BACK TO THE DOLLARWAY SYNDROME: A WORK IN PROGRESS

In 2019, Rob began previewing the book he’s writing about what he calls “The Dollarway Syndrome” – the proclivity white Americans have for treating individual black Americans with kindness, civility, and compassion while, at the same time, supporting and espousing political and social policies that retard black progress. In this post, he relates more about how The Dollarway Syndrome works.

I’ve organized the book into three parts. The first three chapters comprise a memoir in which I relate basic facts about me and report incidents and stories that describe the Dollarway  Syndrome. These incidents and

stories mostly occurred during my time at Dollarway, the small, Pine Bluff, Arkansas high school from which I graduated in 1969. Part two explores the connection between geography and race in America and some basic human behavior concepts. It serves as a bridge between the memoir section and part three, the portion of the book in which I offer explanations for the Dollarway Syndrome, what it means in our broader racial context, and how we might minimize its negative effects. Part three connects the Dollarway Syndrome with ideas about race discrimination offered by scholars, journalists, and others who focus on racial issues.

Today, I relate part of a story from the memoir chapters that harkens back to a political campaign in which Henry, Woodson, and I all took great interest – the 1966 Arkansas governor’s race between moderate

Republican Winthrop Rockefeller and the Democratic nominee, arch segregationist state supreme court Justice Jim Johnson. Rockefeller, who won and for whom Henry later worked, vigorously courted black voters

while Johnson reportedly regularly tossed round the n-word.  The encounter I describe with one of my white classmates left a lasting impression because it shook me and represented my first experience with the duality of the Dollarway Syndrome.

Reading Partners

I arrived at Dollarway as a sophomore in 1966, attending under a freedom-of-choice desegregation plan that lets students pick their school. Only a handful of blacks (three in my class) elected Dollarway. Most remained at all-black Townsend Park High.

One of my white classmates noticed I carried around paperback books that weren’t on our English class reading list. He shared with me that he was also an avid reader and fan of the Erle Stanley Gardner Perry Mason  novels

he’d noticed me reading (the popular television series starring Raymond Burr had just ended). For several weeks, this student and I cultivated a friendship based on our mutual affinity for those novels, whispering back and forth and passing notes in study hall about the latest one we’d started reading.

I felt this student and I developed a genuine friendship based on mutual respect and trust.

Unlike other white Dollarway students, he never used racial slurs. We interacted in a way that made me feel his equal. For a few weeks, I thought of him as the best friend I had at Dollarway, white or black. That’s why I felt betrayed by what happened a little later.

A Locker Room Conversation

Besides English class, this student and I took physical education together. One day in October, with the hot gubernatorial election nearing its climax, as we dressed after gym class, he asked me, “Hey, Wiley, you think ol’ Rockefeller’s gonna win the election?”

I hesitated. Should I make known my

intensely pro-  Rockefeller views? I wondered how being honest with him would affect our friendship, since I knew many white Dollarway students favored Johnson.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know who’ll win. I know who I hope wins.”

I hung back, acknowledging the first part of his statement, but ignoring the second part. “I can’t say now who’ll win. It’s close, real close from what I hear.”

“I don’t like Rockefeller.”

My heart sank a little with his words, but I only nodded and waited for his reason. I lifted my eyebrows but remained silent in the moment.

“Johnson will be stronger,” he continued. “You know, tougher. Rockefeller seems weak to me.”

“I don’t know,” I said, buttoning my shirt,

picking up my gym bag, and moving toward the door. “I guess we’ll just have to see how it turns out.” I left before he could say more. Later, I reflected on his last words. They nagged at me.

After thinking about it a long time, really until after things white people said during the 1968 elections two years later, I realized what my reading partner probably meant. He meant ‘stronger’ and ‘tougher’ on blacks. I’ve always believed he preferred not saying that to me, given the time we’d spent together and the decency he’d shown toward me. I assume he knew talking in overt racial terms would jeopardize the friendship. For his own reasons, I imagined he didn’t want that.

Far worse instances of white people engaging in racially insensitive behavior after befriending me occurred during my Dollarway years. This one stung so much because it was the first.

This student and I remained friends for most of the rest of that school year. We drifted apart over the remaining two years of high school. The relationship was never the same after what happened in the fall of ’66. As I saw it, being for Jim Johnson and recognizing racial equality wasn’t possible. By being friends with me and supporting Johnson, was he saying it was? I’d never considered such an idea and I’m still troubled by people who’d suggest that. One thing was clear after that locker room conversation. I’d seen something I never had before. I’ve been thinking about it ever since.  

