Color Us Connected: Reflections on power − having it and giving it up
This column appears every other week in Foster’s Daily Democrat and the Tuskegee News. Given that this is mostly what the world is focused on right now, Guy Trammell, an African American man from Tuskegee, Ala., and Amy Miller, a white woman from South Berwick, Maine, write about the use and abuses of power.
By Guy Trammell Jr.
Power is the ability to act or influence, or to create change. On Nov. 23, 2022, the Washington Post ran a photo of college student Jerry Jones preventing six Black boys from integrating North Little Rock High on Sept. 9, 1957. Jones now has tremendous power in the NFL as Dallas Cowboys’ owner, but has he changed? With only three Black NFL coaches, has he ever hired a Black head coach? No! Not one.
In October 2022, missing Black college student Shanquella Robinson died in Mexico following a filmed, violent attack. Was this widely reported on the news? No! The story mainly circulated on Black social media. Isn’t this strange, since other missing college students like Natalie Ann Holloway received intense, sustained news coverage? CNN's report on Robinson focused on it being a “femicide,” or gender based crime, not on her family’s distress, nor asking the public for more information. The major white press has not used its power to help learn her full story.
In 1965, Lowndes County, Alabama, was 80 percent Black, with zero Black registered voters. Willie Ricks, a Tuskegee SNCC (Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee) worker, said Blacks needed “Black Power,” so Tuskegee students organized the Lowndes County Freedom Organization and registered voters. The black panther was selected as their logo because panthers bother no one, but when cornered, they come out fighting.
Black candidates ran for office. For law and order, they ran for sheriff. To improve schools, they ran for superintendent. And they ran for coroner. Why coroner, you ask? Because when finding a mother’s son in a ditch with five bullet holes in his back, the death certificate should not read, “Died of natural causes.” The community used their votes to obtain Black Power. Eldridge Cleaver, working for Ramparts magazine, reported on the Lowndes County Black Panther party, causing Huey Newton and Bobby Rush in 1966 to organize California’s Black Panther Party for Self Defense. Also, comic book authors Stan Lee and Jack Kirby learned of it and created the Black Panther cartoon.
The Martin Luther King Jr. holiday was rejected by Atlanta’s white businesses until Coca Cola threatened to move their headquarters to another city; then all the executives gave their support.
In 1870, Tuskegee’s George Washington Campbell, owner of the Macon County Bank and Alabama’s largest merchandise business, went with six other white men and threatened the life of Tuskegee’s Black state legislator, Hon. James Alton, for working against the racist Dixie Democrat Party. By 1880, Campbell had changed completely: he assisted Lewis Adams in founding Tuskegee University, and became its major supporter and trustee.
Hmm ... should Jerry Jones learn from Campbell about using power for positive change?
By Amy Miller
I was invited to participate in a panel recently with a friend from Tuskegee who once shared this column with me. We were at a university to talk about race in America, our relationship, this column. We are a white woman and a Black woman, both in our 60s. Ninety minutes into the presentation, the question of power arose.
A member of the audience, a dean at the school and a woman of color, asked how Karin and I handled the power dynamic in our friendship. It was one of the richest questions I have encountered during the many dialogues about race I have watched or been part of. It gets to the core of issues that permeate questions of race and justice.
Karin and I met in 2017, wrote this column together for nine months and then continued to develop a relationship that has brought many, many hours of talk about our country, our families, our opinions.
Our friendship operates on equal terms, we both believe, but exists in a country where white people hold the power simply by being white, where I am privy to some sort of power simply by being white. Just because of this fact of my birth, I can walk freely, and I can approach people without having them fear me or feel sorry for me or question me. I’ve been irreverent to police officers and used swimming pools in hotels where I was not a guest. And that is just the beginning. I cannot give this power away. Some powers, however, can be ceded.
I talked to Karin more recently about the question of power. Every relationship has them, I suggested. With us, however, it is not clear how it plays out. Out in the world, yes, I have the power of whiteness. Inside our relationship, I sometimes feel I have less power, at least when it comes to discussions of race and racial justice. That seemed to surprise her.
When we were planning our university panel, the white male organizing the talk said he would invite a colleague who is a woman of color to moderate, either with him or alone. Karin and I thought he would do a fine job and asked why he felt the need to draw her in. He explained that he felt a white man need not be running the show, yet again.
He chose to give up, or share, this small piece of power. He gave it up to do his part in creating a more just and representative world. That is one of the ironies of power. You have the power to keep it. You also have the power to give it up.
Choosing to give up power is very different than never having the choice to take it, or give it up. Still, it is a beginning. And may well be necessary for progress.
Amy and Guy can be reached at colorusconnected@gmail.com
This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Color Us Connected: Reflections on power − having it and giving it up
