MLK Day reflection: Are race relations improving or getting worse?

For Martin Luther King Day in 1999, the Daily Herald interviewed suburbanites, both black and white, who had been involved in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s. We asked about their experiences and how they viewed race relations.

We catch up with two of them now, 17 years later, to ask if they believe race relations have continued to improve.

'I think it went back a step'

Paul Reeves was only 13 when he climbed aboard a bus to join the Freedom Riders. His parents tried to dissuade him but Reeves had already seen too much - a grocery store in his hometown of Indianola, Mississippi, had been bombed, and his family's church burned.

In 1961 the Freedom Riders arrived, busloads of civil rights activists who defied the Jim Crow laws by riding in integrated groups through Southern cities to illustrate how civil rights laws were not being enforced.

What he saw on the bus ride shocked him - white people outside the bus screaming at white people inside, threatening to kill them.

In 1999 and living in Hanover Park, Reeves said he felt blessed to have survived such terrifying events, but the lesson of that experience still haunted him.

“If these white people in our town didn't have any feelings for their own race, they couldn't possibly have any feelings for us,” he told a reporter in 1999. “That was a depressing realization for me.”

Today, 65 years old and legally blind, Reeves is still living in Hanover Park. Asked how he views race relations 17 years after his first interview, he is pessimistic.

“I think it went back a step,” he said. “People have been meaner toward each other. It's all messed up.”

If he has to point to a moment when relations soured, he believes, ironically, that it accompanied President Obama's 2008 election.

“The people in Washington won't let him do anything,” Reeves said. “I didn't see as much hate in the people until Obama became president.”

He doesn't expect much change in the foreseeable future.

Reeves and his wife, Wynie, say they used the experiences of their early life in Indianola in the way they brought up their own two children.

Reeves said he always wanted his kids to know their history and how much struggle and suffering were necessary for the rights they have come to expect.

'We are so far from living out the dream'

The Rev. Jimmie Daniels was horrified to see the streets of Chicago erupt in riots after King's assassination in 1968.

Today, he's afraid society is moving toward a boiling point once again.

Daniels, 68, of Inverness, grew up in the Deep South. He came to Chicago after high school to start working with civil rights groups, doing a short stint as president of Operation PUSH.

A conservative Republican, he moved to the suburbs - he ran for Hoffman Estates trustee in 1997 - and when the Daily Herald spoke to Daniels in 1999, he was optimistic that race relations in America had started to improve.

Today, he feels the opposite.

“It seemed like we were starting to come together on race relations, but now something has happened and it has become more obvious that we're not,” he said.

There has been some progress, he noted, like the election of President Barack Obama, but still too far to go.

“We are so far from living out the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King,” Daniels said. “It seems like we're going backward when you really think about it.”

He argues that police shootings and gang violence and the deaths of innocent children in Chicago are signs that there are still major racial problems in the area.

Daniels is glad the recent protests in Chicago do not approach the violence of those in years past, but he worries it could happen.

“I do believe that if things continue to move in the direction that they are, I'm convinced that the riots we saw in the late 1960s will be nothing compared to what's to come,” he said.

Daniels said the issues of race don't stop at the city limits.

“The city of Chicago is a snapshot of what happens in the suburbs, just on a bigger scale,” he said. “This kind of stuff eventually spills over into the suburbs.”

Daniels, who has been pastor of the Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church in Summit for 34 years, said he used to be a staunch Republican, but has been disenchanted by the attitudes expressed by the Republican 2016 presidential candidates.

“They are just so blatant about it and there is an undercurrent there that has a lot to do with race,” he said. “It just shows me things haven't really improved at all.”