Tailgate Party

One who reads books, listens to the radio, has been somewhat exposed to certain areas of the city where there are large homes with manicured lawns, and tennis courts, and we realize that there is a certain line of demarcation between the 'haves and the have-nots'. In my early years, I was exposed to the 'black' sections of town, from which my father would haul field hands to work on the farm. Deep within the recesses of my soul, an inner being of consciousness (with which most of us are blessed) we know that our God of grace and glory made all of us in his image and we “stand amazed” that there is such a difference in the heritage of human beings. Many of us actually believe we are members of just one race, the human race.
I did not realize the vast chasm between the rich and the poor and the attitude of the rich towards the poor, particularly the bigotry existing between rich white people and poor white people and their absolute disdain for black people. I had heard of hypocrisy, the fact that ones 'talk' does not agree with their 'walk'...but, at the university, at Chapel Hill, I realized the chasm of opportunity provided for the state's wealthy people compared to those who merely survived. To this day, I get absolutely righteously sick when I see the pompousness of those whose fore bearers just happened to have been lucky in buying real estate at the right time or getting an automobile dealership at just the right time or by 'hook or crook' and kissing the right gluteus maximus, the right job in a bank or elsewhere.

As a poor, struggling student, who really was not supposed to be there, but was blessed enough to be there, I would stand in my dormitory room at UNC Chapel Hill, on football weekends and see these large cars with our state's drunken elitists, parked in the parking lots, open up the 'tail gate' and have nice expensive food. Meanwhile, I survived 8 years of university education (Chapel Hill and U of Memphis), eating on $1 a day. The more they ate and drank, the drunker they got. By the time they staggered to Kenan Stadium, where I would usher for a few dollars, these Caucasian, pompous elitists were so 'debacled' by their attempt to rally those around them, whom they were trying to impress, with their expensively feathered vestments, and gold decanters that they did not know which school team was on the field.

These same trustees and legislators, and they always made sure everyone knew who they were, judges and the state's powers of commercial prowess, whose sons (at that time, only a few girls attended the university) were there because of WHO they were, WHAT they were, not in any respect their academic ability. It sickened me then, and it paralyzes me with resentment today, that this state-tax supported university furnished special tutors to make sure the sons of legislators, trustees, power-brokers, opinion-molders, and 'blue-bloods' in the state had no difficulty at the university. One of my friends, whose father was a judge, was visited regularly by one of these university lackeys, to make sure he was not having any problems with anything.

The university athletes were always given special privileges of every type; tutoring, expensive food at the Tarheel Club, and spending money to make sure that they were happy “Tarheels”. A young man, who lived across the hall from me in the Stacey Dorm, whose father was a CPA University Trustee, always was brought back from home in a black Cadillac. I remember asking him how much the Cadillac cost. At that time, a black sedan Seville Cadillac cost $5,000. He said, “My mother also has one.” In this university academic quandary of bigotry, with the fraternity set, the special student social groups, (Gimghoul, Order of the Minotaurs, Gorgon's Head Lodge, Order of the Sheiks, Order of the Old Well, Order of the Grail, Order of the Golden Fleece, etc... I understand the cost for being a member of “Skull and Bones” is around $10,000 a year and I'm sure the cost to belong to many of these 'secret', prestigious organizations at Chapel Hill was many thousands of dollars a year.) these “big men on campus”, (BMOC) incested from family and friends who paid their way through this molestation, who continue to pay great fees for their pompous attitudes in their fall visits to their dining rooms are now the very ones who are the prostitutes of the lobbyists in the shrine of the Democrat party, shrine located on Jones St. in Raleigh, the caboose of their ride to fame and fortune, the legislature of North Carolina, and more affected ones, congressional seats in Washington.

