History and My Grandchildren--Race
Memories that will be foreign to my grandchildren thanks to Barack Obama.
My first stark memory of blacks in America was in the 1940's when my parents drove from our home in the suburbs of Chicago to Florida and I was exposed to "colored" rest rooms, drinking fountains and the 'rear of the bus". There were no blacks living in our communities--Wilmette, Kenilworth and Winnetka and of course none in my grade school. My exposure to blacks other than in reading Tom Sawyer and other books by Mark Twain,were Joe Lewis and Jackie Robinson.
As I progressed to high school and Stanford in the 1950s was much the same. We did have one black on our high school football team and I do remember playing and beating Morton High School with him the week after there was a riot in Cicero when a black family attempted to move into the area. I had one black friend at Stanford who came from the Chicago area who. I believe, was the first black to play football Stanford and live in a fraternity house at Stanford, but blacks were few and far between on campus. In the 50s most of my generation was apthetic on questions of race relations.
Things were no better when I was commissioned in the Navy. The only blacks that a recall serving on our destroyer were mess cooks and I do not recall any black officers. After the Navy, I attended the University of Chicago Law School which was situated in the midst of a black area on the South Side of Chicago, but I recall no blacks in my law school class which graduated in 1964, nor in the large, liberal orientated lawfirm which I joined in Chicago.
Probably the most significant day in terms of my personal awareness of problems of racial relations other than what I read in the newspapers and on television, was April 4, 1968. I was working on the defense of a criminal antitrust case in Detroit and when I finished summarizing the day's transcript at 11:00 I went out for a drink in a bar near the hotel which we had frequented for months during the trial. I had several drinks and noticed that the atmosphere was not as friendly as usual among the black patrons of the bar--in fact I was the only white there. When I left, as I was walking down the street, I was scooped by two officers who threw me into their car and asked "what I was doing on the streets." It was then that I learned of the assissination of Martin Luther King. (As an aside, 6 months earlier I had restrained an elderly co-council outside a New York restraunt who was attempting to punch Dr King in the nose because he had dinner with a white woman.) As I sat in my hotel for days under martial law as Detroit burned it became apparent that something had to be done about race relations in the United States, but I never dreamed that a black could run for the highest office in the land.
It has been a long time since that night in 1968 and progress has been too slow. As we all know prejudice still exists, particularly in my generation and in certain parts of the country which will remain nameless (It may be that these areas will self identify themselves in the analysis of today's election results). I can only hope that there no longer is a Bradley effect.
However, with the nomination of Barack Obama by the Democratic Party after wining a contentious primary against the Clintons, and after today's election I believe that we have moved to a new era. The candidacy of Barack Obama is not "affirmative action"--he earned it. The long sought goal of a "color blind" society and Constitution appears to be drawing neigh.
Today, because of the candidacy of Barack Obama our country is a better place and today is a historic day when all citizens can vote for a black as President of the United States. The only way this can get better is if he wins. But as I said at the outset the greater significance is that my grandchildren will never experience the prejudice, based upon race, that was a part of my youth. THere are plenty of other prejudices that they will have to deal with and overcome, but hopefully, they will never encounter prejudice based upon the color of a man or woman's skin.
My first stark memory of blacks in America was in the 1940's when my parents drove from our home in the suburbs of Chicago to Florida and I was exposed to "colored" rest rooms, drinking fountains and the 'rear of the bus". There were no blacks living in our communities--Wilmette, Kenilworth and Winnetka and of course none in my grade school. My exposure to blacks other than in reading Tom Sawyer and other books by Mark Twain,were Joe Lewis and Jackie Robinson.
As I progressed to high school and Stanford in the 1950s was much the same. We did have one black on our high school football team and I do remember playing and beating Morton High School with him the week after there was a riot in Cicero when a black family attempted to move into the area. I had one black friend at Stanford who came from the Chicago area who. I believe, was the first black to play football Stanford and live in a fraternity house at Stanford, but blacks were few and far between on campus. In the 50s most of my generation was apthetic on questions of race relations.
Things were no better when I was commissioned in the Navy. The only blacks that a recall serving on our destroyer were mess cooks and I do not recall any black officers. After the Navy, I attended the University of Chicago Law School which was situated in the midst of a black area on the South Side of Chicago, but I recall no blacks in my law school class which graduated in 1964, nor in the large, liberal orientated lawfirm which I joined in Chicago.
Probably the most significant day in terms of my personal awareness of problems of racial relations other than what I read in the newspapers and on television, was April 4, 1968. I was working on the defense of a criminal antitrust case in Detroit and when I finished summarizing the day's transcript at 11:00 I went out for a drink in a bar near the hotel which we had frequented for months during the trial. I had several drinks and noticed that the atmosphere was not as friendly as usual among the black patrons of the bar--in fact I was the only white there. When I left, as I was walking down the street, I was scooped by two officers who threw me into their car and asked "what I was doing on the streets." It was then that I learned of the assissination of Martin Luther King. (As an aside, 6 months earlier I had restrained an elderly co-council outside a New York restraunt who was attempting to punch Dr King in the nose because he had dinner with a white woman.) As I sat in my hotel for days under martial law as Detroit burned it became apparent that something had to be done about race relations in the United States, but I never dreamed that a black could run for the highest office in the land.
It has been a long time since that night in 1968 and progress has been too slow. As we all know prejudice still exists, particularly in my generation and in certain parts of the country which will remain nameless (It may be that these areas will self identify themselves in the analysis of today's election results). I can only hope that there no longer is a Bradley effect.
However, with the nomination of Barack Obama by the Democratic Party after wining a contentious primary against the Clintons, and after today's election I believe that we have moved to a new era. The candidacy of Barack Obama is not "affirmative action"--he earned it. The long sought goal of a "color blind" society and Constitution appears to be drawing neigh.
Today, because of the candidacy of Barack Obama our country is a better place and today is a historic day when all citizens can vote for a black as President of the United States. The only way this can get better is if he wins. But as I said at the outset the greater significance is that my grandchildren will never experience the prejudice, based upon race, that was a part of my youth. THere are plenty of other prejudices that they will have to deal with and overcome, but hopefully, they will never encounter prejudice based upon the color of a man or woman's skin.
posted by SFFANTASY | 1:50 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home