Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 24, 1990 TAG: 9006220383
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV7 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: ROBERT RIVENBARK SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Medium
Beasley grew up in Cambria and Christiansburg. His boyhood was a happy one, he said, because people were more caring in those days, and because churches played a bigger role in bringing whites and blacks together than they do today.
The congregation of his boyhood church, Mount Zion Holiness in Christiansburg, often went to worship in a nearby white holiness church, and the white congregation regularly worshiped at his church.
As a child, Beasley didn't have a strong sense of living in a segregated world because his playmates were white and black, and because "in those days, if somebody called you colored, it was said with respect."
Many whites Beasley grew up with were kind to his family, he said. The white families who lived near his grandmother regularly brought him castoff clothes and other gifts. If Beasley's mother or grandmother were short of cash, they could go into certain stores in Christiansburg and get food or other goods free.
The picture wasn't entirely rosy. Some grocery stores, Beasley said, regularly charged blacks more for food than their white customers and, while credit was readily extended, blacks had to pay up every week, whereas whites were allowed to settle their accounts every two weeks.
As a young man, Beasley drank, caroused and bowled with many white friends and found that many whites enjoyed his company and made him an exception to the rules of segregation.
Beasley said segregation, for all its its disadvantages, had some benefits as well when it came to education. At his all-black school, Christiansburg Institute, he learned far more black history and got more individual attention from his teachers than his children received at integrated schools.
At the same time, Beasley expressed bitterness at the paucity of funds his school received.
The first significant racial tension in the New River Valley that Beasley can recall came when the Radford Army Ammunition Plant began hiring assembly line workers in 1941. Many whites got jobs there, he said, but blacks were turned away and told that the arsenal hired blacks only for janitorial jobs.
"Only job a black man could get in those days was digging a ditch, cleaning the bathrooms, and so forth, and that was resented," he said.
Segregation came home to Beasley personally after he spent five years in the Army after World War II. Stationed in Germany, he grew accustomed to living freely among whites.
It was difficult to leave that non-segregated world after his term of service and come home to a town where restaurants refused service to blacks and barred them from white restrooms. He also had difficulty finding a decent job, despite his service record and high school diploma.
Beasley took notice of the civil rights movement as early as the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott in 1955. He applauded the achievements of the movement, though he never personally participated in marches or protests.
He was finally able to get a job on the assembly line at Radford Army Ammunition Plant after Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Beasley said blacks are better off than when he was growing up, but the growth of civil rights has slowed considerably since the 1960s.
"Blacks today spend too much time living off what those freedom marchers did back during the Martin Luther King days," he said. "Those marchers in Selma, Ala., and Mississippi and other places died for those rights, and we're going around saying `This is ours. This is ours.' But what are we doing to maintain these rights, or better these rights? Seems like we're going backwards."
Beasley is not optimistic about the future of racial relations in the United States. He is disturbed by what he sees on television about racial violence in the cities, by the growth of skinhead and neo-Nazi hate groups, and by the growth of crack addiction and gang violence among young blacks. He blames society for not providing these young people with sufficient opportunities to better themselves.
He is mildly encouraged by easing of racial tensions in some areas. His son, for example, married a white woman.
"I've had just as many whites as blacks in my own home," he said. "My wife, Dorothy, can tell you that. I've never had any problem getting along with white people myself, as long as they'll just treat me like a person."
by CNB