James M. Redwine

Integration

An Anniversary

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Just over one hundred years ago (June 1921), what historians consider one of the worst incidents of White on Black racial violence occurred in Tulsa, Oklahoma. An entire Black business district and many Black owned residences were destroyed by White vigilantes. Approximately 300 Negro citizens were murdered. The matter was omitted from official historical records until 2001. As a student in Oklahoma public schools from 1950-1961, I never heard of this event. It is now being included in school curricula. I recently was doing research for this column when I referred to a book, The Oklahoma Story, by former Oklahoma University Professor of History Arrell Morgan Gibson (1921-1987). In an informative and interesting book on the history of Oklahoma published in 1978, there is no mention of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre even though Professor Gibson does include Oklahoma’s history of segregation and racial prejudice.

For example, the book points out that the first Legislature of Oklahoma formally adopted legal segregation of public schools, public transportation, public toilets, water fountains and other facilities. While I have never forgotten living in a culture steeped in Jim Crow formal and societal expected segregation, Gibson’s book sharpened my memories and caused me to return to my frequently sublimated curiosity about America’s caste systems. One of my most difficult father/son experiences I had was attempting to explain the apartheid of my youth to my son who could not comprehend the incomprehensible. It is difficult to explain what one does not understand. I approached our numerous conversations about Jim Crow by relating my personal experiences with it. Of course, my experiences remained almost as mysterious to me as they were to my young son.

I had no explanation for why White society used its majority power to keep Blacks, what we called Coloreds, at a distance and a disadvantage. Why was the water from a White’s only public fountain better than that from a Colored fountain when they were both connected to the same source only a couple of feet apart? What difference did it make if Colored waste was separated at a commode when the sewers claimed both? And why was it okay for Coloreds to pay White restaurant owners for food to go but it was illegal for Coloreds to sit at the counter? What was so vile about Colored bodies that they could not ride in the White only seats? Most puzzling of all was what was so sinful about Colored Christianity that it could not be expiated along with White sin on Sunday?

Well, Gentle Reader, if you did not live under apartheid, this probably makes no more sense to you than it did to my son, or frankly, to me. On the other hand, I do wonder if we still have far to go as a society when it comes to race, or religion or gender or…. I also wonder if such public spectacles as the Sean Diddy Combs trial would be the titillating social phenomenon it is if the participants were White. Does America still suffer from a 400-year-old need to keep Black culture in a separate category from White?

Have we progressed or have we found ways to assuage our prejudice with bemusement? Even our President appears to fear that any recognition that America has need to make reparations is somehow morally wrong. As for that conversation with my son who now has children of his own, well, his daughter’s best friend is Black. However, the better news is, I do not think either his daughter or her friend knows there is a distinction.

 

Honor

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Gentle Reader, I was recently invited to address a group of high school honor students. I prepared the following remarks and hope they and you find them worthy of your interest. The theme given for the ceremony for the honor students was, “Write your own story”.  I designed my remarks around that theme.

HONOR

“Honor Students, as you write your life’s story you really only need to keep in mind a few elemental rules.

First, remember you are fortunate to have your American birthright to always guide you. When our son, Jim, first went to the old Soviet Union in 1992 he found complete strangers would pick him and his fellow Americans out and ask them if they were Americans. Jim decided the Americans stood out because they were the ones always smiling.

Then, when I taught judges in Kiev, Ukraine and Volgograd, Russia and the country of Georgia that had once been in the Soviet Union, people would stop my wife, Peg, and me on the street and ask us about America. We simply stood out from those around us. The reason was we were happy and smiling, but most of the natives were dour and stern. What we decided was that we were happy because we Americans had options; our freedom of choice was the difference.

So, Honor Students, as you write your life’s story never lose sight of the essence of being an American, that is your freedom to choose your own path. Of course, your freedom of choice has always been part of your lives. You have learned it at home and in school.

While I learned countless lessons of immense value in high school, I will share just three with you. The first involved the United States Constitution. Now you might think someone who had been to several colleges and even law school might know the Constitution through those schools. However, my most indelible lesson in the U.S. Constitution came from my high school American history teacher.

One cold autumn day our teacher came to class without his regular plaid sport coat. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt and a flowery tie. He asked us in the class, “Why do I have the right to wear this short-sleeved shirt?” Naturally, none of us had a clue. He called on me, “Redwine! You should know the answer. The 2nd Amendment, you know, the right to bare/bear arms”. And I never forgot the 2nd Amendment after that.

Then there was our principal who taught me a lesson in sentencing. As a judge for more than 40 years I have been called on to devise many sentences that are fair, follow the law and do good, not harm.

