By J. Mac Holladay
I had come home to Memphis from five years as a U.S. Naval
Aviator. I had been all over Asia, including Vietnam. I was hired by Dave
Cooley, the strong and visionary head of the Memphis Chamber. My dad said it
was the organization that was making a difference.
I was the low man on the staff chart. They called me the
Director of Special Projects. That meant that I was assigned any and all tasks
that none of the key staff wanted to do. So when Memphis faced a seriously
controversial school desegregation order in the fall of 1972 and Mr. Cooley
decided we had to lead, not follow, I got the call.
We wrote a grant request from the U.S. Department of Justice
to help us peacefully desegregate all of Memphis' public schools. With the help
of our U.S. Senator, Howard Baker, we got the grant.
So we created IMPACT - Involved Memphis Parents Assisting
Children and Teachers. Our core committee was headed by a Methodist minister
named Jim Holmes. It was a diverse, dedicated group of citizens. I was the
Executive Director. The intensity, the danger, and the importance of what we
were doing made those six months before the buses rolled some of the most
interesting and exciting of my career. Every child got to school safely that
January morning in 1973.
One man captured what happened and its importance at the
time. His name is John
Egerton. He graduated from the University of Kentucky, served in Army, and
in 1965 moved to Nashville to work for Southern Education Reporting Service.
John reported on civil rights as it unfolded and later wrote ten books about
integration in the South and was the co-creator of the documentary A Child Shall Lead Them, which is about
the desegregation of Nashville's schools.
While it is less well known than many of his books, he also
wrote a short history of our work in Memphis. It is titled "Promise of
Promise," which he wrote for the Southern Regional Council. Memphis was
the first major city in the South to peacefully desegregate its schools in 1972-73.
John told the story of our people, our strategy, our tactics, and our success.
It made me proud to be a part of the story.
John Egerton died on Thursday at his home in Nashville.
While he later wrote about food and the connection of social justice with our
Southern culture, I know what he cared about the most. He wanted the South to
be better than it was, and he knew we had to do it together. Thanks John. I,
and many others, will miss you and not forget what you wrote all those years
ago.
