The Race Card Project
By Michele Norris
Jane Meacham,
Washington, DC.
My dad is a lawyer in Kansas City, MO, who always had mostly black, working-class clients. When the city school district started to decline in quality in the early 1970s, we moved away to a nearly all-white suburban school district nearby. So I realize now, all these years later, that his African-American clientele’s fees inadvertently helped us flee the changing complexion of a busing-integrated school system.
Charles Dirden
Little Rock, AR
During the first year that schools were integrated this is what my white counselor told me. It hurt my feelings so bad because I had dreams of being a scientist. I ended up being a lawyer.
Karen W. Gronau,
Perry Hall, MD.
I taught elementary school for four decades. I saw a good change over the years. My classes became more integrated. More importantly, over time, many of my students did not see color in their choice of friends. Change is way too slow though.
Susan Duncan,
Bristol, NH.
When I was in the fourth grade, my family moved from Concord, North Carolina, to Leaksville (now Eden), North Carolina. Our street, Patrick Street, was parallel to Henry Street and the dividing line between the “white” neighborhood and the black/African-American neighborhood. Our next door neighbor, Miss Mary, had a large yard and kids would gather to play ball. Even though this was the late 1950’s, our ball team was mixed with both black and white kids. We just played ball. One day, one of the young men asked me: “Susan, when we are able to someday go to school together, will you still talk to me?” This was absolutely a defining question of my young life — even though at the time, I had no idea whatsoever of the significance of the question. I was in high school in another town when North Carolina schools were finally integrated. My senior class of 333 students had 3 black students! I have so often thought of this young man: what did he go on to become in life? did he even survive the south of the 1960’s and the Vietnam war? It haunts me that I do not remember his name. But I so remember his question to me.
Joan Goldbach
Winter Park, FL
When I was in high school, the classrooms were integrated. The cafeteria, though, was segregated – by choice, not school mandate. Please tell me that this isn’t the case anymore.
Laurie Johns
Tuscaloosa, AL
I am white. I attended integrated public schools in Montgomery, Alabama from 1st through 12th grade graduating from Sidney Lanier High School in 1983 as part of a white minority of around 30%. I believe having an integrated school experience allowed me to know and be familiar with black people and to develop some deep friendships that continue 30 years later. We weren’t racially aware at that time. We just were. Some of us have talked about that time and have called it a golden age but we agree that it is now gone. It seems to have been replaced with fear. Fear of “other.”
In developing my six words, I first thought: Integration. Knowing you; not fearing you. Being white, that came from a white perspective about black people – but, I reminded myself, blacks fear whites too. Hispanics fear blacks. Whites fear Hispanics. And so on. Taken down to its essence we, as humans, fear the unknown. We don’t know each other. Our entire lives are lived separately. There is no opportunity to know one another. Except perhaps in an integrated school. My integrated schools were not perfect but my years in them kept me from developing this fear and for that I am grateful. We don’t fear the familiar so regardless of our race we can all say, “know me; don’t fear me.”
Bruce Rosen
New York City, NY
Manhattan
The 3 words together would be inconceivable today & not for the right reasons
Edd Fish
Centralia, IL
In 1952 my second grade class in Elkville prepared for the fall festival by learning to sing “De Camptown Races Five Mile Long, Doo Dah, Doo Dah.” Our parents were sent notes evidently telling them to dress us as hobos for the event with mismatched raggedy clothes. What we didn’t know until that night was that our faces were blackened by the teacher for the presentation. Even have a photo of my group in the yearbook. Next year we integrated with the small black school in this town of 750 people and everything went smoothly. Next fall festival, three black fellows performed a ham bone rhythm act and I was hooked on rhythm.
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