carter raised the newspaper filled with reports of violence following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and waved it toward Willie. “Not much, but we still got hope.”
“I ain’t got no hope,” a young man told Roscoe as he stepped out of the barber’s chair where he’d been sitting. “It won’t be long till the streets are burnin’ right here in Gallatin.”
His words were prophetic. A few nights later, several Molotov cocktails were thrown into an empty building and a vacant house, and numerous windows of homes and businesses were broken near Union Elementary School. Firemen doused the flames, and the buildings suffered only minor damage. But later that same night, a large tobacco warehouse filled with equipment, straw, and dried crops on Red River Road was torched. The 144,000-square-foot structure was the largest tobacco warehouse in Gallatin, and the resulting inferno was enormous and could be seen for blocks.
Sirens screamed through the night. Firemen fought the flames but realized their efforts were futile. With no hope of saving the tobacco barn, they aimed their heavy four-inch hoses at the properties nearby in an attempt to prevent them from catching fire. A number of Gallatin’s citizens stood outside their homes and watched as the warehouse burned to the ground. Other residents cowered in fear, worried sick that the entire town might be set on fire.
“Good God! What’s happening here?” one man cried.
“Who would do something like this?” someone yelled as people ignored the curfew and ran door-to-door warning their neighbors about the fire.
“You know who,” a gruff-voiced man answered. “Those darkies are out of control, and we’d better show ’em who’s boss!”
Local police canvassed the area and quickly apprehended four Negroes, charging three of them with the crime and printing their names in the Gallatin News Examiner, the local newspaper. Although evidence was sketchy, the judge gave the men a choice: either join the army—in the midst of the Vietnam War—or go to jail. They chose the army. Most people in Gallatin thought the judge was being too easy on the troublemakers. The judge and the police felt they were being gracious.
The police sergeant who checked in the boys at the police station after their arrest put it this way, “Many people in town don’t want the darkies indicted; they want them hung by the neck until they’re dead.”