Evelyn P Dumas

Roanoke Free Press » Civil rights leadership awards presented at ...

The Rev. Dr. E. T. Burton came to Roanoke in the late 1950s.” You can appreciate where you are when you look back where you have come from,” said the Reverend E. T. Burton.

History was made at the Dumas Cultural Center Saturday. It was the first time the Progressive Democrats of America recognized the pioneers of civil rights and social justice in Roanoke. It won’t be the last.

“Now we have made it from the back seat of the bus all the way to the stirring wheel,” said Rev. Burton. He called on today’s youth to understand where they use to sit.

Rev. Burton made a confession to the crowd of over 100 Saturday. He explained how he was a janitor for Sears Roebuck many years ago saying “that was the only job you could get if you were a person of color back in those days.” When cleaning the colored restrooms as a janitor he confessed that he really cleaned them well. Grinning broadly he said, “however the white restrooms only got ‘a lick and a promise’.”

The retired pastor’s punchline was that if “you wanted to go in the cleanest restroom you knew which one to go to in the days of segregated bathrooms.” A true story the assembled crowd could laugh about today.

It wasn’t always a laughing matter. Rev. Burton a pastor at Sweet Union Baptist Church for 50 years remembered fighting for equal pay for colored teachers.

In Roanoke there were no demonstrations or violence as in other cities. Rev. Burton said Roanoke saw by then that integration was inevitable. A biracial commission was formed and “a lot of negotiation went on here because the battles were fought in other places.”

The biracial commission decided that black and white Roanoke citizens would make the rounds together and eat at the lunch counters. Rev. Burton said that there were not enough black citizens that signed up. [ You could feel another joke coming for sure .]