Near the end of Black History Month, Terrence Roberts, a civil rights figure from the early years of the movement, made a return appearance in East Cobb.
One of the “Little Rock Nine” who integrated Central High School in 1957, Roberts recounted his participation in that event as part of a lifelong commitment to racial equality.
“There is no present without a past,” Roberts said to an audience Monday at the Wheeler High School Performing Arts Center. He was speaking at an event organized by the East Cobb Middle School Foundation.
Roberts’ grandsons PJ Goodloe, a Wheeler student, and Austin Goodloe, who attends ECMS, introduced him. Roberts’ address, “Hope in a Time of Chaos,” was attended by a mostly adult audience, but the thrust of his message was geared toward young listeners.
The arrival of the first African slave ship in 1619 “set the tone for who we are,” Roberts said in drawing a timeline to nearly 400 years later. “That continues today.
“There’s a very direct connection between 1619 to 2018,” said Roberts, who is a recipient of the Congressional Gold Medal.
Roberts, now 76, ranged between two key Supreme Court rulings, in 1896 that upheld a separate but equal doctrine, and in 1954 outlawing segregated schools, as part of that history, as well as his own birth in 1941.
He was 15 years old when he and eight other black students faced repeated gauntlets of angry white students, even though they were ushered in by National Guard troops ordered to Little Rock by President Dwight Eisenhower.
While “the law was on our side,” he said, ingrained social, cultural, psychological and religious attitudes have remained, and this Roberts believes is still where much progress must be made.
“I was 15 but I knew the truth of the matter,” said Roberts, who finished high school in Los Angeles and still lives in southern California, having a long career in the social services field, academia and now in management consulting.
The psychological torment he and the other students faced, and especially their families, might have produced the biggest scars.
Roberts told about how his mother received a phone call with a false report that he had been beaten at school. The mother of another of the Little Rock Nine, Gloria Ray, lost her job with a white employer for refusing to take her child out of Central High.
“We hung in there for the year,” he said. “Eight of us made it through the school year.”
He credited his parents for “their great strength. I have been so blessed.”
Roberts also recalled a rare white schoolmate who expressed empathy for the black students, and who was “psychologically beaten down.” Going against the grain during such a momentous time took a toll.
“If you do what other people do, that’s not peer pressure, that’s stupidity,” he said.
Roberts was asked if he would try to change anything about that experience, and he didn’t waver in his answer.
“I would have tried to have a dialogue with the kids who were beating us up,” he said.
He also addressed notion that social progress is inevitable, and that Americans have made sufficient progress in racial relations in the 61 years since he became a participant in that movement.
“We are preparing to make progress,” Roberts said, describing the word as “a concentrated effort to rid ourselves of the underlying problem” of racism.
Roberts, who proudly called himself a member of the “Civil Rights Army,” said those efforts continue, because “we have a responsibility to recognize that we are part of the problem.
“Humans choose what they choose to do. We choose best when we know that we have more options.”
After his remarks he autographed copies of his books, “Simple Not Easy: Reflections on Community, Social Responsibility and Tolerance,” and “Lessons From Little Rock.”
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