As bleak as the Ahmaud Arbery murder was, and as much as the guilty verdicts for his murderers was an exhale-worthy relief, there are a few lights to be thankful for on this Thanksgiving. James Fallows recounts an effort in Pensacola to come to grips with darkness in the city’s past.
Specifically, a celebrated business, political, and cultural figure of the last century, TT Wentworth, recently was proven to be a local Klan leader. The story, Fallows observes, “resembles many other ‘open secrets’ of many other American communities.” What’s hopeful are efforts to acknowledge this history and no longer deny it.
“Their example can inform other American efforts to acknowledge our racial and racist past,” Fallows writes.
Two presentations from an “Acknowledgement and Lamentation” event publicly acknowledging this past caught Fallows’s attention:
The first of these presentations was the official Acknowledgement statement from the Wentworth Historical Foundation, as read by Sharon Yancey. Nearly all members of the Foundation’s leadership and of the extended Wentworth family signed on in support of this statement about what their forebear had stood for and done.
The statement is long, and I have included it in full at the bottom of the post. It deserves study for its unflinching clarity and directness. Yancey said that her family’s commitment and responsibility was to “excavate the truth, acknowledge the truth, and work with community leaders to do the work of restoration, as warranted.” The rest of the statement spelled out just what that would mean.
There was no rationalizing language—“but those were different times,” or “how could they have known.” No shrinking from the generations-long effects of abuses and inequities. For instance: “if you or your ancestors did not receive the education you deserved because a local Klan leader before TT served as superintendent of public schools, you have been dealt out of the promise of what is possible in America and Pensacola.”
There was no flinching from the involvement of state and local government, religious leaders, and business people in enforcing “white supremacy [as] a defining part of Pensacola’s past.”
“We grieve and we grieve deeply,” she said near the end. “Forgive us.”
It is worth careful reading, and reflection.
‘Today, a better story’
The other presentation I want to mention was from Rev. Freddie Tellis, pastor of the Allen Chapel AME Church in Pensacola.
Early on he expressed his respect and admiration to one of the best-known heroes of Pensacola’s civil rights struggles, who was in the front row for the ceremonies. This was the Rev. H.K. Matthews, a Korean War veteran who was ordained as an AME minister 60 years ago and then led protests, marches, and movements in western Florida and Alabama. A public park in Pensacola has been named for him.
Rev. Tellis told his personal version of the injustices the Wentworth family had acknowledged, starting with his having to drink from the “colored” water fountain at Pensacola’s downtown old Sears and Roebuck store. “I also saw stores where they had three restrooms,” he said. “White men. White women. Colored.”
Where Yancey’s reading of her family’s statement had been quietly intense, Rev. Tellis built the crowd into AME-style call and response. It was particularly powerful in its coda. I’ve posted a somewhat scratchy audio of this section in an accompanying post, which I’ll link to below. But here is the part I want to emphasize, for its rhetorical structure and meaning.
After an unsparing account of racial injustice through his lifetime, Rev. Tellis engaged the crowd to answer him:
All that I’ve said is in the past, and the present. But today—Somebody say “today.” [Crowd response, after a beat: “Today!”]
But today, here in the so-called city of five flags, we start a better story.
Today [crowd answer more promptly, and louder, “Today!”], here in the home of emerald waters, we start a better story.
Today [“TODAY!!”] in the place of sugar-white sands we start a better story.
Today [“TODAY!!”—and the crowd is in the rhythm now, playing its part through the rest of the passage] we start a new paradigm.
Today [“TODAY!!”], we start a shift in a way things have always been…
Today [“TODAY!!”], with the courage, bravery, audacity, resolve, resolution and determination of the Wentworth family, we start a better story.
Today [“TODAY!!”] we will start a movement that will be an example to Florida, America and the entire world.
There is more at the link, including links to Pensacola News-Journal investigations and an audio recording of Rev. Tellis’s “today” speech.