opinion
In my professional career at the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, General Tire and Rubber Company and the Chrysler Corporation, some of the finest men and women I ever worked with were African American. They were smart, hard-working, determined individuals.
At my level as director and vice president of three Fortune 500 companies, I was fortunate enough to see first hand the capabilities of educated and aggressive Black Americans, and it was a fantastic experience for a person who grew up in the segregated South.
I never heard my mother or father utter a racist remark, and I was too busy fighting my own demons to be concerned with racism, being a son of a blue-collar worker living on the wrong side of the river. We were not poor, but expenditures were limited.
When I crossed the river to attend Gadsden High School, I was amazed that downtown kids wore a different shirt every school day, while I had only two shorts in total. I soon solved the clothes problem by getting a job with the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, a grocery chain, as a sack boy. I worked for the chain until graduating from high school, and my senior year I was voted Best Dressed in my class, a distinction that gave me much pleasure.
I can’t recollect when I first confronted the horrific treatment of African Americans in the United States, but I remember a term paper I wrote for partial fulfillment of the requirements in Political Science 419.
The paper was presented to Dr. Edward C. Williamson at Auburn University and began with a quote: “The way to control the Negro is to whip him when he does not obey without it, and another way is never to pay him more wages than is actually necessary to buy food and clothing.”
These heinous words actually were spoken to a crowd of cheering Mississippians by W.K. Vardaman, U.S. Senator from the state, who held office from 1913 to 1919. They clearly point out the dominant attitude of the South toward African Americans.
I believe the latter part of the statement concerning wages was the most successful tool of racists in their complete subjugation of African Americans in the South during the Jim Crow era. By keeping them penniless and living in poverty and squalor, Southern racists broke their will and destroyed any hope they might have had for an improved station in life.
I continued in the term paper: “Today, however, times are changing. The racists still have a grip on the people, but this writer believes as the Negro becomes a more dominant force in the economy of the nation, the fact he is a Negro will become less and less a factor in his struggle for equality. In the following pages this writer will pursue the effects that might be expected from the acceptance of the Negro by the business world and the subsequent results of the purchasing power and new found power of the ballot.”
I received an “A” for the paper — and I was right in my belief that buying power would be a catalyst to a better life for African Americans, as evidenced by the Montgomery bus boycott, a political and social protest against the city’s policy of racial segregation in its public transportation system.
The boycott lasted 381 days and was finally successful with the Supreme Court upholding a lower court’s ruling that Montgomery’s bus segregation laws violated the Constitution’s 14th Amendment. The decision not only ended segregation of the buses, but it ended the negative economic impact of empty buses for the city of Montgomery. The young leader of the bus boycott was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
I started this commentary by talking about African American individuals with whom I have been associated. They were aggressive but fair, results oriented but not to a fault, and never conscious of their skin color. I would have gone to war with any of them. I hope they felt the same about me.
Knowing how results oriented my African American friends and business associates were, it would be interesting to know how they view this presidential election. Getting through all the bluster and chaos created by President Donald Trump, how do they view his accomplishments, which are many.
On the other hand, how would they view African Americans who faithfully follow Democrats who have done nothing for their constituency? Their observations would be priceless.
John F. Floyd is a Gadsden native who graduated from Gadsden High School in 1954. He formerly was director of United Kingdom manufacturing, Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., vice president of manufacturing and international operations, General Tire & Rubber Co., and director of manufacturing, Chrysler Corp. He can be reached at johnfloyd538@gmail.com. The opinions reflected are his own.
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