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The status quo sits on society like fat on cold  chicken soup, and it's quite content to be what it is. Unless someone comes  along to stir things up there just won't be change.
--ABBIE HOFFMAN

Sometimes it takes a story about death to teach you about life. . . .

Back when I was working as a legal correspondent for NBC News, I  discovered what appeared to be an appalling injustice in Esto, Florida, so  I went down with a production crew to check it out.

Esto is a sleepy little town on the panhandle, just south of Dothan,  Alabama, another small town. I remember thinking how cool it was to stand  with one foot in Florida and another in Alabama at this one place in town,  and that, in more ways than one, the region really was a kind of  crossroads. I was there to look into the events surrounding the death of a  local centenarian named Ada Dupree, whose passing split the town along  racial lines in a way that seemed to beg for a spotlight.

Miss Ada--you'll forgive me, but I'm from the South, so every adult  southern woman gets a "Miss" in front of her name--was one hundred and  four years old at the time of her death, and one of the most beloved  people in Esto. Along with her husband, she was one of the founders of the  town, and over the years her good deeds and indomitable spirit came to  characterize the community. People came from all over to visit with Miss  Ada. She was even mentioned on The Today Show by Willard Scott, on  the occasion of her 100th birthday, and she had a collection of good  friends that would have filled the spaces between Esto and Dothan.

One of those good friends was Sybil Williams, the wife of the former  local mayor. When Miss Sybil was a child, Miss Ada helped raise her, and  in adulthood the two women were like sisters. Miss Sybil was in her late  seventies at the time I went to meet her, which made her about twenty-five  years younger than Miss Ada at the time of her passing, but I suppose at  that age the difference in years didn't much matter. What did matter to  these women was the bond of love and respect they'd built together, and  the shared history of more than half a century.

Well, Miss Sybil was so touched by Miss Ada's passing that she made plans  to have her buried in the Williams family plot at the Williams's church.  It was where Miss Ada wanted to be buried--with the people she loved, for  eternity--and it was where Miss Ada's own family wanted her to be, as  well. They knew the special connection Miss Ada felt for Miss Sybil and  her family. The problem with this plan, it turned out, was that Miss Sybil  was white, and Miss Ada was black. Some of the white folks in the  church--the same white folks who loved Miss Ada when she was alive, who  turned out to celebrate her 100th birthday, who counted themselves among  her closest friends--did not want a black woman buried in their cemetery.  Not even Miss Ada. It just wasn't the way things were done in Esto. The  message, if you were black, was that it was okay to be the most loved  person in the town; it was okay to be a doctor or a lawyer or even the  mayor; but it wasn't okay to trespass on the final resting places of your  white friends and neighbors. In the final analysis, you weren't worthy of  the same treatment, the same respect. Well, when I got wind of what was  happening I just had to go down and take the pulse of this community for  myself. I mean, these were the 1990s. We stood at the gates to a new  century. The reports we were hearing in New York were deeply upsetting in  the way they suggested a dangerous kind of racism, more troubling than the  racism born of ignorance or disassociation. Here you had a black woman who  was not only accepted by her neighbors but embraced, and yet even these  people couldn't get past the color of her skin.

Before I left for Esto, I called my grandma Pauline down in Badin, North  Carolina, just to check on her and my granddaddy Clyde. I told Grandma  about the story I was working on, and we talked about it. She was  surprised at my surprise, because black folks and white folks weren't  buried together in Badin either. I was shocked, and started to rant and  rave about how we didn't have to take that kind of garbage anymore, but  Grandma hushed me and told me to calm my little self down and think about  it. Most people want to be buried with their "people," she explained. Not  their particular race of people, but the people in their family.  Now, that I could understand. But what about someone who wanted to  be buried somewhere else? Surely we had come that far, but Grandma  couldn't say because the subject had never come up in Badin, although if  it did she guessed the folks there would react pretty much the way the  folks down in Esto reacted to the news of Miss Ada.

Talk about your reality checks. Still, I needed some kind of rationale,  so my first stop in Esto was a visit with Miss Sybil. She impressed me  straight off as one phenomenal woman. She had me out in her yard, sipping  lemonade, and I turned to her and asked, "Why are you taking this on?"  Hers was not a popular position. The issue had had a real polarizing  effect on the community. Some of the people had threatened Miss Sybil, as  well as Miss Ada's family. "If you try to bring that nigger to our  cemetery," they were told, "we're gonna have guns." Keep in mind, this was  1995, in the United States of America, and these good people with their  hearts in the right places were being threatened by these others with  their heads up their butts. It was enough to make you wonder who'd turned  back the clocks.

By the time I'd breezed into town, the Dupree family had gone ahead and  buried Miss Ada in the "colored" cemetery. This wasn't their fight, but it  was Miss Sybil's, and she was holding on to her cause. She took a  purposeful sip of lemonade and gave me the answer of a lifetime: "Baby  girl," she said, "if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for  anything. I would rather go to my grave knowing that I did what I was  supposed to do, knowing I was on the side of right, knowing I stood up for  a friend, than be complacent and simply go along with these people. If  they don't like it, that's their problem."

I thought, Whoa! I don't think I had ever heard someone summarize exactly  what I felt about life like this gracious woman did right then and there.  Her answer shakes me up even now. I sat in awe, because in front of me I  saw the woman I wanted to be. I wanted to be like Miss Sybil. I wanted to  have the strength of character to stick to my principles, no matter what  the argument was, no matter the stakes. It could be about race, religion,  education, family, whatever. If you're on the side of right it doesn't  matter who's coming at you. It doesn't matter if they're throwing stones.  If you can go to sleep every night after having looked in the  mirror--after having brushed your teeth and washed your face--and still  find something to feel good about, to feel proud of, then you'll be fine  when God finally asks the question, "Have you been My servant?" If you've  been on the side of right, you've been His servant.

Miss Sybil had it exactly right. If you don't stand for something, you'll  fall for anything. If you don't know what your own position is, if you  don't know where you draw the line between right and wrong, you'll never  see yourself as you truly are. You'll never see the world as it truly is.  You'll never make a difference. You'll never have the confidence or the  drive to do what you have to do, to do what you know is right. You'll  never feel good about yourself and your place in the world. So that's  become my credo. Stand for something. And do you know what? I don't fall  for much. I know what I believe, and I know what I will do to support  those beliefs, and everything else will just have to take care of itself.  If it didn't matter to Miss Sybil what her friends and neighbors thought  of her for taking such an unpopular position, then it doesn't matter to me  what people think about some of the unpopular things that can't help but  find their way out of my mouth. If I know it to be right and true, then  that's all that matters.

In Esto, Miss Sybil's stand didn't amount to much beyond shining a light  on the true nature of the folks who lived in that part of the panhandle.  Miss Ada's body remained in the black cemetery, and Miss Sybil's fight  couldn't change anything, but I realized it didn't matter. She didn't have  to win the fight in order to be heard. She just had to stand.