Helms’ power to divide endures

By Patricia Hunt
Published: July 11, 2008

I wish I had been in Idaho when Jesse Helms died. Or Estonia. Or anywhere other than visiting my family in North Carolina.
Seven generations ago, more or less, Southerners were divided brother against brother during the Civil War. During my entire adult life, North Carolinians have been divided brother against brother, and sister and parents, over Jesse Helms. Few people were neutral, perhaps because Jesse was never neutral about anything.
Jesse Helms was the uninvited and invisible guest at many a family Christmas dinner. Wherever people gathered (white people anyway) because they were family or college classmates or Rotarians or neighbors, Jesse was the elephant in the room.
Some North Carolinians voted for him every time his named appeared on the ballot. Not all of them did so because they were segregationists. There is an extreme contrarian streak running through the inhabitants of the Tarheel state that leads them to vote for anyone they think is looked down on by the rest of the world. Jesse got enormous mileage out of the disapproval he garnered from the world beyond the state borders and from homegrown college professors, newspaper editors, and people deemed “elite.” It must be confusing to people unfamiliar with the peculiar ways of North Carolina to comprehend that often candidates for office need only to demonstrate that they would be unelectable in California or Massachusetts to be successful.  The delight such voters took in Jesse’s victories over African-American Harvey Gantt, former mayor of Charlotte, could turn a pleasant social event angry and bitter. No talk of religion or presidential politics or college sports rivalries could poison a dinner party as quickly as the mention of Jesse Helms. 
When a newsflash appeared on the television screen announcing that Jesse Helms had died, on the 4th of July no less, my heart sank. There are people I love, people who have cared for me and taken care of me and loved me who voted for Jesse Helms. There are people I love, people who have cared for me and taken care of me and loved me who despised Jesse Helms.  I knew where this was headed. All over the state people had gotten together with friends and family for the 4th, and one last time Jesse Helms was going to be plunked down in the middle of our lives to be dealt with by people deeply divided.
At my family’s house this took the form of remembering one more time our personal stories of race. My mother, when she was young and single, worked for the YWCA, a national organization that cut the South no slack when it came to racial prejudice. They had no patience with it, which was fine with my mother. She recalled organizing what she believes was the first racially integrated worship service in Greensboro on behalf of the YWCA. Blacks and whites gathered at a downtown Southern Baptist church despite efforts of some very important local people to put a stop to it. And this was about 1943!
Mother also remembered the remarks of a certain public school superintendent when he spoke to an all-white audience apologizing and explaining why he was required to hire black teachers. Mother was next on the program and had the opportunity to state that there were good and bad teachers of both races, and the superintendent should just find some really good teachers to hire. Mother supported school busing to achieve racial balance, a very unpopular point of view among my father’s people.
My sister and I recalled how thoroughly segregated our schools were when we were growing up. Even in our colleges, which had been technically integrated, if you were black, it was pretty certain you were on the football or basketball team. We also recalled the racist attitudes of some family members who are long gone. And on the conversation went. This isn’t an easy past to deal with.
Jesse Helms, in life and in death, was a lighting rod for all the fears and anger and pain of our struggles with race. If he were a fictional character dying on the Fourth of July as a black man was running for president, the critics would trash the author; it would all be too much. But maybe his dying when he did was his way of giving us one more opportunity to tell each other our stories of living through the shame and glory of our haunted past.
Patricia Hunt, of Staunton, is a chaplain at Mary Baldwin College.