Union County's dark past remembered

By Jason deBruyn, The Enquirer-Journal, April 14, 2010

MONROE -- Young people gathered to hear some Union County history from the perspective of two black men.

Roy L. Crowder and Herman Cunningham, two black men featured in a racial history documentary, served on a panel with the Marshville Home News editor and publisher John Edmondson at South Piedmont Community College and recounted stories about their lives and how they were treated in the 1950s and 1960s.

Crowder told a story of he and his friends going to the Oasis Café in 1960, a time when blacks were told to stay out of diners like the Oasis. He remembers drawing a good bit of attention that afternoon and by time they left, a crowd had gathered outside the café.

“I said what in the world have we done? All we wanted was a hamburger and a soda,” Crowder said with a chuckle.

Serena Johnson with SPCC, Rodney Singleton and Jamaal Rhodes helped organize the forum and hoped it would be one of many to come.

“This was a huge step forward,” Singleton said.

Rhodes said he hopes forums like this one would “make an impact,” and be an inspiration to others.

The two agreed the forum helped them see how far the United States has come and helped them gain insight into race relations.

Johnson first became aware of the rich Union history when she stumbled across the documentary “Negroes With Guns.” She realized much of the information came from Monroe and set out to find people featured in the documentary. Crowder and Cunningham still lived in Monroe and agreed to attend the forum and share their memories.

“Monroe was a racist, Ku Klux Klan town,” Crowder said. He pointed to the water fountains for blacks that “looked like something a dog would drink out of,” as an example.

Over the years, race relations improved, and Crowder said he developed a brotherhood with men regardless of race while serving in Vietnam. If they could live together in Vietnam, they surely should be able to live together back home, he said.

Johnson hoped to hold similar forums around Monroe in the future in order to resurrect some of Monroe’s history.

“There is so much black history here,” she said. “This is just the tip of the iceberg.”