Under the baobab: Look at history, focus ahead of most critical election in more than a century

I am in Atlanta to act in several episodes of BET’s “All the Queen’s Men,” which is being filmed at Tyler Perry Studios (TPS), one of the largest production facilities in the country and the largest Black-owned studio in the world. There are five major projects currently in production. TPS staff and crew, mostly Black, treat actors graciously with utmost respect. Perry says it is how actors of color should have been treated all along. It makes TPS a joyous place to work. It hasn’t always been that way.

Because of racial segregation laws, Hattie McDaniel, the first African American to win an Oscar for her supporting role in “Gone with the Wind,” was not allowed to attend the world premiere of the film in Atlanta. She could not even stay in the same Georgia hotel with the other stars of the movie. When the Oscars were presented in Hollywood, the same racist policies didn’t permit McDaniel and her husband to sit in the same auditorium with her co-stars. A special table was set up outside. It took 50 years before another African American woman won an Oscar for acting, Whoopie Goldberg in “Ghost.” We have come a long way toward restoring justice, and not only in the movie business.

Recently I was in the office of Fani Willis, district attorney of Fulton County. The Howard U (HBCU) and Emory U Law School grad is the first woman to hold the position. Along with Rosalynn Carter, Coretta Scott King, Stacey Abrams, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Shirley Sherrod and Gladys Knight, she is one of my Georgia “sheroes” who have changed the world. DA Willis is one of the courageous public servants who brought charges against former president Donald Trump and 18 alleged co-conspirators for allegedly attempting to undo the peaceful transfer of power in the U.S.

Georgia, a seat of the old confederacy, has emerged as a leading site of political activism and inclusiveness. Of the five states segregationist George Wallace won during his 1968 run for president — Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi — only Georgia has transitioned toward political inclusiveness. Recently two Democrats were elected to the Senate, Georgia’s first African American and first Jewish American Senators. Georgia sent Jimmy Carter, a progressive anti-segregationist, to the White House. Carter appointed the first African American Ambassador to the United Nations, Andrew Young, who later became mayor of Atlanta.

The private sector with the support of Coke, CNN and others, have also promoted the building of international and interracial cooperation. The full community was represented in the development of one of the world’s most important airports and the 1996 Olympics. Set asides for minority business were established to make sure that the full community was involved. These achievements established Atlanta as the sports and business center of Southeast United States. Georgia, along with Pennsylvania and a few other swing states, will determine the next President of the United States and the political direction our country will take in the future. The election will be the most critical since 1860, when Lincoln became President and the Republican Party came to power. It resulted in the Civil War, the costliest disaster our country suffered until the COVID-19 plague.

Sisters and brothers, it is essential that we commit to turning our attention toward the struggle to save our country. We owe it to the world and the ancestors who have gone before and the children yet to be born. It will not be an easy fight; it never was. This past week a crazed woman poured gasoline all over Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s ancestral home, a national historic site, trying to burn it down. There are those who think they can control the future by destroying the past. They can’t.

Ubuntu!

Charles Dumas is a lifetime political activist, a professor emeritus from Penn State, and was the Democratic Party’s nominee for U.S. Congress in 2012. He was the 2022 Lion’s Paw Awardee and Living Legend honoree of the National Black Theatre Festival. He lives with his partner and wife of 50 years in State College.