Cobb: An Old School Tale

July 05, 2003

An Old School Tale

I came across one of those old black men that give people fits, honest to a fault, unsympathetically political and conservative. His name is Clark and he's 73. He has a long memory. We talked politics.

I spent a great deal of time with him on this hot afternoon. We talked about, or more accurately he railed on about missing weapons of mass destruction, Colin Powell's great lie to the United Nations, voter apathy, Gerald Ford, the difference between GWBush and Ronald Reagan, Affirmative Action, Harold Ford, Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, black conservatives and the politics of the northeast, Pennsylvania in particular.

His father, he told me with his eyes fixed on mine, was born in 1895. He had something that was rare for black men who worked in the coal mines at the time, a sixth grade education. He could both read and write. This made him very attractive to the Republican bosses of the day who were agitating to weaken unions and wished to convince blacks that they shouldn't join white unions. The elder Clark refused and stuck with the pro-union Democrats. For this, the Clark house was firebombed.

He continued on and told me how much he loathed the passing of the Taft-Hartley Act, which he saw as nothing more or less than an excuse for union busting. I've never thought of it in any way, to me it's one of those vague memories - some bit of trivia to recite at games parties. It occured to me that his conviction is a bit stronger than mine, I possess the more optimisitic direction, he bears witness to the destruction of hope and the venality of party politics. I have always wanted to be one of those gruff old men who has no difficulty whatsoever in brazenly stating his opinion. In that future I will be talking about the past.

We seemed to converge on a point, I think. It's hard to digest two lifetimes of political lessons into an afternoon, but it was an odd one. We agreed that Jesse Jackson's infamously overblown 'hymietown' remark marked the beginning of the end of the Democratic party. He hopes for General Wesley Clark to announce his candidacy, I hope the Colin Powell will shed some light on what is going on behind the scenes between Defense and State. We both agree that Bush shouldn't and won't survive 2004. He believes that Bush would jettison Rumsfeld in order to try.

At the end of the afternoon, we embraced. He hollered out that he had hugged a Republican and we chuckled about it.

Posted by mbowen at July 5, 2003 09:55 PM

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