Summary
Donald MacDonald witnessed first hand the racial bigotry of the American South in the 1950s. Today, he takes part in a radio programme that examines the Scottish influence in the southern states, which hasn't always been an admirable one, hears Jim Gilchrist
'THERE was a mob howling at this child going to school, they were spitting and throwing stones and holding up "Go home nigger" placards..." Donald MacDonald is recalling the appalling scenes of unfettered racial hatred 52 years ago in Charlotte, North Carolina, where, as a reporter on the local and liberally-inclined Charlotte News, he and a fellow journalist were walking alongside a courageously self-possessed 15-year-old Dorothy Counts, the first black student to enter the newly desegregated Harry Harding High School.See the full content of this document
Extract
A Cross to Bear
"It was horrendous," recalls MacDonald, now 83, sitting in his home in Edinburgh - for he has lived in Scotland, a country he loves deeply, since 1961. "We went back and wrote it up and told it like it was. And we were really angry because they toned it down. The editor said he didn't want Charlotte to be another Little Rock," he says, referring to the bloody race riots in Arkansas around the same time, when paratroops were drafted in to keep the white mob at bay as African-Americ...
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