I only knew James J. Kilpatrick as a syndicated words columnist who my dad liked to read in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
I had no idea Kilpatrick had once supported segregation so vehemently that in 1963 he wrote an article for The Saturday Evening Post with the proposed title, "The Hell He Is Equal," and a thesis that, "the Negro race, as a race, is in fact an inferior race."
(The article wasn't published because the editor got to feeling queasy when four black girls were killed the church bombing in Birmingham, Ala.)
As a writer, I guess I find it comforting to know that it's possible to be dead-ass wrong on the most important moral issue of your time, and go on to have a happy writing career.
As a man, I hope I never have to account for such a grave error on the ungenerous side of the ledger.
Kilpatrick was once an editor at my hometown newspaper, the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Today they ran this column, reprinted from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, in which he renounces the racist views he once held and gives reasons (not excuses) for why he held them.
http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/oped/2010/aug/17/ed-kilpo17-ar-456808/
Thanks much for that, Robert. It fills in the picture.
Kilpatrick doesn’t answer for still being so unconverted in 1963 (at the age of 43, and seven years before his odd final conversion in 1970) that he’d write an article called, “The Hell He Is Equal.”
I’m not sure whether his journey toward espousing equality was a under his own power, or propelled by the winds of history and his need, as a writer, to be in touch with popular opinion, but he took a journey, and I have no doubt that he taught his kids better than he learned.
We can all (still) hope to do the same.
I’m no apologist for Kilpatrick. His views were a little too conservative for my tastes. But thank God most of us change the way we think and see things as we gain more experience in this world. I know my viewpoints on many matters have changed over the years — and often in fewer than 7.
Another perspective from another Richmond man: “The evil that men do lives after them.”
http://tinyurl.com/2akpg4p