THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 16, 1996 TAG: 9606140178
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Ida Kay's Portsmouth
SOURCE: Ida Kay Jordan
LENGTH: 85 lines
``A City Too Busy to Hate''
That headline on the front of The Washington Post book section last Sunday caught my eye. Then I looked closer, and there was a picture of Renie Dobbs Jackson, the mother of former Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson Jr. and a person with whom I became acquainted some years ago.
Dr. Jackson, as everybody in Durham, N.C., knew her, was pictured with her son, Maynard, under a sign designating a street named for her father, John Wesley Dobbs.
The story reviewed a book about accommodations between blacks and whites that have enabled Atlanta to move relatively peacefully to the 21st century to become the most bustling of all Southern cities.
The review noted that Maynard Jackson was much less patient than his grandfather with the race situation. But it also pointed out that the road to peaceful accommodation has paid off.
Having been acquainted with several of the daughters of John Wesley Dobbs, I couldn't help but recall the stories they told about growing up in Atlanta in a family headed by one who was considered an activist in his day.
Dr. Jackson, a language professor at North Carolina Central University who played a mean rag on the piano, was the oldest, I believe. Mattiwilda Dobbs, the first black singer to perform on a regular basis at the Metropolitan Opera, was the youngest.
In between were others just as outstanding.
The daughter I knew best was Josephine Clement, the first black (and maybe the first woman, too) to serve as the public school board chairman in Durham. Her husband was an executive of North Carolina Mutual Insurance and also chairman of the North Carolina Central University board of trustees.
Both Dr. Jackson and Josephine Clement talked a lot about their father, a railroad postal clerk. He was a disciplinarian, expecting his array of six daughters to do well - not only in school but also in music and other cultural pursuits. Most of all, he expected them to do well in life and to contribute to society.
Dr. Jackson said he would not allow her to play rag music, insisting that she practice and play only serious music on the piano. But eventually she pursued her interest in Scott Joplin's music. I remember her sitting at the piano in her Durham living room, playing a Joplin rag that rivaled any interpretation I've ever heard.
Josephine remembered well her father's real concern with getting black people to vote. Feeling that power lay in the ballot box, he organized a system to have black residents of Atlanta save a nickel a week until they had accumulated enough money to pay the poll tax that was a prerequisite to voting many years ago.
The poll tax was one means of limiting voting by poor blacks, who seldom had $2 to spare.
Dobbs worked to see that his daughters were well-educated and well-rounded individuals who could function in the total world. He succeeded.
Josephine was deep into the cultural and social life of the Research Triangle area, comfortable with all sorts of people and bowing to none. Probably the most genuinely integrated party I've ever attended in my life was at the Clements home near North Carolina Central University many years ago.
That was a night Leontyne Price sang to a sold-out house at Duke University, where the concert had been moved from the auditorium to the gymnasium to accommodate the demand for seats.
The famous black soprano was, of course, a friend of the Dobbs sisters from way back - a little younger than Mattiwilda, in whose steps she followed at the Met. I think one of the other Dobbs sisters had been a classmate of Price somewhere.
Anyway, the guests at the Clements party had two things in common: they loved music and they revered Leontyne Price. Nobody cared a whit about race.
Josephine was not into impressing anybody. She invited those she believed would enjoy meeting Price and vice versa.
In some ways, I think of that party as a symbol of what we must do in Portsmouth to overcome racial differences. We must have common goals and common interests that supersede individual needs.
I see that concept emerging in the Park View Civic League, where an assortment of citizens work together to rid the neighborhood of undesirable people and activities. Common enemies have brought together blacks and whites.
While it might be too late for the kinds of accommodation practiced by John Wesley Dobbs and his white counterparts in Atlanta all those years ago, we must try to arrive at some sort of basic understanding in Portsmouth. Because if everybody in Portsmouth is not going in the same direction, we're not going anywhere.
Compromise sometime seems like a weak answer when, in fact, it takes strong and visionary people to see beyond today's politics to a better tomorrow for everybody.
We need to get too busy working on tomorrow to find time to hate today. by CNB