opinion

How brutality at times paves way to progress

As we take this year of civil rights anniversaries to reflect, the young people marching now against police brutality can see it didn't start in Ferguson, Mo., or on Staten Island.

The fatal police shooting of unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown and the illegal chokehold that killed Eric Garner prompted a wave of nationwide protests. No criminal actions were taken against the white police officers involved in either encounter.

Angry protestors from all walks of life and colors and creeds came together. Across the country protestors were black and white; medical students, including some at Harvard University, staged die-ins; thousands of students at Berkley blocked streets and stopped trains, looted stores and businesses. "Black Lives Matter" and "National Solidarity Day" demonstrations were held at churches.

Even President Barack Obama acknowledged the protests were born of frustrations people of color have harbored against a legal system with a long history of discrimination against black people.

The president was right about that history. Unfortunately, we see it repeating itself over and over again. We can go back decades. Montgomery in August 1950, five years before Rosa Parks was arrested for defiantly refusing to give up her seat on a city bus to a white passenger. That's when my father, Thomas W. Gray, and fellow World War II veterans led a protest against white police brutality.

It was a case involving a white bus driver who summoned a police officer to report a drunk and disorderly black man attempting to board a bus downtown on Dexter Avenue. His name was Hilliard Brooks. The policeman shot Brooks and wounded a couple of other people on the street in the process.

As historian J. Mills Thornton tells the story in his book "Dividing Lines," Officer "Mills pushed Brooks to the sidewalk and shot him to death after he struggled back to his feet; Mills stated that Brooks was advancing on him, but other witnesses reported that Brooks was standing with his arms at his side."

Both Mills and an article the next day in the Montgomery Advertiser agreed that Brooks was reportedly drunk and cursing. But was that any excuse for a police officer to shoot him? The Advertiser said there were hundreds of witnesses, and some called the shooting "reckless and needless." Brooks later died in the hospital.

It turns out Brooks was a World War II veteran, a guy my father knew as a youngster. They played sandlot football together. Brooks was taking classes at Saint Jude Educational Institute, where many black vets were getting postwar training.

Dad was an adjutant with AMVETS, teaching math and civics there. He and Post Commander Ronald Young sent a copy of a letter they wrote to city officials to the editors of the Advertiser, complaining that the shooting was a "malicious and unjust act." Their letter, published in the letters column called "Tell It to Old Grandma," demanded that the officer be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

Nothing happened. A police board ruled the fatal shooting was justifiable. So the vets took to the streets to protest. Hundreds of them went downtown days after the shooting and marched to the courthouse. They needed a strategy and reason to be gathered like that. So they carried signs that said "Ballots Beat Bullets," and many of them registered to vote.

It's not clear if their message got to their intended audience. But a story in the next day's newspaper quoted the chairman of the Montgomery Board of Registrars as saying she had received applications for voter registration from about 50 Negroes. Reports had indicated as many as 300 Negroes, mostly men, had gone to the courthouse seeking to register. The registrar couldn't explain the reason for the sudden rush.

The Advertiser story made no mention of the protest.

The nation's history shows protest does sometimes lead to change, just as the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Freedom Rides and other actions of civil disobedience led to the Civil Rights Act, outlawing racial discrimination. The Selma-to-Montgomery March and other protests eventually resulted in the Voting Rights Act.

Progress? Yes. Unfortunately, the road to racial justice has been a bumpy one, claiming years and lives, and it's still sometimes paved by police brutality.

Karen Gray Houston is a Montgomery native who spent 40-plus years in broadcast journalism, including more than 20 years as a news anchor in Washington, D.C.