Diana Valentine
Minneapolis, MN

I am haunted to this day (and I am now 65) that I was so completely clueless about race, civil rights, and justice when I should have known better at age 15 when the March on Washington occurred. I moved from the North to a small town in the South when I was 11 and saw the overt segregation and the “Whites Only” signs at the local theater and water fountains and certainly in the schools and throughout the small town. It was never discussed in my house or among my group of friends. Any questions I may have asked at home were answered with something along the lines “that’s just the way it is.” Yet it was many years later before I realized what I had done (or not done) and felt the shame.. Thank you for allowing me to voice this shame and heartfelt regret.