Working Toward A Truly ‘United’ States

By Larissa Lytwyn

His approach was like that of a kindly grandfather — a bestower of wisdom encouraging his children to understand a history that still reverberated in their seemingly auspicious world.

That history was the Civil Rights movement, the “grandfather” Jefferson Wiggins, PhD, an esteemed author, lecturer, and decorated Army officer who served in World War II.

During a recent visit to third and fourth grade students at Middle Gate Elementary School, Dr Wiggins told stories from his segregated rural Alabama upbringing with themes of cultural unity and acceptance of all people.

“Don’t make assumptions about anybody or anything!” he boomed, a sudden shift from his previous near-whisper. Throughout his presentation, Dr Wiggins’ undulating voice, ranging from an easy, conversational style to a downright shout, kept listeners rapt.

He talked about making a life-changing delivery to an army sergeant at age 13. “The sergeant asked me how much the package was,” Dr Wiggins recalled. At the time he could scarcely read or write because of the inferior conditions of the segregated blacks-only grade school education he had received. Dr Wiggins told the sergeant that the amount was “on the box.” The sergeant laughed at him, sneering, “Are you so dumb that you can’t tell me how much this package is?”

As Dr Wiggins turned to leave, however, the sergeant called him back and encouraged him to sign up for the Army, that is, if he was 18. Falsely telling the sergeant that he was indeed 18, Dr Wiggins gained permission from both his parents to pursue a career in the Army. It was, after all, the only viable way he could escape his impoverished condition in his racially charged hometown.

Dr Wiggins trained at a Staten Island boot camp, often venturing into nearby New York City. Growing up in Alabama, Dr Wiggins could not go into the town library because it was marked “Whites Only.” In desegregated New York City, however, Dr Wiggins was able to go into the city’s famed library.

“I was like a child!” he exclaimed. “I was running down the aisles!”

Suddenly a white woman with “long blond hair and eyes bluer than I have ever seen since” approached him.

Though he was sure she was going to ask him to leave, she ended up asking him if he was looking for a “special book.”

With a laugh, Dr Wiggins recalled, “I told her, ‘Of course I am looking for a special book!’ She asked me the title. I didn’t know a single one. Then she just smiled.”

The librarian, Anna Marie Merrill, became a mentor to Dr Wiggins, teaching him how to read and eventually encouraging him to pursue higher education.

“The only book I really knew was the Bible, and that was something I had memorized [from it being recited] and then from reading it,” Dr Wiggins said. In two years of Army training and working with Ms Merrill, however, Dr Wiggins developed higher-than-average reading skills.

Going to college, though, was another matter.

“I told her, you are one crazy white woman!” Dr Wiggins remembered, grinning wildly. “But she petitioned my high school in Alabama for nine months. She called them a few times a week and kept telling [the administrators] that through my work with her and in the Army I deserved the degree.”

He finally received one, Dr Wiggins said, and attended Tennessee State University and later the Sorbonne in Paris.

The New Fairfield resident has an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Briarwood College in Southington and was the 2001 recipient of Connecticut’s Multicultural Educator of the Year award.

He heads the Wiggins Institute for Social Integrity from his home in New Fairfield. “We are a nonprofit organization that has been in operation for about eight years now,” he said. The institute’s half-dozen volunteer staff delivers presentations to schools and communities through New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey.

The presentations emphasize the importance of building community with one another. Dr Wiggins said he is troubled with the self-imposed segregation at schools of varying levels of diversity. “You go into [most] school cafeterias and you will see the white kids sitting with the white kids and the black kids sitting with the black kids,” he said. He believes making curricular changes with a greater emphasis on cultural unification is key to building bridges across “our cultural chasm.”

“There are 47 different languages spoken at Danbury High School,” Dr Wiggins said. “Now I am not suggesting that everyone learn Vietnamese or Spanish, but we need to be more open toward each other. We need to find the likeness in each other and build on that, not our differences.”

Recently the Wiggins Institute completed a survey of New Fairfield high school and middle school students on bullying. “A sizable majority believes that bullying is a problem in their school,” said Dr Wiggins. The institute is currently in the process of presenting the report to New Fairfield’s Superintendent of Schools.

His latest book, Another Generation Almost Forgotten, is a personal memoir of overcoming social adversity. He has also authored numerous books on Martin Luther King, Jr. For more information on the Wiggins Institute for Social Integrity, contact Dr Wiggins at 746-4520.