| David Vest | |||
| Carl Elliott's Last Stand | |||
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Originally published in the Birmingham News I'll never forget the look in his eye and what he said to me. The year was 1966. I was graduating from Birmingham-Southern College and heading off to graduate school at Vanderbilt. Me, the son of a body-and-fender man who never made it past the 6th grade, graduating from college. Me, the grandson of a Morgan County sharecropper, going to an expensive school like Vanderbilt. I was eager to hit the road, but there was something I had to do before I left Birmingham. Carl Elliott was in town, running for governor, and I read in the Birmingham News that he'd be giving a speech not far from campus. I didn't know much about the race for governor, but I was determined to meet Carl Elliott and shake his hand and say thank you. I will go ahead and say that he may have been the greatest man I ever met. When he died recently, the New York Times called him a man who "sacrificed his political career to the principles of social justice." He did as much as education and for civil rights as any politician of his time, and far more than most. But that's not why I wanted to shake his hand. You see, he was the reason I was going to graduate school. I had just been awarded an NDEA fellowship. The National Defense Education Act, which Elliott sponsored, made it possible for many folks like me to get a good education at schools we'd never have been able to afford on our own Some of the prestigious schools we went to didn't exactly welcome us with open arms. We weren't the rich young scions they were used to dealing with. (There were people at Vanderbilt who openly looked down their noses at commoners like me. One senior faculty member made a little speech in my presence about the federal government meddling in education and things going to hell in a handcart. He made me feel like a freeloader, as though I were somehow less worthy than the people spending their parents' money.) People like me went to graduate school anyway, in large numbers, whether the old guard wanted us or not, and it was Carl Elliott more than anyone else who sent us there. So I went to meet him and shake his hand and tell him how much I appreciated what he had done for me. I caught him coming off the stage out near the fairgrounds and made my little speech. When I got through, he looked me in the eye and said, "We can still win this fight. I need your help. Will you stand with me?" The question stumped me. I had no interest in politics and really had no idea what he was talking about. Little did I know that this tireless opponent of ignorance, racism and bigotry was making his last stand. He had already lost his seat in Congress, narrowly defeated by George Wallace and the Klan and all who feared Elliott's progressive politics. Now Wallace, prevented by law from seeking another consecutive term as governor, had stooped to running his wife, Lurleen, so that he could in effect succeed himself. Elliott, believing in all his mind and heart and soul that somebody had to stand up to Wallace and stem the tide of hatred, had stepped forward and offered himself. As a matter of fact, he had offered pretty much everything he had in the world. He wound up losing not only the election but his own money, his home, even his Congressional pension. When Carl Elliott stepped off the public stage, he walked away with nothing in his pockets. After a lifetime of public service, he wound up living in the kind of poverty I grew up in, the kind the National Defense Education Act lifted me and many others out of. When I compare Carl Elliott to the rich people who hold office today -- and who leave office even wealthier after taking all they can get -- it makes me sick. Especially when they blather about principles and extol their own virtue. By their standard, of course, he was a failure. How could anyone with a grain of sense serve eight terms in Congress and come away with nothing, to wind up in a wheelchair, living on a meager Social Security check, barely able to take care of himself? But I do not think history will judge Carl Elliott by the standards of the greedy and the self-serving. I think history will judge him as one who taught us what social justice is worth by giving everything he had for it. Or perhaps it will judge him the way a friend of mine does: as the kind of man we ought to name our children and our grandchildren after. When I compare Elliott to people like Trent Lott of Mississippi and Bob Barr of Georgia, who curry favor with groups like the Council of Conservative Citizens and who have never done anything to upset bigots, much less to oppose bigotry, it makes me more than sick. It makes me mad. Mad enough to feel that I can finally hear what Carl Elliott was saying to me. I think about what a tough time my own kids have had getting a toehold in the world, with their student loans the size of yesteryear's campaign debts. I think of how much still needs to be healed in our country's race relations. I think of all the women and children who'll be victims of domestic violence this year. I think of James Byrd, dragged to death in East Texas, of Matthew Shepard, crucified in Wyoming, of Shannon Wright, throwing her body in front of a bullet meant for a little girl in an Arkansas schoolhouse, and I feel like I can hear Carl Elliott's great ringing voice: "We can still win this fight. I need your help. Will you stand with me?" Link: carlelliott.com - Official Web Site for the Carl Elliot Museum - Jasper, Alabama |