Chelsea Lowe
Boston, MA
In 1959, my mother was engaged to marry a man who wanted a black best man at their wedding. Even though my grandfather had made a point of drinking from “colored” fountains when the family drove south to Florida, this was–you could say–beyond the pale. “I can understand an old family retainer,” attending the affair, my grandmother had said. The families quarreled and the wedding was off. If they had gone through with it, I, of course, would never have been born.
It would be wrong to judge my family by something that happened so long ago. My mother still cries–and I do, too–remembering how she wasn’t allowed to invite a friend of color to her ninth birthday party. She always encouraged me to make friends of all races and nationalities.
The irony? We’re history’s most hated minority: Jews!
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