Can a Vastly Bigger National-Service Program Bring the Country Back Together?

[Zorro]

The idea has a remarkably broad array of supporters, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Stanley McChrystal.

Linwood Holton, Jr., was not an obvious candidate to advance the cause of national reconciliation. He was a white son of the Old South, and grew up during the Great Depression, in Big Stone Gap, in the rural southwest corner of Virginia. His mother worked at home and his father ran a railroad that pulled coal out of the mountains.

During the Second World War, Holton served in the Navy in the Pacific, and, after he attended law school, he entered politics in Roanoke, where he gained a reputation for discomfort with racial segregation. After the Supreme Court’s 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, Virginia embarked on an ignominious campaign of “massive resistance,” in which it closed public schools rather than integrate them. Holton opposed the practice, and lost three campaigns for office between 1955 and 1965. But, in 1969, after assembling a diverse coalition, he became the first Republican to be elected governor of Virginia since 1874. In his inaugural address, he quoted Abraham Lincoln in calling for a society that operates “with malice toward none, with charity for all.” Months later, a court ordered the city of Richmond to achieve meaningful integration of its public schools. Many wealthy white students moved to private education, but Holton and his wife, who had four school-age children, enrolled them in majority-Black public schools.

By the end of his term, in 1974, Holton was out of step with Republicans, who had embarked on Nixon’s Southern Strategy of appealing to segregationists estranged from the Democratic Party. Holton was never elected to office again; he spent the rest of his career as a lawyer and as an appointee to various government posts. He died on October 28th of this year, at the age of ninety-eight, at home in Kilmarnock, Virginia. In an interview with the Washington Post before his death, he called his work on integration the “greatest source of satisfaction and pride for me.”

What inspires a person to transcend our tribal boundaries? What does it take to nudge members of separate racial and income groups to begin to appreciate one another’s perspectives and experiences? There is rarely a neat, single point of origin—a real-life Rosebud—in anyone’s story, but Holton’s offers clues about the source of his motivation: the suffering, for instance, that he witnessed, as a child, in the lives of Black mentors and caregivers. In a memoir, “Opportunity Time,” he wrote of a man he admired named John Cloud, a servant in a neighbor’s house, who was bullied by one of Holton’s white friends. Cloud, despondent, referred to himself with a racial slur. “I hardly heard what he said next,” Holton recalled. “It didn’t make any difference—the beginning of that sentence gave me pain that I still carry.” Holton’s daughter Anne identified another crucible. “He served in World War Two with folks of different races, and then came home to a segregated Virginia,” she told me, in a 2016 interview.

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[mopinko]

1. my son did a year of americorp. changed his life.

he had dropped out of hs, and been sitting on my couch for 5 yrs.
he's probably on the spectrum, and had been painfully shy, and bullied. but he kept in touch w his hs friends, and several of them had done the program to get money for college.

turned that shy kid into a great teacher. and a leader. he tutored/taught his way all the way through grad school. his main job was tutoring primary kids in reading and math. their scores went up 2 yrs that yr. that gave him something to be proud of that he had never rly had. found out what the rewards of service are.

i shudder to think his path w/o all that.

[Dial H For Hero]

2. Not if it's mandatory. I can't accept involuntary servitude.

[RussellCattle]

5. I really can't agree with you. The people who need to do this the most are the ones....

....who won't do it unless it is mandatory for all. Think of a young Donald Trump being forced to work with others, away from his silver spoon upbringing.

[Dial H For Hero]

6. I don't believe the government should be able to deprive everyone of their liberty for a

year simply because it's "good for their character".

"You don't want to spend a year doing manual labor in a national forest while living in a barracks? Tough shit. Here's your shovel, get to work."

[RussellCattle]

7. Like I said, I can't agree with you. I don't see a year of service as a year of servitude, even....

....if it isn't voluntary. I'd consider it as another cost of citizenship, just like taxes. We'll disagree.

[Dial H For Hero]

8. If the authorities force you to work at a job you don't wish and don't allow you to live where

you wish, how is that not servitude? But as you said, agree to disagree.

It's not as if there's the slightest chance of it coming to pass in any case.

[greymattermom]

3. My grandson would love to work in a National Park.

How about forgiving student loans in exchange for something like that? He's considering forestry as a career.

[CrispyQ]

4. My best friend in college changed her major to forestry & switched colleges for it.

I missed her terribly when it happened, but she's worked in forestry for over 40 years now & said it was the best decision she ever made.