Race Relations

Race relations have blossomed in my time. When I was growing up there was only one African American in the community. He lived in a little shack he built by the creek on Dad's farm. (My Dad always helped poor people who needed a place to live.) I saw "Nigger Jim" walking on the gravel road toward sometimes, but never had interaction with him.

A few black families lived in Odessa, where I went to grade school. The families had children, but they couldn't attend my white school. In college at William Jewell there was not one black student. When we went shopping in Kansas City I saw black people, but they barely registered in my consciousness.  I never gave much thought to race beyond that acknowledgment of its existence.

When federal marshalls were required to escort James Meredith to register at the University of Mississippi, I was amazed by the southerners' apparent hatred of blacks. Then the tide turned in the late '60s and early '70s.  Black people were fed up and I was frightened by their hostility. My daughter was abused by black children on the school playground and at the Lawrence swimming pool. That occasioned my first real interaction with blacks.

Oddly, I became the first director of Affirmative Action at the University of Kansas. I had to reach out, and succeeded in establishing good relations with black administrators and faculty. In retrospect I saw that our first interactions were so self-conscious, so careful, as to preclude any real relationships. The difference didn't become clear until Dennis and I moved to Lexington, Kentucky, where our only real friends were a black couple, Kenneth and Sonja, who lived across the street.

All of this came back to me yesterday went I ate lunch in the Merc dining area. As I walked in I  noticed a lovely young black woman at a table with a middle-aged white woman. After I chose a table and sat down, I glanced at her again. She caught my glance. We smiled warmly at each other as strangers sometimes do, then looked away. Now that's a real interaction. What a long way we all have come. Hallelujah!