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RAILEY COLUMN: Local minister was 'change' before change was cool
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Published: January 18, 2009
"... your old men will dream dreams,
your young men will see visions."
-- Joel 2:28
The Rev. Jerry Drayton of Winston-Salem will watch the King holiday celebrations and the inauguration of Barack Obama on TV this week, too frail to go out and too invested to tune out.
"I believe I've given most of my life to the struggle," Drayton told me last week. "I believe I can take it easy now and observe." He's proud of his country and grateful to a God who he believes is active in human history.
He's 90, part of the wave of civil-rights activists who laid the groundwork for the election of the first African-American president. Many of these activists have died or are dying off. Many young people have little notion of the depth of their pain or the brilliance of their strategizing.
Growing up in Savannah, Ga., Drayton said he heard about black women being raped by white men, and saw blacks shot and beaten with blackjacks. The violence hit him personally when he was still a child. While hawking newspapers one day, he responded to a customer's request and entered a white restaurant. The restaurant manager grabbed him by the ear and dragged him out.
"But I don't concentrate on the past," Drayton said. "If I did, I'd be bitter. You don't concentrate on it, but you don't forget it."
He came to Winston-Salem in 1944 to lead New Bethel Baptist Church. The City of the Arts was totally segregated, like the rest of the South. And, for that matter, like much of the rest of the country.
"See, when I came here, for example, there was only one black in City Hall, and she was an elevator operator," Drayton said.
He began quietly working for integration. At his alma mater, Morehouse College in Atlanta, he'd learned that change comes through working with the white power structure. Winston-Salem "was completely, absolutely controlled by a power block," Drayton said. "Nothing could be done without that block."
Gradually, he got to know the leaders of Wachovia Bank, the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. and the city's other big businesses. By the early 1960s, Drayton and other black leaders had convinced them that segregation was bad for business.
"These men, they had an interest in the welfare of Winston-Salem," Drayton said. "It's got to be a cooperative effort. We could have never dismantled segregation if it weren't for the cooperation of the whites."
Drayton met behind the scenes with those leaders. The leaders, in turn, directed the city's elected and hired officials to open doors to blacks. For example, blacks were staying in the Hotel Robert E. Lee within months after a complaint about segregation was made there. Drayton and his friends also helped in efforts to integrate the fire and police departments, as well as lunch counters and city buses.
The white leaders, Drayton is quick to acknowledge, were paternalistic. But unlike many white leaders in the South, they realized early that the bad publicity over segregation was bad for business.
Drayton's strategy wouldn't have worked in many cities. Some critics have said he should have spoken out loudly for civil-rights through demonstrations here. He scoffs at them. "Young black leaders, a lot of them are not realistic. You deal with a situation as it is. In our days we were realists, we took the situation as it was, then worked to change it. We could use some realism now."
His strategy of working for positive change anticipated Obama's strategy: Work with whomever it takes to get the job done, even if that approach sometimes angers your base.
Winston-Salem is a far different place than when Drayton first arrived. The shots are no longer called by a few big businessmen. The headquarters of many businesses are out of town, anyway.
Blacks are on the city council, the board of county commissioners and on many business and nonprofit boards. And grass-roots leaders are grappling for their share of power.
"We've still got a long ways to go," Drayton said. "But by and large, things are so much different now than when I came here. It's like the difference between night and day."
King's dream of a colorblind America is closer than ever before, Drayton said.
That's his dream as well. It continues as an African-American president with his own vision for the future takes office.
"It's historic, and I thank God I've lived to see it," Drayton said.
■ John Railey writes local editorials for the Journal. He can be reached at 727-7357 or at jrailey@wsjournal.com.
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