|
|
|
|
||
|
||
|
|
||
| SEARCH | SUBSCRIBE | ||
 |
'Elder'
tells of battles won, battles left to win By
Mike Hudson The
Roanoke Times August 12, 2003
Oliver W. Hill Sr. sat in his wheelchair, microphone in hand, talking to a roomful of people he couldn't see. The years have blinded his vision and weakened his health, but he still has things to say. "Sorry I can't see all these good smiling faces," Hill, 96, said. "That's the one thing I regret - I can't see. But I've still had a very interesting life." His life has certainly been interesting - the story of a black man born at the dawn of the last century in the old Capital of the Confederacy, raised in Roanoke's Jim Crow neighborhoods, schooled in the nation's capital to be "social engineer" who would use the law to attack racism, and trained to fight the courtroom battles that prompted the nation's highest court to outlaw school segregation and open the doors to America's civil rights struggle. Hill told bits and pieces of that story Monday night on a visit to Roanoke's High Street Baptist Church, during a reception in his honor sponsored by a local organization, the Committee for Community Preservation. High Street's pastor, the Rev. Floyd Davis, told the gathering that the idea behind the event was simple: "We want to sit at the feet of an elder and let him talk." And so Hill talked. He was born in Richmond in 1907 and moved to Roanoke when he was 6. He joked that he goes far back enough that he remembers when High Street Baptist was actually on High Street (the church is on Florida Avenue Northwest now). He recalls the city's racism, but he also remembers the vibrancy of black neighborhoods, too. Among those who came Monday to hear Hill speak was Robbie Board, a former classmate. Board, 97, recalled that Hill was a talker even then, a child who argued his points relentlessly if a disagreement came up. "He would never shut up," she said. "I told him he was going to be a lawyer." Hill took a winding path to the law, however. He had to leave Roanoke in 1923 because the city's black schools didn't go beyond eighth grade. > He went away to high school in Washington, D.C. He stayed on to attend Howard University, where he was, by his own admission, a "happy-go-lucky C student." That changed when his reading in constitutional law led him to the U.S. Supreme Court's 1894 Plessy v. Ferguson decision, which said that "separate-but-equal" arrangements in public transportation, schools and other areas did not violate the principle of equal justice for all. Hill was incensed. As he put it to the Roanoke audience Monday, his voice showing the anger he first felt so many decades ago: "Ain't no way in the world can you isolate people, and then say it's only in their minds if they think they're second-class citizens." He decided to enroll in Howard's law school and dedicate himself to wiping Plessy v. Ferguson off the books. He opened a law practice in Richmond and joined other NAACP Legal Defense Fund-backed lawyers who pressed lawsuits across the nation in the 1930s and '40s, challenging inequities in school funding and facilities. They won victory after victory, but the results were merely modest improvements in the still segregated, still underfunded Jim Crow schools. Finally, Hill and other civil rights lawyers decided to attack segregation head-on, arguing that separate always amounted to unequal. Cases from Virginia's Prince Edward County, Topeka, Kan., and elsewhere were combined under the name Brown v. Board of Education, and argued before the U.S. Supreme Court. The justices' 1954 ruling struck down school segregation, creating a firestorm of defiance in the South. Its consequences and meaning are still being argued today. Noting current battles over diversity on college campuses, Hill said affirmative action's opponents "don't know anything about American history and the American Constitution." He hastened to note that there are plenty of "decent white folks" who are working for racial justice, but said "it's those 'undecent' white folks who seem to get in power." For him, that means there are still battles to be fought. He still believes in the philosophy that guided him - "When you see something that needs to be done, don't look for somebody else to do it. You're somebody. Copyright
© 2002 Global Action on Aging |
