Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 24, 1990 TAG: 9006220320
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV7 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: ROBERT RIVENBARK SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: DUBLIN LENGTH: Medium
As a child growing up in Dublin's tiny black community of about 300, Todd lived in a world that centered on family, church and neighborhood. Her first significant encounter with whites came in 1965 when she entered the first grade at Dublin Elementary School.
"I was the only little black girl in the first grade," she said. "But I didn't mind being there by myself. My teacher, Mrs. Blanche Rorrer, treated me just like the other kids."
In the fourth grade, Todd found anonymous letters in her desk threatening Ku Klux Klan violence. But she said racial incidents were kept to a minimum thanks to the efforts of an enlightened principal, Winsdon Pound.
"I think Winnie Pound was an exceptionally broad-minded person for that time," she said.
As a student at Pulaski County High School in the mid-1970s, Todd said she faced racial incidents more often, some at the hands of racist teachers. Most of her teachers, however, were fair-minded and treated her well, she said. She also had a number of white friends, although these were for the most part at-school-only friendships.
Many school activities were still segregated at the time, she said.
"A black girl didn't have a hope of being a cheerleader in those days, even though half the football team was black," she said. "You weren't light enough. Your hair didn't bounce."
Thanks to the influence of a black seventh-grade teacher, Joe Reed, Todd began to develop a deep pride in her color early in life.
In high school she discovered Malcolm X and became, for a time, an admirer of his campaign against white supremacy and his dreams of a separate black homeland in America, though she never went as far as embracing his Black Muslim faith.
Even today, she holds that Malcolm X was an important man for his time.
"I don't think the civil-rights movement would have made the advances it made without the threat of Malcolm X and his philosophy pushing on the back side of white folks in power," she said. "White people were caught in the middle between Martin Luther King's people saying `We won't budge' and the Malcolm X faction rising up behind them."
As a single parent raising a teen-age daughter, Todd has adopted a more tolerant approach in dealing with whites than in her radical days. But she believes relations between the races haven't improved significantly.
"The civil-rights movement made a lot of difference, sure," she said. "It's why I'm working at Pulaski County High School. And I have white friends today I love dearly. But you go to football games and you still hear somebody behind you in the stands yelling `Look at that nigger running up that field.'"
Todd said she still suffers from prejudice when she visits local department stores. If she wears her work dress and high heels, she has no problem, she said. But if she goes in casual clothes, she is perceived as a shoplifter, and store employees follow her from aisle to aisle, waiting for her to try to steal something.
To protect her daughter, Aisha, from racial hurts, Todd keeps her in a strong support network built around family and Todd's Pentecostal church, the Church of God in Christ in Dublin. She teaches Aisha to stand up for herself when dealing with whites, but at the same time not to look for trouble.
"You have to temper your feelings with the reality that white people hire you and fire you and make a place for you in the nation," Todd said.
Todd expressed some optimism about the future of race relations in the United States, saying that disagreements between whites and blacks are not automatically perceived as racial disputes anymore. She also said she thinks intermarriage ultimately will reduce racial tensions.
Todd worries about the rise of skinhead and neo-Nazi hate groups in the United States and confessed she feels anxious whenever there is a Ku Klux Klan march in the New River Valley. But she comforts herself with the belief that extremists of all kinds, including black extremists such as Black Muslim Louis Farrakhan, are a minority in America.
by CNB