Charles McDew

Charles McDew is our featured speaker this morning. He is sharing his experiences in helping found SNCC (Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee) and all that entailed  in the Civil Rights movement.

The juxtapositions and ironies of his life are incredible.

First, though he grew up in the north (near Ohio), which certainly allowed for more freedoms than the south, still had its restrictions.  McDew’s father had grown up in the south and was a chemistry teacher.  However, when he moved to the north, the only work he could find was in a steel mill.  How’s that for irony?

When McDew was done with high school, his father shipped him off to South Carolina to attend college.  McDew, though, was quite unaware of the Jim Crow laws.  He became introduced to them when he went home with his roommate, who was from South Carolina, for Thanksgiving.  They went to a party and his roommate was drunk, so McDew drove him home.

On the way he was pulled over by two white cops.  McDew got out and cooperated.  However, the cops noted how apparently flippant he was with him and asked him where he was from.

McDew said, “You have my license.  Can’t you read?”

The officer beat McDew . . . just once.  After the first punch, McDew began to defend himself and was beaten down by the other cop.

Thus, he was arrested and thrown in jail.

After getting out, he was going to take a train to the university.  When he boarded, the conductor told him to take his proper place with the baggage.  McDew refused and was arrested yet again.

After getting out of jail, he decided to walk back to the university.  His only mistake was to take a short cut through the park, which was “Open to the Public” (which McDew said surely meant “Not Open to Blacks”).  He was subsequently arrested yet again and thrown in jail!

Can you imagine?  Talk about the worst week ever!

Eventually, McDew became a Civil Rights activist and became vital in starting SNCC and advocating for equality, namely voting rights for African Americans.

While talking Mr. McDew also talked of his father, who fought in WWII, though African American soldiers were really servants.  McDew’s father was a prisoner of war in the Phillipines.

Finally, his father was released.  McDew said that years later his father had told him that all he wanted after his years of captivity was a cold American beer.

Not too much for a veteran (a POW nonetheless) to ask, right?

However, his father entered a white bar in Virginia and was beaten so badly that he had to spend two years in a hospital recovering from his wounds.

Can you imagine that?  You sacrifice so much for you country and come back to it and can’t even have a beer.  Not only that but you are also beaten so badly that you have to spend longer in the hospital than you did in a prisoner of war camp!  That’s insane.

Ultimately, all of this pain and frustration was worth it . . . to finally see their dreams realized when Barrack Obama was elected president.

McDew had a great line . . . how often do you start a movement and work so hard and sacrifice so much (indeed many of his friends and fellow activists were hanged, shot, beaten to death, and bombed) to actually see it come to fruition and bear fruit in your lifetime.

How rewarding that must be.  But at what an incredible cost.

Such a story certainly helps put things in perspective.

And it also makes me irate that some states (Texas namely) wants to pretty much relegate the Civil Rights movement to the margins or totally neglect it all together.