“Before you accuse, criticize and abuse, walk a mile in my shoes.” — Joe South, “Walk a Mile in My Shoes”
Schoolteacher Genell Howell was driving to work at Fort Hill Junior High in Dalton, perhaps thinking of her students and their assignments for the day. Little did she know one of those students was lying in wait to assault her. Harold Brock was walking to school and saw it happen. In the 1960s there was racial tension in the air, and on campus.
“Some of the white students weren’t just racial against the Blacks, but against the teachers that tried to stand up for the Blacks,” said Brock. “A white guy got a big chert rock and threw it through her windshield. Ms. Howell was Tommy Howell’s mom. I don’t know if it was him, but there was a kid in the car. The guy did it because she stood up against discrimination at school.”
Of course, I was shocked to hear the story, having known Genell Howell while living nearby her family on Pine Hill Drive a few years later. Her son, the late Tommy, and I served in the Marines together, and I am also friends with his sisters Jerrilyn and Angela. After a column called “Kept alive on death row” was published recently in the Dalton Daily Citizen, Brock sent me a message and then agreed to sit down for an interview.
Brock, 65, said another white teacher, Ida Webb, was a “great example” to the students at Fort Hill.
“I was in the eighth grade and there was another white student — I’m not going to tell his name — (who) yelled across the classroom and called (another student) the N word,” he said. “Miss Webb came out from around her desk, and did we ever get a sermon both on history and the Creator’s version of how it all wrapped around together!”
Like Brock’s family, Webb lived in the “Newtown” section of Dalton on the east side of Fort Hill, where many African American families resided. Brock said originally the area was known as Black Bottoms, but it changed to Newtown in subsequent generations.
“Newtown was a move from bad to good,” he believes. “I look at it like it’s ‘new’ instead of just calling all of us that lived there black at the bottoms. There was a new generation coming up, but they were still struggling. They were still going through things I understood as a white guy because I lived on that side of town. Most of my friends were Black. They trusted me and I trusted them, and they knew that I understood where they came from, how they felt — they got that, because I would mingle and play ball with them.”
Fights were liable to break out anytime at Fort Hill, where a historical marker titled “African-American Soldiers in Combat” tells the story of the 14th United States Colored Troops who helped drive off a Confederate cavalry attack against the railroad lines in 1864.
“I saw discrimination when violence broke out at school,” said Brock. “There was a certain group of whites that suppressed the Blacks, and I feel that the Blacks wanted to be accepted. We would have Black and white fights on the campus after school. There was a place called the ‘smoke hole’ off the edge of the gym and down there’s where it always came to a head. And it often happened inside the lunchroom.”
Sometimes anger knew no color boundaries, however.
“I saw whites and Blacks rage with hate against each other,” he said. “But I saw white-on-white violence and I saw Black-on-Black fighting because of the choices they made. We can say a lot of this happened because of color, but the root of it all was hate.”
Brock recalls when the Ku Klux Klan came and burned a cross on the Fort Hill schoolyard.
“It was on the back side of the gymnasium on the east side of the campus,” he said. “They had their white hats (hoods) on. I saw it; there were 25 or 30 of them. Now I didn’t go near them, I stood on the road below it and looked up on the hill.”
Brock believes learned racism perpetuates a “generational curse.”
“I say that because they were fed this garbage that their elders had always known and passed on,” he noted of race relations. “But I saw a positive change in my dad when I was growing up. There’s a bondage we can get, a way of life that comes from what we were taught and what we hear. We don’t look at the whole picture, at how this stuff came about, and we don’t take the avenues to fix it — we can just stay stuck in our prejudices.”
Asked if he felt changes had been made through the years, Brock replied, “We’ve seen progress in Dalton. I think that generation I grew up with, and went on through high school with, made some changes. We were on the east side of the tracks in town, and there were students on the other side, and once those two met and learned about each other, there was a difference. You played ball together, you didn’t go against each other as rivals … we came together, and through the good teachers and coaches there was no other way to do it than to be together. In other words, ‘You’re in high school now — you’re not on the other side of the tracks. We’re all on the same side of the tracks now, you understand?’ And I saw a good change on both sides. The ones who didn’t feel accepted felt like they had an opportunity.
“It has a lot to do with stopping and looking, and realizing race relations don’t have to be bad. It’s what we make it. We can be open-minded to the truth that God made us all equal. You can find out a lot about somebody if you just sit down with them.”
Brock would have been a 1977 Dalton High grad, but he dropped out of school in the 11th grade. Later, he said he earned his GED diploma with the help of another teacher named Ann Millican when they attended the same church together. He wears an “I Love Jesus” ball cap and feels that when his father, James, served in the Korean War he was fighting for all races back on the home front.
“At creation it wasn’t a race, it was just man that God created — he said, ‘I created man to be in my image’ — not white men, Black men, Englishmen, just man,” Brock said of the Book of Genesis. “It has gotten better, and there’s so many opportunities now. Opportunity is something for everybody, but some people don’t want to change. It’s a choice. I made some bad choices in my life, but I can’t do nothing about them. You just go on, and look to the future and try to make the best for your wife, your family and your friends. I really learned from that experience while I was growing up that we can learn from each other and love each other. We are all human beings created to live equal in the purpose of our Creator.”
Brock said his faith, and the rich relationships he formed with both Black and white friends he made while growing up, keep him grounded — and hopeful.
“No, we can’t forget the past, but we have the opportunity to make sure we never create division between us,” he said. “Everyone is equal in God’s eyes. I pray daily the Lord’s Prayer, so that I’m reminded of my duty to all my brothers and sisters — no matter what race we are.
“I believe if we have faith and hope, anything is possible.”
Mark Millican is a former staff writer for the Dalton Daily Citizen.