Only the wealthiest families in the state (at this time, there were only a few prestigious universities in this state, Duke, Wake Forest, etc) could finance a son's debutante entrance into the premier society of the 'rich and famous' in the Tarheel State. All Democrats, all bigots, all 'country club'. I always stayed very quiet and just watched this debauchery, their paddles, their Greek pins, their one-up-manship on who knows who, and who is sleeping with who at the prestigious, state girls' schools.

While a medical officer in the Army, another medical officer, graduate of the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, whose father and grandfather were also the paternal 'debauchers' of the fraternity lifestyle, invited me to go to Tuscaloosa with him one Saturday. I then discovered the extent to which this nomenclature of bigotry extended. We walked into the dining room of the fraternity house, the black waiters were bowing and kneeling to the 'homecoming' returnees. Food, fit for a king, was on every buffet just for the eating. Each person in the room was trying to 'out impress' the others with their financial accomplishments. This, my friends, is the way the offspring of the rich and famous live, get their political backing, and like the 'Judas goat', foils you at the voting booth. Who is surprised, when former Governor Easley and his wife, are so caught up in this madness of excess, thievery and crooked activity?

I want to disclose a situation, to which a young black man had sworn me to secrecy, because he did not want me to get into any kind of trouble while I was a student at Chapel Hill. This young black man, 19, had graduated at the top of his class in a nearby black high school in Orange County. He wanted to attend the university, but no blacks were allowed at the university at that time. His widowed, poverty-stricken mother took in washing (laundry) for a living. He worked as a janitor in the dormitory, where I got to know him. He realized, that I worked at the medical school (at that time, a 2-year school) and wanted to use some books in the medical school library. I knew Ms. Annie Pickard, medical school librarian, would never allow him inside the facility, just across the hall from Dean Barry Hill's office. But, I told him, on the nights when I would be in charge of the library, he could come over and use the books; he was a magnificent artist and was making drawings of all the musculature, the circulatory system and nervous system of the human body.

He needed to study the books in the medical school in order to perfect his drawings. is intentions, if he could ever get the money together, was to attend the black medical school, Meharry, in Nashville, TN. So, he would come over at night, sit at the table, and do his work. The only problem I ever encountered, Dr. Margaret Swanton, professor in the pathology department, one of the few women on the faculty, asked me what that 'Negro' was doing in the library. I made up some story, which she bought, and never heard anything more from it. But, he knew, as a black citizen of this state, whose mother and family paid taxes at the store just like anyone else, that he was not allowed within this state facility and he also knew, that this poor white boy, whose stay at the university depended on his job, was taking a risk in allowing him to study there.

My education continued, I went on to another university, into the military, and then into a world of isolation and blindness. The last I heard of this young man, he never went to medical school, but did attend the Wharton School of Economics in Philadelphia. He is probably one of the top black entrepreneurs We often wonder why North Carolina has been so bedraggled by self-imposed hypocrisy. When poor whites, decedents of the 'cotton mill impoverishment' and poor blacks, descendants of the tenant farmer obstructionists, complain to me about their lack of opportunity, I simply say, “Keep walking lock stepped to the polls, voting the Democrat ticket, your slave masters for over 100 years.” You must love the fact that just last year, this Democrat, decadent, legislature lost $635 million which should have gone to the mental health facilities of this state. This is enough money to have put running water in every home in Eastern North Carolina which still has out houses. This is enough money to have corrected all the problems at the mental institutions such as Cherry Hospital where one patient died while waiting for care (24 hours).

When I was a student at Chapel Hill, two of my father's friends, Hardy Talton and Rowland Braswell, were in the legislature. Since they knew my ability, my interest in politics, they would invite me over to watch the legislature, which at the time, was meeting in the capital building. I still remember, 'cousin' Wayland Spruill, longtime politician, who passed out all the state funds to his friends, coming into the hall of power, calling out “SUEY, SUEY, SUEY” as if he were calling the hogs to the trough. The Democrat hogs are STILL at the trough, after 60 years, very little has changed. Life in the “good ole north state” is still a big tailgate party.