But I am not sure I fully understood the power of forgiveness and reconciliation until I lived with Florida State Rep. William L. (Bill) Flynn, owner of Flynn's Dixie Ribs, a barbecue restaurant known also for its Key lime pie, in 1980. Flynn represented South Dade County, where my family lived. I met Flynn only a few years before the photo of the men in blackface and a Ku Klux Klan costume appeared on Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam's yearbook page when he was a medical student.
I was selected to serve as a page in the Florida of House of Representatives under representative Dr. Arnett Girardeau, a black dentist from Jacksonville who would later become one of the first black state senators in Florida since Reconstruction. I was excited about the opportunity (my sister had served as a page two years before me, sponsored by Rep. Gwendolyn Cherry, the first black female Florida legislator).
But neither of my parents was able to accompany me to Tallahassee. Flynn offered for me to stay with him and his wife for that week. I was only 12 years old, so I didn't fully understand the significance of a former segregationist hosting the daughter of civil rights leaders.
I learned from my parents that in the 1960s, Flynn didn't let blacks eat in his barbecue restaurant. Two black community leaders said Flynn had even chased them away from the property with a shotgun. But he had since renounced his segregationist ways as a result of the civil rights movement and implored my mother to entrust him with my care.
I don't know what was in Flynn's heart and mind. Had he rejected segregation at his restaurant because it was the morally right thing to do? Because he was legally required to do so? Because it was an opportunity to earn more revenue? Or, because it was politically expedient, since blacks were now able to exercise their right to vote? Regardless, he did it, and in doing so, publicly confronted his past.
I recall my parents comparing Flynn to former Alabama Gov. George Wallace, who proudly proclaimed during his 1963 inauguration, at the height of the civil rights struggle, that he supported "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." They described him defiantly standing in front of a door at the University of Alabama to block the admission of black students.
But, by 1972, when Wallace was running for the Democratic presidential nomination, he said he was a born-again Christian and renounced segregation. After an assassination attempt that year, Wallace was visited by US Rep. Shirley Chisholm, D-New York, who was also vying for the Democratic nomination as the first black woman to do so. Her visit and his ensuring support on a bill she was pushing would raise eyebrows, but it demonstrated that it's possible to forgive past racial transgressions.
As a young adult, I didn't understand how people could so drastically change or evolve their views, but I knew my parents wanted to give Flynn a chance to prove himself. While my parents' decision was not supported by many in the black community, they still felt it was necessary for reconciliation.
My mother had led the first jail-in of the nation, serving 49 days in jail instead of paying bail to fund Jim Crow segregation, after being arrested for sitting-in at a Woolworth's lunch counter in Tallahassee. She would later explain her decision about Flynn this way: "I felt that this was what we were working for -- for change -- so we could say, 'Alright, you've changed.'"
Of course, I was nervous about staying with the Flynns in Tallahassee (What if they really hated blacks or thought I was inferior?), but the experience was one of the best I had in my life. They were generous and gracious and made me feel confident that I could succeed in my role. I felt as much Flynn's page as that of Girardeau.
What I learned from that experience is that people can, in fact, change and grow -- and need to be forgiven in order to do so. But they need to publicly acknowledge the demons from the past and not try to hide from them.
Although Northam's actions did not involve blatant and public displays of racism like those of Flynn and Wallace, the actions that occur in private circles are just as telling about a person's character and form the foundation for institutional racism and discrimination.
When Northam initially admitted that he was in the offensive photo -- although he reportedly told others he didn't know if he was the blackface minstrel or the Klansman -- he was acknowledging that those racist actions and beliefs were very much a part of who he was. Although his initial apology said all the right things about how hateful and harmful the photo was and how inexcusable it was to give hate a platform, his apology failed in one crucial way that is necessary for reconciliation: It should have been given decades ago when he first realized his actions were wrong.
What I learned from Flynn is that if it was Northam in the photo (and even if it was not, as he says now), he should have publicly admitted and confronted any of his racist or racially offensive actions or beliefs of the past -- including wearing blackface to impersonate a black singer -- when he first began running for public office and asked for forgiveness and the ability to prove himself then.
Now may be too late.
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