Letter

I just saw an incredible movie, The Help, about a time in Mississippi in the 60's. I lived in Chicago during that time and knew several people who had helped register Southern voters. A time when black churches were blown up with children in them. And other church leaders who were trying to get a law passed that outlawed interracial marriage. (Sound familiar?)

It brought back some more recent memories in Curry County. The state wide vote to remove the references to "negro" and "mullato" from the State Constitution where over a third of our county' voters wanted to keep those references in.

Holding a small meeting at the Salty Dog and listening to the locals talk about the "gorilla's" playing in the NBA.

Listening to a new student at Gold Beach High School telling us that she was astonished that some of the students there believed that the Ku Klux Klan was a black organization.

The resurgence of the John Birch Society here in the county with their racist ideology.

The new restaurant in town, the Vista Pub, proudly displaying the Confederate Battle Flag on Memorial Day.

And just the other day I was in Fred Meyer checking out some buffalo steaks. A man in a motorized shopping cart said to me, totally out of the blue, "We should have left the buffalo alone and killed the Indians." Excuse me.

These have all been public displays. I'm sure we have instances of positive public displays. I just wonder which ones our kids and visitors to our county remember most?

Gordon Clay
TheCitizensWhoCare.org
Brookings, OR