Newspaper Article

Community can follow example set by Eliot Battle

Cooper, Chip

2013

Overview

  Although he made his work look effortless, it wasn't. He regularly took himself and his family outside their comfort zones, actively seeking opportunities to break down the racial divide by becoming involved in the community as an equal. Whether it was breaking the impenetrable red line by making his family the first to move into a white Columbia neighborhood or becoming the first black faculty member at Hickman, or sending his oldest two children to Grant Elementary as the first black students when they were in first and second grades or urging his kids to join school clubs if no black kids had previously been a member, he was always looking for ways to generate positive energy with faith that it would come back around some day for him, his family and other black folks. He never tired of his work. He never lost his smile, ... even when his racist neighbor shot and killed his 13-year old son's dog, Bingo, as they walked on the street outside their home on Crown Point just off West Broadway.

• Publisher: Columbia Daily Tribune
• Subject: Battle, Eliot