The Arrogance of Being Connected

I have papers that I now come across that show that I lived among the privileged class.  When I reflect on how “connected” we were, it tends to make me feel self-important.  For instance, when telling people of my growing up years, I will often mentioned that we lived three doors down on Piedmont Road from Ralph McGill, Mrs. McGill, and their son, Ralph, Jr.

Now that I am able to put a little distance between myself and my childhood and early adult years’ arrogance, I am able to more soberly assess why I was given the opportunity to relate to opinion-makers of the 1940’s and ’50’s.  Since I was blessed as I was, why?  Maybe, as was true of Abraham, I was blessed so I could be a blessing, in turn, to others (Genesis 12:2).

How did a Ralph McGill relationship impact me?

·       I saw a Christian journalist willing to stand alone, if need be, to try to steer the citizenry of Atlanta to treat one another as equals and with dignity.  Over such an idea, radical to many at the time, the McGills’ mailbox was blown up late one night by the Ku Klux Klan in order to scare Mr. McGill and his family.  This caused me as a teenager to think more deeply about the broad repercussions of hate and the imperative to stand against hate.

·       I would read his daily front-page column.  His words left an impression on me.  Here are such words from the 10/15/58 column for which he won a Pulitzer Prize:

You do not preach and encourage hatred for the Negro and hope to restrict it to that field. It is an old, old story. It is one repeated over and over again in history. When the wolves of hate are loosed on one people, then no one is safe.

Hate and lawlessness by those who lead release the yellow rats and encourage the crazed and neurotic who print and distribute the hate pamphlets, who shrieked that Franklin Roosevelt was a Jew; who denounced the Supreme Court as being Communist and controlled by Jewish influences.  

·       He walked the block from his house to the corner of Piedmont and Peachtree every workday and caught the bus into the offices of the Atlanta Constitution.  He reversed this trek every evening.  Even as a kid, I thought that was pretty cool.  It lodged an anti-arrogance kernel in the back recesses of my brain.

Ralph McGill died in 1969, two days shy of his 71st birthday.

Following is the letter from Mr. McGill that I recently came across: