My slog through the depressing downward spiral of daily news reporting in California, followed by a layoff and a lengthy unemployment stint, ended last summer when I found gainful reporting work once more in Louisiana.
Things have hit a new high thanks to my first cover story for the Baton Rouge Business Report, Baton Rouge's melting pot, about the touchy topic of historic segregation and contemporary social mixing in the born-again downtown.
People here talk about an "invisible line" that divides the black-north and white-south/east areas of town, but while everyone knows about this stratification, few really talk openly about it. Perhaps the article will encourage a little conversation.
In the piece, Civil Rights icon and local businesswoman Maxine Crump, who helped break the color barrier at LSU, had this to say:
“Baton Rouge has tried to hide its history. It’s not talked about openly very often,” Crump says. “And when it is, people smile about it uncomfortably. Who has conversations about it? It shouldn’t silence a room when it’s mentioned if we’re really owning our history. And it does.”
Folks 'round here are trés polite with door-holding and "where ya from?" greetings and such. Yet as one source told me, people love to ask you to lunch, but they won't invite you to dinner. A colleague even told me that around here, "If you're gay, you keep it to yourself."
People can seem awful friendly thanks to that famous Southern hospitality, but there's a wall separating the in-crowd from the outside world that defines the region, and makes change infamously tough.
As one angry tourist insinuated while jabbing a stick into a South Carolina hornets nest, is Dixie's neighborly charm sometimes a veil masking ancient intolerance?
Read the full article on Baton Rouge's downtown meeting ground here.
Speaking of outsiders, I hear a cynical local group is looking for someone to lead the charge in gathering fringe dwellers in the Capital Area, consider joining.
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