It was during the spring when the staff of Town&Gown met to discuss what feature stories the magazine should run in the August issue. The Bellefonte Art Museum for Centre County had recently opened a new exhibit, The Underground Railroad — The Journey to Freedom, and it was decided that it would be interesting to not only write about the exhibit but also Centre County’s participation in that important piece of history.
Given current events, T. Wayne Waters’s story, “Uncovering the Underground Railroad,” in this month’s issue seems to take on a little more meaning than just looking back on our past.
In recent weeks, you’ve likely heard — or even thought — that this country is as divided as we’ve ever been when it comes to race. That’s in our lifetime, obviously, because about 150 years ago this country was truly divided and fighting a war against each other.
Even when it seems as if people have gone to their separate corners and remain divided, there are those who take steps toward the middle to try and bring us together. This region showed that during the Civil War. In Waters’s story, Dr. Donna King, who is pastor at St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church in Bellefonte, says the region “was a place where black people and white people came together to right a wrong like slavery.”
Following the shootings in Dallas last month that took the lives of five police officers, a wonderful example of people coming together was shown to the world. In a video that appeared on CNN and hit social media, a group of Black Lives Matter demonstrators were marching down a commercial street. Across the street were a group of All Lives Matter protestors who put up pro- police flags. Instead of the incident escalating and tensions rising, a member from each group met and shook hands. According to CNN, they talked about “how they both want what’s best for Dallas and the people that live there.”
The two groups came together, hugged each other, and prayed together, inviting a police officer who was at the scene to join them.
Moments such as that should give us hope. Looking back at our history and knowing how far we’ve come also should give us hope.
Unfortunately, there are people and groups who’d rather we stay in our corners and not walk toward to each other and talk to each other. It benefits them financially or politically, or is just how they want the world to be.
I’d like to think those numbers of people and groups, while they will always be there, are decreasing. I’d like to believe that as this country becomes older, more and more of us are surrounding each other, helping each other, respecting each other, and giving hope to each other in our pursuit to form a “more perfect union” that, even with our differences, won’t be divided.
