by Elayne Savage, PhD
I almost didn't go to see Django Unchained. There were way too many warnings about spurting blood. Sometimes I faint at the sight of blood, so my plan was to stay away.
Then someone whose taste in movies I really trust convinced me I shouldn’t miss it.
It's an intriguing story about heroes and antiheros. Loyalties and betrayals. And of course rejection and acceptance.
The film is filled with delightful whimsy and irony and obscure references to old novels and paintings and movies and characters. Django looks so cool in his round sun glasses (sun glasses in the mid-1800’s!)
Actually, as much as I dreaded the gore, the spurting blood was like watching a ballet in slow motion. Or a Dancing Waters® fountain display. Some parts were even comical. Not to say I didn’t sometimes have my hands over my eyes!
Much of this movie was familiar because it reminded me of my student years at the University of Alabama in the 1960’s. The school was still all-white back then.
Coincidently, just after I saw the movie I read that James Hood had died. He and Vivian Malone were the first African American students to attend the University of Alabama.
This was the famous George-Wallace-high-profile-grandstanding-standing-in-the-schoolhouse-door drama. The time was June, 1963. The place, Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
The movie’s story parallels the desegregation drama at the University. Both are about striving to preserve the Southern way of life.
I missed the actual “stand-in-the-schoolhouse-door” day. I had just graduated and returned to Baltimore. Well, I really didn't miss it. In a way, I was part of it. I had been involved in the careful planning that began many months before.
Knowing that desegregation was going to happen in the near future, a group of student leaders were organized to make sure plans were initiated and strategically choreographed. We were hoping to pre-empt problems and avoid violence. And we did!
James Hood and Vivian Malone headed the cast of characters of this real-life drama and were seen as heroes by the media and most of the country. Many viewed Governor George Wallace who vowed to block desegregation as the antihero. Of course, his supporters saw him as defending the southern way of life.
Deputy U.S. Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach confronts Alabama Governor George Wallace
and his attempt to block integration of students at the University of Alabama.
1963 file photo/The Associated Press. Photographer: Warren K. Leffler. U.S. News and World Report.
There are many parallels between James Hood and Vivian Malone with Django Freeman and Dr. King Schultz, the bounty hunter who frees Django. And of course there are the shared values of Stephen, the sinister house slave and George Wallace, both defiantly standing in the doorway, fiercely protecting what they believed in. Which includes acting in their own best interests. I don’t know if Stephen had a nickname, but called the Governor “Tail-Wind Wallace.”
The Real Heroes
The real heroes of this Alabama desegregation saga are Dr. John L. Blackburn, then Dean of Men at the University, and his band of student leaders. Many months before the official integration of the school, John L. organized thirty student leaders to make and carry out plans, meet with other students, and insure a smooth transition. He orchestrated the essentials and shepherded everyone through their roles. I remember being part of those planning sessions and how impressed I was with the commitment and teamwork involved.
Climate of the Times
Here's a reminder of what the climate was at that time: This was seven years after mob violence took place at the University following the admission of Autherine Lucy in 1956. The violence was sparked when it became public that the University hadn’t realized from her application that she was African American.
The integration of the University took place a year before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was enacted. At the time the white supremacy doctrine of the Ku Klux influenced townspeople and politicians. KKK racism, lawlessness and violence towards African Americans was unchallenged in the Deep South media. However, in the early 60’s the Klan and their sympathizers began to realize integration was inevitable. They wouldn’t be able to stop it.
And they were scared. And desperate. And dangerous.
In September, 1962, the editorial staff of the University’s newspaper, the Crimson White, wrote an editorial titled ‘If I Had a Bell,’ supporting James Meredith entering The University of Mississippi at Oxford, Mississippi. It began with the words of an American Folk Song:
“If I had a bell, I’d ring it in the morning,
I’d ring it in the evening
All over this land.
I’d ring out justice,
I’d ring out freedom,
I’d ring out love for my brother and my sister,
All over this land.”
And it ended with "There was no need to send to Oxford this week to see what bell rang. It wasn't the bell of justice and freedom: it rang for you and me."
Melvin Meyer, the editor of the Crimson White, didn’t write that editorial, However, because he was Jewish, he took the brunt of the Klan’s vengeance: His fraternity brothers received threatening phone calls and a 14-foot cross was burned on their front lawn. The newspaper staff received anti-Semitic hate mail. The University made sure he had armed guards.
Interestingly, it was the burning of this cross and intimidation by the Klan that led Joe Levin, a fraternity brother, to become a civil rights activist attorney.. “Once my eyes were opened, I couldn't ignore others who were persecuted around me.”
