That was more than 50 years ago, but the pain was still evident in his voice today.
“That really irritated me,” said the Rev. Enorris Thomas, 72, of Middletown, as he sat at his kitchen table.
And he did something about it. Not that day. But every day since.
After the service, Thomas joined the Civil Rights movement in the South that was gaining momentum under the leadership of the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth and others.
Shuttlesworth was the man credited with inspiring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., to lead the fight against segregation and other forms of racism as a minister in Birmingham, Ala. He was a co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, was instrumental in the 1963 Birmingham Campaign, and continued to work against racism and for alleviation of the problems of the homeless in Cincinnati, where he took up a pastorate of the Revelation Baptist Church in 1961.
Shuttlesworth remained intensely involved in the Birmingham struggle after moving to Cincinnati, and frequently returned to help lead actions. He returned to Birmingham after his retirement in 2007 and on Oct. 5, he died in his hometown. He was 89.
While Thomas’ failing health kept him away from the funeral services in Cincinnati and Birmingham, he still considered Shuttlesworth a close friend.
He called him “a great man. He didn’t back down. He was for everybody.”
Thomas said the Civil Rights movement was for all races, all people. But whites who supported the movement sometimes were referred to in derogatory terms. Thomas remembers watching as a white man who accidentally boarded a movement bus being badly beaten by other whites when he stepped off the bus.
Thomas didn’t understand the discrimination then, or now.
As he said: “God made all of us out of one man, a lot of genes. He loved us all when we were made.”
As for Civil Rights, Thomas said: “We have come a long way, but we have a long way to go.”
Thomas, pastor for 37 years - the past 16 as associate pastor of Second Baptist Church in Middletown - made numerous drives from Middletown to Alabama to participate in Civil Rights marches.
He never thought he’d see an African-American elected President of the United States, but he was there in Washington on Jan. 20, 2009 — “the coldest day of my life,” he said — when President Obama was inaugurated.
He called that “a joyful day” as the people, regardless of their color, “came together.”
Thomas worked as Armco/AK Steel for more than 30 years, and saw African-Americans promoted within the company.
He’s concerned about the increase of black-on-black crime, especially the almost nightly reports on Cincinnati television stations.
“That just makes no sense to me,” he said. “It’s bad.”
Then Thomas’ mind flashed back to a kinder time, his childhood. He remembers sitting at the kitchen table and commenting to his father, Robert S. Thomas, that the family had a white postal carrier.
His father told him: “That man has a name. Go ask him his name.”
It was Robert Chamberlain.
Some names — and more importantly, life lessons — you never forget.
Contact this reporter at (513) 705-2842 or rmccrabb@coxohio.com.
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