I have many times remembered the wisdom of my high school principal who devised a “sentence” that perfectly fit the crime, that is, the football players including me who got into an out-of-control snowball fight during a lunch hour.

Our principal had us line up outside his office and ordered us not to move or talk while we waited for him to deal with us one by one. We stood in line dreading our punishment for 2 hours until he came out of his office and said, “Alright boys, no more brawls, now go to practice”. I have often thought back on this fair and imaginative “sentence” when I have had to make a sentence comply with the law but show mercy too.

Another lesson that helped guide me through several difficult sociological dilemmas involving the fair and equal treatment of people who came before me in court, was taught to me by my two high school football coaches when we played a game against another high school in a nearby town.

After the game our coaches put us on the bus and we drove to a restaurant in that downtown. Now, I realize to you Honor Students today, segregation is like something from a foreign country and a by-gone age. I assure you it was real.

I did not go to school with African American kids until after Brown vs. The Topeka, Kansas Board of Education in 1954 when the U.S. Supreme Court declared “separate but equal” in U.S. education may have been separate, but it was not equal and it was unconstitutional even though it was written to be the law.

My high school integrated my freshman year in 1957 and we had 3 black players, called coloreds back then, on our football team. So, when we stopped at that restaurant after the game our whole team went in, but the restaurant owner refused to serve our black players. Our coaches said, “If you won’t serve our whole team, none of us will stay”. So, we all returned to the bus.

This lesson in choosing the harder right over the easier wrong made a life-time impression on me as to what choices really matter. This experience made a better judge, and better person of me. It also helped me to recognize the major difference between American judges and the many foreign judges I have observed and taught. Foreign judges often refuse to devise a way around an unjust written law, but American judges will choose the harder right over the easier wrong and apply a legally acceptable but fair alternative to a tough case.

So, Honor Students, please write your own story knowing you have the right to choose where you go and what you do, what you believe and what you find invalid.

As Professor Joseph Campbell who taught at Sarah Lawrence College said, there is only one unpardonable sin, “To be unaware”. Therefore, pay attention as you write your story, do not let your life pass you by.

Also, Socrates told the Honor Students of Athens 2,500 years ago, “The unexamined life is not worth living”. In other words, be curious, challenge the status quo. As Alexander Pope cautioned in his poem, A Little Learning, “Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring”. That is, do not be fooled by too little knowledge or those who espouse it.

The poet Robert Frost advised us to take the road less traveled, or as that great philosopher Yogi Berra said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it”.

Honor Students, remember the sage advice of your mothers and “If you can’t say something nice, say nothing at all”.

And most importantly, as you write your own story, always “Choose the harder right over the easier wrong” and your life story will have a happy ending! If you follow these guideposts, I predict each of your life’s stories will be of great satisfaction to you and of great benefit to everyone else.

As Henry Wadsworth Longfellow said in his poem, A Psalm of Life, “Lives of great [people] all remind us, we can make our lives sublime and departing leave behind us, footprints on the sands of time”.

Honor Students, write your own story your own way and keep smiling!”

Be Bold, It’s Worth It!

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Peg’s Gift! Photo by Peg Redwine

Thousands of free people gathered in front of the country of Georgia’s parliament in the capitol city of Tbilisi this past week to protest two new general laws the ruling political power, The Dream Party, wanted to impose on Georgia’s citizens. Although it has been denied by Russia, both bills were inspired by Russia’s draconian statutes that suppress dissent and oppress would-be dissenters in Russia. The Russian Duma and President Putin have managed to enact a series of laws that would make Joseph Goebbels envious and George Orwell prophetic.

Georgia’s reactionary, pro-Russian, anti-Western ruling party thought to run roughshod over freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of the Georgian citizens to peacefully assemble and ask their government to address their grievances. In the case of these two new laws, the attempt by The Dream Party was to prevent foreign support for Georgian democracy and to punish by fines of up to 25,000 Georgian lari ($9,600 U.S. dollars) or even up to 5 years imprisonment, anyone who accepted foreign support of over 20% of their budget for pro-Western/anti-Russian activities and thoughts. These two statutes would have designated such support as coming from “foreign agents”, say America for example. In fact, since Peg and I were paid and dispatched to Georgia by the American Bar Association, the United States Agency for International Development and the East-West Management Institute, those two Alice in Wonderland epistemological abominations might well have resulted in our appearance in the very courts we were sent to help.

Most of Georgia’s northern border is bounded by Russia. In 2008 Russia simply drove its army into Georgia without need for much military activity and took over 20% of Georgia’s sovereign territory that it still occupies. Russia exerts great influence over much of Georgia, but a majority of Georgians see themselves as being entitled to a free and democratic country that looks to Europe and the West for its future. Russia and Georgia’s governmental majority Dream Party demur from this position.

