Fighter for justice

To some minds, a Southern accent is a tip-off of potential racial hostility. Don’t tell that to native North Carolinian Tony Stewart.

He will tell you that the closer you are to the challenges of prejudice, the clearer it is that it’s wrong.

Still, the soft-spoken political science professor – who steps down today after 38 years on the North Idaho College faculty – is a walking paradox.

The quiet Southern gentility that marks his personality, for one thing, seems out of place alongside the personal courage that enabled him to denounce acts of racism as a boy in North Carolina and, later, to defy death threats as a human rights activist in the center of North Idaho’s Aryan Nations infestation.

If Richard Butler and his Nazi cohort are largely relegated to this region’s history now, Stewart had a lot to do with it.

Thanks to him and the colleagues who took inspiration from his unbending commitment to human dignity, the Idaho Panhandle that acquired an unwanted national identity with bigotry also won for Coeur d’Alene the first Raoul Wallenberg Community Award for Human Rights.

Stewart would tell you he’s never been able to keep his mouth shut in the face of injustice. Among the founders of the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations, he is one of a handful of civic leaders (a term he’s uncomfortable applying to himself) who were determined to eradicate the bigotry that took root in the Inland Northwest.

Although they spent decades at it, it was a demonstration of perseverance, not of patience.

“I’m afraid that in advancing humanity to the point where we should be, we have been too patient,” he said once in an interview.

Earlier in his life, he considered politics as an outlet for his passion for human rights, but he eventually heeded a friend who counseled that he might be more effective working outside the system, speaking truth to power and pricking the consciences of those within.

When white supremacists embarrassed Coeur d’Alene with a nationally spotlighted march down Sherman Avenue, Stewart acknowledged their free-speech rights. But he became chief promoter of a “lemons to lemonade” strategy, securing pledges that raised thousands of dollars for human rights causes for every minute the racists marched.

The official announcement of Stewart’s retirement is scheduled for today, and he’s promised to disclose the direction his life will take next. If anything is clear on this bittersweet day for NIC, it is that if a chapter of Tony Stewart’s life is ending, the book will go on.

It would be startling if the next installment doesn’t continue in some way to trace the course of human justice.

And if there’s a cage to be rattled, look for Stewart’s hand on the bars.