“Sometimes I think I wouldn’t have gone out and done all that marchingif I realized how much we were going to lose,” said (Mayor) McCrory, 61, whoparticipated in civil rights protests as a young woman.
Hobson City grew to about 1,500 people by the mid-1900s, with restaurants, laundries, stores, a skating rink and other businesses. The town was poor, but had a vibrant culture centered on the all-black vocational school.
“It was never a rich town, but it was a good place to raise children,” said Mayor Alberta McCrory.
Federal anti-poverty money flowed to Hobson City in the 1960s, and federal aid helped build a modern municipal complex in the 1970s. But in an ironic twist, McCrory said, the end of racial segregation sent the city into a tailspin around the same time. “Sometimes I think I wouldn’t have gone out and done all that marching if I realized how much we were going to lose,” said McCrory, 61, who participated in civil rights protests as a young woman.*
The all-black Calhoun County Training School became an integrated elementary school in 1972, and fair housing laws meant blacks could live elsewhere. Many who could afford to move away did so, costing Hobson City hundreds of residents.
* It stands to reason: had the equality fanatics in the federal government and the Frankfurt School disciples ensconced in the universities minded their own business, cities like Hobson, Ala could today very well be vibrant all-black communities. — Ed.
“African-Americanshave, unfortunately, constituted a permanent underclass in this countryfor hundreds of years. Certainly, they were brought here in bondage andheld in involuntary servitude for hundreds of years as well. After thatservitude was ended, they were still subjected to apartheid and werenot accorded full status as citizens until forty years ago. Over thepast forty years, our government and dozens of private organizationshave tried to put things right in a variety of ways — generousscholarship programs, head start, affirmative action, earlyintervention and the investment of untold trillions of dollars. Yet,after all of this effort, the living conditions of the average blackchild are actually worse than they were 40 years ago. Back in1960, one-fifth of black children were born out of wedlock; whereastoday, it is more than half. There can be no more telling example of apolicy that not merely fails to achieve its stated objectives, butmakes matters materially worse, and at a terrible cost in terms ofhuman misery.
[snip]
Let’s go back to whatculture does: it holds and nurtures the people who developed it,emphasizing their strengths and compensating for their weaknesses. Whenthe Africans were brought to this continent in chains, they were notonly stripped of their human dignity, but their culture.Stripped of their culture, even after being freed of their shackles,they are still immersed in a culture that co-evolved with Europeansrather than Africans; and as a result the culture is not merelyunsuitable for most people of African ancestry, but downright poisonous.
And THAT is why African-Americans are doing worse in practicallyevery category AFTER the races were integrated than they were before.Think about that a second. Living under an ostentatiously apartheidsystem that regarded them as less-than-human, where blacks had theirown schools, their own colleges, their own churches, their own socialstructures and so forth – blacks had stronger marriages, lower crimeand in many cases higher academic achievement than they do today.African-Americans didn’t somehow become less intelligent today thanthey were 80 years ago. IQ scores are not the explanation.European-Americans didn’t somehow become more “racist” than we were 80years ago — if anything, we have become way less racist. The majorchange that occurred was INTEGRATING blacks into white culture. It wasjust like handing Superman a rod of kryptonite.”– John Young, The New Racial Conciousness