Who’s the guy running behind her? That’s race official Jock Semple, trying to tackle her and pull her out of the marathon, yelling “Get the hell out of my race and give me that number!” The men running with Katherine blocked him and she was able to finish the race. Click here for the full story.
I hadn’t seen this famous photo before. A friend posted it to Facebook today, along with some rhetorical questions:
Who are you in this story? The harbinger of progress and equality? The rallying troops willing to stand up for what’s right? Or just another Bull Connor, aggressively fighting against integration and inclusion?
I wish it were that simple. I bet Jock Semple changed his mind about women after that incident. But Bull Connor? My money says he died unrepentant, still hating black Americans. Some leopards change their spots; some never will.
More than half a century after the civil rights battles of the 1950s and 60s, there are still millions of white Americans fighting integration, an issue most of us thought settled long ago. Millions who would resegregate schools and lunch counters if they could. Millions so deranged by hatred of America’s first black president they have actually convinced themselves it was Obama, not Bush, who got us into this huge recession.
Who would I be? I hope I would have been one of the runners shielding Katherine Switzer. I know I was one of the starry-eyed college kids who packed clothing and food for the Freedom Riders in the 60s, one of the campus pinkos who joined his college’s Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee chapter, one of the first to march on the Capitol Mall in Sacramento in opposition to our war in Vietnam.
But on other issues of the day I’ve been a bystander, even occasionally a Bull Connor. Post a Facebook photo of gay servicemen locked in an embrace and ask me who I am in the story, and I’ll say I’m a bystander. Live and let live; it’s not my fight. Post a Facebook photo of stoners panhandling on a downtown street corner and ask me who I am in the story, and I’ll say Bull Conner. Get those fucking dopers off the street and out of my town!
Like I said, it’s not that simple.