 

ATTENDING TWO REUNIONS

This time, Rob shares an essay he wrote for a church service on family. This piece looks back at his experiences in the ‘60s and asks that Americans act now and spare their children the pain, divisiveness, and turbulence of the past, and even of today.  

High school class reunions generate many emotions – longing for days gone by,    excitement at seeing old friends,regret about roads not taken, reflection on life and what it’s meant, realization of mortality and all it implies. I never thought, however, reunions would generate sadness and apprehension for my children’s future. That’s what happened this summer as a result of attending two class reunions. Those reunions drive my thoughts about family this fall. 

 

My 50^th

Two Thousand Nineteen marks 50 years since I graduated from high school. Due to an odd circumstance, I got to go to two reunions. The thoughts and feelings they generated offer a commentary on the past, on our times, and, unfortunately, on the times my family may see in the future. 

I’m a member of the graduating class of Dollarway High School of 1969. The Dollarway School District lies on the western edge of Pine Bluff, Arkansas. I attended DHS from the beginning of my sophomore year until graduation.

I grew up in Hope, Arkansas, so until we moved to Pine Bluff,

I attended school there. I finished my  freshman year at Hope's Yerger High in the spring of 1966.

Like most school systems in the South in the 1960s, the

Hope and Dollarway districts found themselves caught up in the battle over desegregation. Both operated dual school systems. Blacks attended one set of schools and whites another -- by law. They called it de jure segregation.

The Dollarway and Hope districts resisted ending their dual systems by using so-called “freedom-of-choice” plans. Students and their parents could choose the school they preferred. This resulted in desegregation in name only. No whites attended the black schools. A few blacks attended the white schools. Only two other black students graduated from Dollarway with me in 1969.

The federal courts and the United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare ultimately decided the constitution required unitary systems – one set of schools for everyone. That fall—after my graduation – in both districts, the black schools and the white schools merged. That freshman class I started with was, therefore, the last graduating class Yerger High ever had, as

Back of Yerger 50th Reunion T-shirt

the back of the 50^th reunion t-shirt proclaims. I remained friends with some members of that class and they kindly invited me to their reunion in early July. Two weeks before, I attended my Dollarway class reunion.

Initially, both reunions left me joyous about renewing old acquaintances and reliving my youth. But, as they say in the National Football League, “upon further review,” I saw things differently. 

I had a positive experience at Dollarway. For the most part,  it

was what high school should be – a time of personal growth, youthful exploration, and adolescent experimentation. I had a few racially uncomfortable moments there as I will explore in my forthcoming book The Dollarway Syndrome: Race, Individual Goodwill, and the Continuing Struggle for Equality. By and large, however, my Dollarway

experience left me with warm feelings. That’s what the reunion reminded me of – positive emotions associated with football games, bonfires, drama club meetings, and track practice.

The Yerger reunion provided pleasant moments of a different

kind. I loved spending time both  with the friends with whomI’ve stayed in touch and those I hadn’t seen in ages. I appreciated learning about their triumphs and tragedies, reminding me of the miniscule margin between success and disaster. I didn’t do high school with the Yerger graduates, but they’re good people who played a meaningful role in my past.

Some Things Never Change

Despite the good feelings, generated by different circumstances at the two reunions, being at both reminded me of something else – America’s unfinished business with race. Both school districts have re-segregated. 

Dollarway, nearly all-white when I started there in 1966, is now about five per cent white, the rest of its student population black and Hispanic. Hope is about 20% white, the rest black and Hispanic.

It happened at Dollarway because whites left for private schools and because real estate developers built subdivisions in far out suburban areas. In Hope, a few private academies opened, and some white parents transported their children to a nearby rural district that welcomed them with open arms. So, fifty years after the battles I witnessed in the ‘60s, America still fights wars about race. The reunions reminded me of the depressing fact a good chance exists my children will likely still be fighting about race at the time of their 50^th class reunions. The battles won’t be the same as those of my youth, or even the ones of today.  But so many signs I can see say their society will face racial turmoil. That makes me very sad. I so much wish we would decide we don’t want that for our children, that we really are one family, and do something about it ourselves --- NOW.