Foot Soldier of Birmingham

A few nights ago, I was listening to a Malcolm Gladwell podcast that uncovers something unexpected about an iconic image from the Civil Rights Era. I remember seeing the image in one of the documentaries we watched. It depicts a young African American man looking calmly at a policeman while a police dog is viciously pouncing on him. The image told the narrative of a passive, nonviolent victim and the snarling jaws of oppression and subjugation. Over time, this man has been memorialized as some kind of hero. However, this story is not the truth.

Gladwell finds old interviews of the boy depicted in the image, Walter Gadsden. Gadsden’s interviewer asks him a set of questions attempting to confirm the story that most of us today associate with the image. However, Gadsden does not cooperate. He reveals that he was not even a protester. In fact, he was not particularly interested in the civil rights movement. He says that he was merely skipping school to go and watch the activity downtown. Gadsden notes that when his picture appeared in the paper, his parents were just angry at him for skipping school. He does not see himself as an agent of good, as a courageous man fighting for rights. Gadsden even recalls that the policeman was attempting to restrain the dog when it pounced.

After a statue was created to commemorate this false story, Gadsden is once again interviewed says that he doesn’t like it. He says that he doesn’t even look like the boy shown, that the artist made him look more stereotypically black. Gladwell summarizes by saying that they were expecting a “heroic civil rights veteran” and what they got was “a grumpy old man still wedded to the oldest most awkward of black prejudices.”

Gladwell tells a story that allows the listener to see how history can be altered in order to be simplified or to match the narrative to one that the public wants to hear. Gladwell reminds us that it is important to question and reexamine what we are taught.