Josh Moon

Montgomery Advertiser

We pretend like the bad stuff didn’t happen.

That’s how people in Alabama, and especially in Montgomery, deal with an ugly, racist past.

I was asked a few days ago about how Montgomery reconciles its past with its present – how so many who played large roles on both sides of the Civil Rights Movement could coexist, how such ugliness could be glossed over even when it sits in plain sight, how such deplorable acts could be forgotten.

The easy answer is: We play pretend.

Just like they did recently in Selma when they laid to rest one of the upstanding citizens in town, Namon O’Neal “Duck” Hoggle. As columnist John Archibald wrote for al.com, Hoggle was buried with the celebration of a town icon – the sheriff and probate judge served as honorary pall bearers, Hoggle was hailed as a businessman and a great friend of the community.

In another time, though, Hoggle was in the newspapers for a different reason. He was suspected of participating in the beating death of the Rev. James Reeb in 1965.

But an all-white jury set him free. And poof, it became ancient history.

Hoggle became an upstanding citizen. The black citizens of Selma were told to forget, to move on, to let bygones be bygones.

There was a similar situation in Montgomery recently.

Sonny Kyle Livingston was buried in Millbrook last month. A lengthy obituary with a few dozen messages of condolences attached is on the funeral home webpage, and it tells the story of a respectable Montgomery businessman, husband and father.

But the history books tell another story of Sonny Livingston.

A terrorizing story. A terrible story.

The Rev. Robert Graetz and his wife, Jeannie, know firsthand of that terror.

Livingston was twice arrested and charged with horrible crimes against blacks during the 1950s — the murder of a man forced to jump to his death in the Alabama River and participating in the bombings of multiple homes and churches in Montgomery. He was also photographed hitting a black woman with a baseball bat during a Freedom Riders assault in Montgomery.

Livingston was one of two men ultimately charged with the bombings in 1957. One of those bombs rocked the Graetzes’ home, where they were sleeping with their two young children. A second, unexploded bomb tossed at their front door that night would have killed all inside, Jeannie Graetz said the fire chief told her that night.

The detectives found the KKK members responsible for the multiple bombings, even found a written list of targets. The Graetzes, who were prominent participants in the Bus Boycott at the time, were high on the list. The cops had overwhelming evidence.

But you couldn’t beat the odds of a white jury back then. It took about an hour for an all-white, all-male jury to find them not guilty.

During an interview last year, both Graetzes refused to utter Livingston’s name. They said they had attempted recently to make a connection with him, to maybe bury the hatchet later in life, but they were rebuffed.

Livingston and three others also skated on murder charges brought by former Attorney General Bill Baxley in 1976. Baxley brought the charges after one of the men confessed and became a state’s witness. In the early 1990s, a second man involved admitted on his death bed to his involvement and corroborated the story.

But it didn’t matter.

It had to be forgotten. The victims and black citizens of Montgomery had to let it go and move on.

This is what it’s like to a black citizen in Montgomery.

Your children attend schools named for men who enslaved, tortured and killed your ancestors. You do business in buildings and drive on roads and bridges named for men who helped uphold and enforce cruel Jim Crow laws. And you are expected to forgive and forget the deplorable actions of men and women who are now upheld as pillars of the community.

You’re also supposed to trust the police who often participated in those heinous crimes and the justice system that has a very sketchy record of convicting whites for the crimes and wrongfully convicting blacks.

And no matter what, should any of this ever become too overwhelming and get you down, don’t you dare fail to show respect for this country that, despite its promises of equality for all men, continues to disrespect you.

Instead, just forget it ever happened.