THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, September 1, 1994 TAG: 9409010540
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: MARC TIBBS
LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines
Labor Day, 1989.
The phrase alone is enough to send chills up the spine.
It washes up horrible images on the shores of Virginia Beach. Scenes the likes of which hadn't been witnessed since the civil rights struggles of the early 1960s.
Police bashing people with nightsticks, rioters smashing plate-glass windows, looting. It was the wedge that deepened the racial divide; a dark time in the city's history, and it was broadcast nationwide.
The debacle that was 1989's Greekfest, once an annual back-to-school bash, chased African-American college students, their friends and their checkbooks away from our shores and left the resort city with an ugly national image.
Labor Day, 1994.
It's five years later, and city officials seem to have moved beyond the fear and ignorance of 1989 toward an aura of inclusion.
Organizers have lined up a host of local bands and several national acts to provide a variety of music and fun that everyone of any stripe can enjoy.
When I first heard that Virginia Beach was sponsoring an ``American Music Festival'' that would include The Beach Boys, The Temptations, Billy Ray Cyrus and The Four Tops, I thought: The city has moved to silence the racist murmurings that blacks don't belong at ``our'' beach.
``We didn't want it to be too narrow,'' organizer Chris Casey said of the music festival. ``We wanted it to be broad enough so that any family out there would find some interest in it.''
Gone are the powerboat racing and monster truck pulls that for the last five years did nothing to encourage blacks to visit the Oceanfront. Welcome now is reggae and rock, blues and jazz, latin music, beach music, folk and Caribbean.
Armchair analysts of Greekfest say the riot happened largely because there were thousands of young people with nothing to do. How about swimming, boating and volleyball? The same beach activities that anyone else enjoys when they go to the Oceanfront.
Police tension, their overreactions and sweeping insensitivity led to the city's national shame. A shame some are now too quick to dismiss.
Greekfest, Casey said, ``was five years ago. We need to move on. We wanted to look forward, not backwards.''
All too often, blacks are asked to forget about past injustices, and walk arm in arm with others, trusting that horrors of the past will never happen again.
As much as we'd all like to forget Greekfest, looking back and learning from what happened there is necessary if we are ever to grow as a community.
Yet people like Virginia Beach police spokesman Lou Thurston still get defensive.
``I haven't the foggiest idea'' what caused the 1989 incident, Thurston said. ``I hate to see it brought back up again. We were chastised that we didn't take a hard enough stand.
``What do you do when several thousand people decide to `break bad' on you?''
Let's hope that everyone in law enforcement is not as quick to dismiss an event that was a lot more complicated than several thousand people deciding to ``break bad.''
Since 1989, although Thurston is hesitant to attribute it to Greekfest, city police have undergone cultural and sensitivity training to help avoid those horrid 1989 reactions.
This week's festival has the potential to be a rousing success. But if we neglect history, we run the risk of repeating it. by CNB