I Still Dream About You

Another Side to the Story

IN HISTORY BOOKS, THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT WILL ALWAYS BE viewed as a great triumph, but for those who lived through it, black or white, it was not easy.

The year Maggie was Miss Alabama, she arrived in Atlantic City for the Miss America Pageant, excited and hopeful. And as the days went by, she had reason to be hopeful. In the preliminary judging, she won first place in the evening gown competition, and after seeing her for a few days, the press had already listed her as most likely to win.

Everybody had been so encouraging that when the time came to ride in the annual Miss America Parade down the boardwalk, Maggie was feeling on top of the world. It was a cool, crisp, September day, and hundreds of people had already lined up on both sides of the boardwalk, waiting for the parade to start. Every state had its own float, and alphabetically, the Miss Alabama float was always the first to appear, so naturally, they wanted it to make a big impression and be as beautiful as possible. The year Maggie was Miss Alabama, the float was particularly spectacular. A group of the top floral designers from all over the state had flown to Atlantic City the day before and had spent the last twenty-four hours decorating the Alabama float with bushels of Alabama cotton, magnolia, gardenia, dogwood, and azalea blossoms they’d had shipped in from all over the state. Then the entire float had been sprinkled with hundreds of silver stars, in keeping with their “Stars Fell on Alabama” theme song. That morning, they carefully placed her on the float and draped her white gown all around her throne and waved and cheered for her as the parade began. It was so exciting riding down the boardwalk, seeing all the people lined up on either side of the boardwalk and all the little souvenir and saltwater taffy shops. Her float had not traveled more than a block and a half when it happened. Maggie did not see who threw the first bucket, but she heard the gasps of the crowd, and when she turned to look, the contents of the second bucket of mud hit her on the side of her face. At first, it was simply such a shock, and she was not sure what had happened; it wasn’t until a moment later that she looked down and saw her lovely white gown splattered with mud and garbage. But the float kept moving down the boardwalk, and she couldn’t get off. She didn’t know what to do, so she just sat there through the entire parade, trying not to cry, trying to keep smiling, hoping that maybe people wouldn’t notice that her gown was filthy and that her hair was matted with mud.

Fortunately, the incident was kept out of the papers. Nobody, particularly Atlantic City or the Miss America Pageant, wanted bad publicity. “It was just a few crazy people trying to cause trouble,” they said. It had only happened to her because Alabama’s was the first float to go by. Everyone assured her it was just a fluke, a prank not personally aimed at her. But that was not the end of it. On the night of the pageant, when her name was called, it started slowly and quietly, and then as she walked around the runway, the boos and hisses became louder. Evidently, this had been a planned protest against the state. People had been strategically placed all around the auditorium, so no matter where she was on the runway, she would be sure to hear them. Each time she appeared onstage, she heard them, and later, during her talent number on the harp, the sounds of the booing rattled her so that her hands shook badly, and she missed a few notes and almost lost her place several times.

Later that night, after the pageant was over, Maggie could tell by the way her mother and her chaperones looked at her that they had also heard the boos and hissing and were anxious and worried that she might have heard them, but she pretended she hadn’t. However, the judges must have heard them, because they had taken an unusually long time in reaching a decision that night. The next day, a lot of people in the press said she should have won. Some said she didn’t win that year because she was from Birmingham. But nobody would ever know for sure. Everybody, including her mother, said that they had not even noticed that she had skipped a few notes in her talent number. Maggie knew, though, and she would never forgive herself for disappointing everyone.

However, a few days later, when she returned home from Atlantic City, hundreds of people met the train and cheered for her, just as if she had won. Alabama may have lacked a lot of things that other states had, but loyalty had never been one of them.

The mudslingers and the booers and hissers who had traveled to Atlantic City had been terribly disappointed that their actions had not made the papers, but no matter, they were still very pleased with themselves. They had made a statement.