44 / CHRONICLESnenough to persuade the newcomer toncancel his planned march.nNow, many of us think folks oughtnto be able to march for any damn-foolnreason they please or none at all. OnenForsythian who felt that way, a whitenman named Dean Carter, said he wasngoing to march, with his family,nwhereupon the threats got a little morenserious. Carter, too, had secondnthoughts, at which point the ReverendnHosea Williams, a veteran of the civilnrights movement now an Atlanta cityncouncilman, heard what was happeningnand showed up with 75 marchers.nWilliams’ party was met with bottlesnand rocks thrown by a mob of 400n(most of them Klansmen, according tonthe newspapers), and the fat was in thenfire.nThe next week, Williams was backnwith more than 15,000 marchers (asnmany as 4,000 more were left in Atlanta,n40 miles south, because therenweren’t enough buses for them). Annumber of speakers addressed thenmarchers on the general subject of thenunrighteousness of Forsyth Countyn(which does have an undeniably sordidnpast). This time about a thousandncounterdemonstrators showed up,nmany of them from out-of-state, butnthere was no violence: The march’sncritics stuck to shouting insults andnmaking obscene gestures. Everybodynwent home and the media settledndown to tell us what it all meant. (Thennext week, the whole business dissolvedninto farce as Williams insistednon going to jail because Oprah Winfreynwouldn’t let him on her televisionnprogram.)nThe national media seemed torn.nSome wanted to treat both this affairnand the New York City lynching thatntook place about the same time as signsnof resurgent white racism, somehownadding up to an indictment of thenReagan administration. Others, I suspect,nsaw the Forsyth County episodenas a welcome return to tradition, withnwhite racism back in the Deep Southnwhere it belongs—and what a reliefnnot to have to think about HowardnBeach any more. Either way, mostnobservers treated the event as (in thenWall Street Journal’s words) “an oldfashionedncivil-rights march.”nBut, of course, an old-fashionedncivil rights march is the last thing itnwas. (If you wanted to see one of those,nyou could have watched a splendidnPBS documentary series, Eye on thenPrize, that debuted just as all this wasnhappening.) For starters, the odds hadnchanged, radically. The rabble opposingnthe march were wise to stay nonviolent:nThey were outnumbered notnonly 15-to-l by the marchers, but alsonbetter than 2-to-l by the law. Andnadded to the usual celebrities —nAndrew Young, Coretta Scott King,nDick Cregory, Gary Hart (briefly, butnlong enough to find a televisionncamera)—were two very significantnones: both of Georgia’s U.S. senators.nBut the big story, it seems to me,nwas that even many white Georgiansnwithout presidential aspirations werensympathetic—although the networks,nthe wire services, the major newspapers,nTime, and l^ewsweek seem largelynto have ignored that fact. (OK, Indidn’t see them all; the ones I sawnignored it.) For that angle, I’m indebtednto a college reporter with the honestynand good sense to write his storynafter he went to Gumming: RockynRosen, of the Duke University Chronicle.nI haven’t seen a geographical breakdownnon the marchers themselves, butnmost of those who talked to Rosennseem to have been Georgians. Certainlynmost of the marchers werenwhite, and Hosea Williams had thengrace to notice. Rosen quoted him:n”There is not a more important momentnin the history of America thanntoday,” said Williams in his speechn(perhaps exaggerating just a little bit).n”We never had a demonstration, fromnMontgomery to Memphis, that gotnmore white folks out there standing upnfor justice than black folks.” Rosennalso noticed the “Gumming residents,nmostly elderly, [who] waved to thenmarch from inside their homes,” andnreported that the Forsyth CountynBoard of Commissioners welcomednthe marchers with a banner across thenparade route and a full-page advertisementnin the Atlanta Journal. Did younread about that in your newspaper?nNow, I don’t want to go overboard.nThose hateful counterdemonstratorsnwere there, and not all of them werenoutside agitators. Maybe the bannernand newspaper ad reflected merely thenBoard of Commissioners’ fear that allnthis fuss is bad for business. If so, itnwould be in what is now an old Geor­nnngia tradition, pioneered by Atlanta,n”the city too busy to hate.”nNevertheless, what went on innGumming wasn’t the relatively simplenstory that we saw repeated time andnagain in the early 1960’s. The newnstory may be dramaturgically less satisfying,nand it’s harder to tell in 90nseconds on television, but it’s a storynthat, on balance, strikes me the way itnstruck Hosea Williams, as good news.nBy coincidence, at just about thensame time all this was happening,nRolling Stone carried an interviewnwith the immortal Bo Diddley, whonhad just been inducted into the Rocknand Roll Hall of Fame. Bo wasn’tntalking about Forsyth County, but hencould have been. After answering anquestion about the hard times he hadnfaced as a black performer in the JimnGrow South, he observed:nIt’s different now. The peoplendown here in the South now isngot their s— together.nEverybody’s fine; everybodyngets along beautiful, and I’m sonhappy that that’s whatnhappened. But you can alwaysnfind a fool—you can find anfool in church, you understand?nIf everyone had Brother Diddley’sntrue, fine sense of proportion, ournnational conversation would benhealthier. Of course, the nation’snop-ed pages would be emptier.nJohn Shelton Reed used to work as andisc jockey at WMCH, “your goodnneighbor station in Church Hill,nTennessee.”nLetter From thenHeartlandnby Jane GreernWhere the Action IsnBetween now and the turn of thencentury, 16 eastern and southeasternnstates will celebrate 200 years of statehood.nHere in the hinterlands, sevennmore states will have their 100th birthday.nThen there will be just five statencentennials left, with Alaska and Hawaiinas late desserts in 2059—whennmany East Coast states will be close ton