When Peg and I were sent to Georgia beginning in June 2022 and permanently leaving 25 February 2023, we were instructed to work with several of Georgia’s judges, court staffs, attorneys, law students and university pupils with the main goal of helping to enhance judicial independence and citizen access to the justice system. We were impressed with the desire of the Georgian people for freedom and democracy and especially the goodwill we experienced as representative Americans. We made many wonderful friends and greatly enjoyed the people.

In general, Georgians like and respect America and most of them are oriented toward the West and evince western values of justice and democracy. Peg and I were reminded of our halcyon days on our college campuses and our own protests against the Viet Nam War and for the Women’s Movement and the anti-discrimination movement to help Black people. I already had my honorable discharge when I returned to campus and Peg was not subject to the draft. However, we both engaged in First Amendment activities without regard to other possible repercussions, such as cutting class.

Much of my motivation came from growing up during days of Black/white segregation and losing one of my childhood friends to combat in Viet Nam. Peg was and is, of course, a member of that class of persons most affected by gender discrimination. Those are some of the reasons we respect what the people of Georgia are standing up for. They have much to lose personally but they do not want to lose their beautiful country. Therefore, they are making the hard sacrifices and standing up for their own rights and those of all their fellow citizens. And as President Theodore Roosevelt said, “The Glory Belongs to the Ones in the Arena.” We say to our Georgian patriots, if it were easy, it would not mean much. But, since there is much to dare, we say, as did World War II General “Vinegar” Joe Stillwell, in faux Latin, “Illegitimi non carborundum!” Be bold, it’s worth it!

A reminder in a coffee shop in Batumi, Georgia. Photo by Peg Redwine

Sour Grapes

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Painting by Shirley (Smith) Redwine

Aesop (620–564 BC.) was a slave in ancient Greece who told morality tales. Aesop’s fables generally used irony and experiences from everyday life to illustrate their lessons. Negro spirituals provided the same type of psychological relief for slaves in America. Each Fourth of July as we celebrate our country’s freedom from Great Britain in 1776 we honor the principles of democracy handed down to us by those brilliant and courageous ancient Greeks. But the Greeks from c. 2500 years ago and our Founders from 245 years ago were seeking a perfect society, not establishing one.

Athena was claimed to have sprung full-grown from the mind of Zeus and the United States is often claimed to have been born free and equal when we adopted our constitution. However, the goddess of justice and justice in America were ideals not reality. We know there is more work to do and we are doing it. Independence Day celebrations are a good time to reflect on the hard work remaining.

Each Fourth of July our family, probably much as your family Gentle Reader, get together to renew and reminisce. This year we are gathering at the Constantine Theater in Pawhuska, Oklahoma on July 16 and 17 during the wonderful Cavalcade Rodeo event. Shirley (Smith) Redwine has graced our family for well over half a century after she competed as a queen contestant and barrel racer in the Cavalcade. You can see her in the painting she created. You go Cowgirl!

Shirley’s husband and our eldest sibling, C.E. Redwine, is a wonderful professional musician and is coordinating a family jam session at the Constantine. We will have saxophone, ukulele and guitar players of various persuasions as well as singers and talkers. We will not pay you to attend nor will you have to pay to come visit with Pawhuska High School graduates from 1954, 1955, 1960 and 1961 on July 17th from 2-4 p.m.

This same group got together at the Constantine in 2011 when we showed the movie we made of my historical novel JUDGE LYNCH!. That horrific tale of injustice and its brand-new sequel Unanimous for Murder involve the legacy of slavery, segregation and integration in Posey County, Indiana and Osage County, Oklahoma. Those sad stories also involve an Aesop-type irony from 2011. It reminds me of the bittersweet years when we had Colored Folks and White People.

 

When Peg and I wrote JUDGE LYNCH! I borrowed, with his prior permission, the name of one of my childhood friends. Travis Finley is a sports legend, minister and former Pawhuska City Councilman. I used his name for a character in JUDGE LYNCH! When we returned to Pawhuska from New Harmony, Indiana in 2011 to show the movie we made we invited Travis and his wife Edna to attend the premier. As I was up on the stage of the Constantine explaining the book and movie, I looked out in the audience to find Travis and Edna; they were not visible. After my introduction I searched the downstairs of the theater then went to the balcony. There, just the two of them, sat Edna and Travis. I went up to them and said, “What are you doing up here?” They reminded me of what America has been and what it was meant to be when they answered, “When we were kids we weren’t allowed to sit downstairs so now we don’t want to. Besides, you can see better from up here.”

Happy birthday, America. Let’s keep perfecting!