In 1971 Levin started the Southern Poverty Law Center with Morris Dees, which as you may know has prosecuted the Klan and other hate groups over the years.
The Imperial Wizard of the KKK, Robert Shelton, who also lived in Tuscaloosa, directed violence toward other Jewish students as well. As a scare tactic, my sorority house was broken into, requiring round the clock campus police protection. Threats of violence were made just before an upcoming pep rally and school officials asked us not to wear our fraternity or sorority pins in public.
In other words, unless we became invisible our lives were in danger. It was a scary time.
Two months earlier, in April, 1963, Birmingham Police Commissioner Bull Conner, used fire-hoses and attack dogs against peaceful demonstrators including children.
To counter George Wallace standing in the schoolhouse door and initially blocking the entrance for the first two African American students, President John F. Kennedy sent Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach and federalized National Guard troops. Vivian Malone and James Hood were escorted into Foster Auditorium to register without incident. On June 11, 1963 the University of Alabama was officially integrated.
Vivian Malone and James Hood emerge from Foster Auditorium as officially registered students
at the University of Alabama on June 11, 1963. File photo/The Associated Pres
But there were those in the Deep South who felt threatened and scared. They became even more dangerous. Late that same night African American activist Medgar Evers was assassinated in front of his home in Jackson, Mississippi.
Evers had been involved in the efforts to overturn segregation at Ole Miss.
Three months later on September 15th, just after the desegregation of Birmingham’s schools, four young African American girls died in the bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.
Mirror Images
Watching Django Unchained, I was repeatedly reminded of those Alabama tragedies. There is a very funnyscene of vigilantes with sloppily cut eyeholes in the pillowcases over their heads Yet even while I was laughing, memories of those terrifying early experiences with the Klu Klux Klan came flooding back.
Here’s another Django Unchained scene parallel to events occurring in Alabama: The house slave, Stephen, tries desperately and sinisterly to protect his master's way of life and keep his own power in the household from eroding. Stephen, like George Wallace, symbolically stood in the door, showing unflinching loyalty to his master.
Years later, when I visited Alabama, I had a chance to hear the backstory of the integration drama from John L. and some of those 60’s student leaders. John Clements shared some amusing and poignant stories about how he made sure Malone and Hood got into classes even though they were already full!
I learned information I never knew about how things were choreographed down to minute details. How the gang of 30 combed the campus and removed any debris that might be used to hurl at Malone and Hood. How John L. had prepared both Malone and Hood in advance of their enrollment. How they had student companions flanking them at all times. How the Student Government President, invited James Hood to sit at his table in the cafeteria, welcoming him, and hoping others would do the same. This leader was Donald Stewart, who later became an Alabama attorney and a Democratic US Senator.
Fade Out
James Hood was the last of the headliners of that schoolhouse door drama:
• George Wallace died in 1998. Toward the end of his life, he apologized for his segregationist stand at the University of Alabama.
• Vivian Malone Jones became the first African American student to graduate from the University. She became Director of Civil Rights and Urban Affairs and was appointed Director of Environmental Justice for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In 1996 she was the recipient of the Lurleen B. Wallace Award of Courage. George Wallace declared at the ceremony: "Vivian Malone Jones was at the center of the fight over states' rights and conducted herself with grace, strength and, above all, courage." Her brother-in-law. Eric Holder, Jr., is the current U.S. Attorney General.
She died of stroke complications in 2005 at the age of 63.
• John L. Blackburn died in 2009. He was a nationally renowned leader in higher education and founder of the Blackburn Institute, a leadership development organization at the University.
John L. was my personal hero and inspiration. I traveled to Tuscaloosa where I was privileged to speak at his Memorial service.
• History will recall that James Hood and Vivian Malone enrolled at the University of Alabama in1963, but Hood left after only two months saying he wanted to avoid “a complete mental and physical breakdown.”
Non-acceptance, harassment and disrespect probably played a major role in his premature departure.
He earned a bachelor’s degree from Wayne State University in Detroit and returned to The University of Alabama to earn a doctorate in higher education in 1997.
Hood retired in 2002 as chairman of public safety services in charge of police and fire training in Madison, Wisconsin and returned to live in Gadsden, Alabama until his death.
When George Wallace died in June 1998, James Hood traveled from his home in Madison, Wis., to attend the funeral in Montgomery, Alabama.
Compassion vs. Revenge
It looks like there was much to be said for turning the other cheek by the headliners in the Alabama drama. Not so much for the main characters in Django Unchained – who dish out super heavy doses of revenge.
© Elayne Savage, PhD
Many thanks to my brother, Lee Raskin for his research in writing this.
Elayne Savage is the author of ground-breaking relationship books published in 9 languages.
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