When A Name Isn't As Important To Change The Hearts And Minds Of People
When A Name Isn't As Important To Change The Hearts And Minds Of People
Monica Williams-Hudgens, the biracial granddaughter of South Carolina's former Senator, Strom Thurmond; said some profound and enlightening things when she visited Clemson University earlier this month.
Read below on what was said:
“I am not going to come here and tell the good people of South Carolina what they should and shouldn’t do,”. These are the words of Williams-Hudgens. “It is the board of trustees, the students, those who live here in Clemson; your voice is what’s important. Are you offended by that? Are your children offended by that?”“What’s in a name? That can be important. Very, very important,” she told the crowd of several hundred gathered for the event, which was part of Clemson’s “Race and the University” speakers series.
Universities are places where “radical change is supposed to happen,” she said.But she added, “Changing a name won’t change the hearts and minds of the people.”She said she doesn’t believe in blaming the current generation for the sins of the previous one.“There are certain things that are offensive to me, and I’ve learned to live on. There are certain things that were offensive to my mother, and she learned to live on,” she said. “I’m not going to let that stop my voice.”She said that for many people, including herself, “There’s a healing that has never taken place.” Monica Williams-Hudgens, 58, told of how when she was a child, being light-skinned, she didn’t believe she was “colored.” But she learned what that meant when she faced the discrimination of the Jim Crow laws in the early 1960s.
She recalled “not being able to drink in a water fountain, having to go around a building to use the bathroom out in the bushes when there’s a toilet right there.”“I think about that,” she said. “But I depended on my mother to guide me and have me do the right thing.”Her mother, Essie Mae Washington-Williams, died two years ago after keeping quiet about who her father was until after his death.Thurmond never asked her to keep it a secret, Williams-Hudgens said. She did so not only to protect him, but because she was fearful of the impact it might have on her if she spoke out sooner.
“No one can possibly ever convince me that Essie Mae Washington-Williams was not on his mind every time he raised his hand, did his filibuster, said all the things he said,” she told the mixed-race audience of students and older folks.And he changed with the times, voting in favor of creating the Martin Luther King holiday and hiring one of the first black aides in Congress, she said.
“When my grandfather knew better, he did better.”
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When A Name Isn't As Important To Change The Hearts And Minds Of People
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