Muncie Times, Muncie, Delaware County, 14 January 2004 — Page 7

The Muncie Times 'January 14, 2004 • Page 7

Dr. Charles Payne continued from page 6. obvious significance for me, but my personal gains are much boarder than the obvious. I was fortunate enough to have been raised by parents who were college graduates, my father was a Negro County Agent and my mother was an elementary school teacher. Because of their level of education and status within the community, I always knew that I would go to college. That was a given. However, I had assumed that I would graduate and move to another black community to become an educator or perhaps a high school principal. Becoming a college professor*even at one of the Black Colleges was a remote idea. To become a university professor at a major predominantly white institution was completely unthinkable. As door after door continued to open for me educationally plus my willingness to take risks, as late as 1972, I became one of the first African Americans to get a doctorate in education from the University Virginia. During the graduation ceremony at Virginia, one of my African American classmates suggested that Mr. Jefferson (Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States, slave owner, and founder of the University) would turn over in his grave when we crossed the stage. From there I became one of the first African-American professors at Ball State University, and I believe the first in the Teachers College. I was also the first African American to earn the rank of Full Professor. While I wpuld have been successful in the Black community and schools without the efforts of Dr. King and the civil rights movement, it would have been unequivocally

impossible for me to have broaden my professional landscape without the civil right movement. One of the greatest impacts that Dr. King had on me was his ability to be such a charismatic person and yet be a dynamic and credible leader. He had an outstanding ability to understand, work with and interact with the masses. For example, when h.e visited my hometown of Philadelphia, Mississippi he shot a game of pool, and "talked trashed" while "running the table." He demonstrated to me a principle that my mother had taught me and that is: "the only way a person can guarantee survival is through an education." It has often been said that a true leader is one that does not only have respect from his ethnic group members, but from members of other ethnic groups as well. Dr. King had this ability. One of the significant ideas that he taught America is that racism is something that can be overcome and that it is not a permanent condition. If we persist in seeing only the immorality of racism, then racists will continually hide and we will have no chance of changing them.' We must follow Dr. King's example of seeing racism as treatable. Perhaps the most significant contribution made to America from the civil rights movement is the impact that desegregation has had on the economy. As I travel around the country and the state of Indiana I marvel at the amount of money that minorities are spending in places where they would have been denied service during segregation. Hotels and motels, restaurants, fast food places, entertainment places such as theme parks, and sporting events are only Ynn ?b qotv ot side ad o»

a few examples. I also think of the impact of the money that minorities are putting into automobiles, clothes, homes, and stocks. The above observation is perhaps a significance of Dr. King that is easily overlooked. As I look at the participation of minorities in the economy, a question that comes to my mind is how can this country afford not to have full participation from all its citizens? Another one of his significant contributions is the fact the he left America with a dream. For a dream is "a series of images, usually pleasant ones, that pass through the mind of somebody who is awake." He has left a series of images of the kind of America that we should work toward. A key part of this statement is the idea of images being in the mind of someone who is awake, not sleep. If a nation or a person fails to dream, then that nation or person fails to grow. What is Dr. Kings dream for America? Listen to or read his "I Have a Dream Speech." Charles R. Payne Professor of Educational Studies Teachers College Diversity Coordinator TC 805 Phone: 765-285-5466 Fax: 765-285-5489

Hurley Goodall continued from page 1. women and children, black and white, rummaging through garbage cans looking for food to sustain their families. It was also a childhood that witnessed a time in our community's history that people who looked like me could not be served at most eating places in downtown Muncie,

including the Woolworth 5 and 10 cent store or other places that happily accepted our money for other goods. It was a time when I and my friends were required by the downtown movie theaters to sit in the balcony, in a designated area, even though we paid the same amount for our tickets as anyone else. It was also a time when my mother, aunts, uncles, cousins and all of our neighbors paid taxes to support a swimming pool in Muncie--but we could not swim in it. The most ironic situation was that white people who lived in the surrounding communities but paid no taxes in Muncie were welcomed with open arms to swim in the Muncie city pool. This was at a time when I attended Longfellow Elementary School, where there were no teachers who looked like me. When I attended McKinley Junior High School, there were no teachers who looked like me. When I attended Muncie Central High School, there were no teachers who looked like me. Why? No one ever explained that to me. I guess someone in authority decided that should be the way it should be. It was not important to them that I see a teacher who looked like me in front of the class. When I graduated from Muncie Central High School, I joined the U. S. Army because that is what most of my friends did in those days. When I got there, I again saw no one who looked like me in a leadership position. All of my officers were white. There were noncommissioned officers who looked like me, but they did not actually make decisions that affected my

life. They did what they were told, just like me. When I returned home, got married and started a family, I made a promise to myself that I would do all I could to make sure my children would not have to grow up like I did, where they could not be served in a restaurant, be taught by a teacher in a public school that looked like them or not be able to use a public facility that I was paying taxes to support. So, like many former veterans, I joined every effort in my hometown designed to make it a better place to live. I recall the Delaware County Human Relations Council, a group of concerned citizens who voluntarily joined together to encourage change in our community. This was in the late 1940s, right after World War 11. By chance, my wife was born in Montgomery, Ala. During a visit there in 1954, we met Dr. King and his wife at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, in downtown Montgomery. It was ironic that no blacks owned property in downtown Muncie, my hometown, while in Montgomery you could step out of the front door of Dexter Avenue Church and look up at the front steps of the Alabama state capitol. What a contradiction. The (Montgomery) bus boycott was then in its early stages. We witnessed a community determined to change a humiliating system that required a black woman to give up her seat, which she had paid for on a public bus to surrender her seat to a white man who got on the bus after her. It was a system that had to change because this nation was built on the notion that "all men are created equal and continue on page 8.