In early June a photo of a little boy holding an Obama sign was posted, bringing tears to my eyes - so many memories. We have come a long way, with miles left to go.
In 1965 I was the first Caucasian teacher in nine of my 10 schools in Baltimore City. The two segregated school systems had merged in the 1950s, but emotionally were still separated. Most African-American supervisors and officials, except principals, lost their seniority and became assistants in the new joint endeavor.
I chose to teach instead of march in the South because I knew my outspokenness and emotion would likely get others in trouble. Baltimore was bad enough - with calls from the KKK after hosting a faculty dinner party, being harassed by passing cars and nearly being run off the road down by the Inner Harbor, on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway and on the New Jersey Turnpike. But mild compared to what others were experiencing.
The summer of 1963 a large group of us from Morgan State walked from the college down to the end of Howard Street, with not a single eatery allowing us a meal or even a glass of water. I know now that the students had me enter first so I would experience firsthand the discrimination they all grew up with.
The spring of 1961 a group of young African-American men, in their dark suits, narrow ties and crisp white shirts, came to our college campus in Westminster encouraging us to actively work for equal public accommodations. After several days of meetings they left, and we held sit-ins at the local Read's drugstore soda fountain and formed an Inter-racial committee to actively work towards integrating the college student body.
I was from upstate NY and didn't even realise the college was segregated until I was on campus and later learned they had only allowed Jewish students admittance in the late 1950s.
So my heart is full as I gaze at the young boy holding the Obama sign. All things are possible.
I was supposed to be there 45 years ago - never dreaming that August event would have such long-lasting repercussions.
It was a month earlier, July 1963. I was 22, having just finished my first year teaching near the steel mills of Sparrows Point. I was taking graduate courses at Morgan State - $7 a credit. Gas was 25 cents a gallon, sometimes less. Of course, our starting salary was $2,940.
A group of us decided to walk from the college down to the end of Howard Street, about a three mile trek - down near where the Inner Harbor is now. It was hot and sticky - a typical Baltimore summer. One of the group said let's stop for a glass of water, maybe a sandwich. They had me, the sole Caucasian, go in first. We got as far as the screen door. Sorry, we can't serve you. Not even a paper cup of water, I naively asked.
We tried two more little restaurants before I realised what my classmates were trying to show me (a first generation American from upstate New York) - something I thought was in the history books. Oh, I had participated in the 1961 sit-ins at the drug store counter near Western Maryland College, and I helped form the first Committee on Interracial Relations on our campus. But it was an all white college that only a few years earlier had begun to admit persons of the Jewish faith - neither fact I even thought to question until I arrived on campus.
Walking down Howard Street that summer it wasn't just getting served in dining rooms - it was trying on a dress in a downtown department store, going to the Gwynns Falls amusement park at the end of the streetcar line, swimming in whatever pool you wanted to at the local park. Everyday things that were so easy to take for granted.
As we continued down past the Greyhound bus station, everyone was talking excitedly about going to Washington for an event just before Labor Day. Churches were busing groups or we could car pool. But my dad said I had to come home and spend time with the family. The place near his summer church had no electricity so I don't even know if Dr. King's speech was broadcast live on the radio or tv. All I know is that fall my friends kept saying you missed it, you really missed it.
Now with Barack Obama comes the culmination of many of those dreams. And yes, I have a tear flowing.
