At work today I read Didamo's comment in a previous post about racism being one of her pet peeves. Shortly afterward I went outside to do lunch duty. I stood there on a beautiful autumn day watching kids of various races enjoy their lunch break. It made me think to a time long ago.

The Supreme Court ordered the desegregation of schools in the landmark "Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education" decision in 1954. Word must've travelled slowly, because my hometown of Sapulpa, Oklahoma still had segregated schools when I entered elementary school in 1967. One interesting thing was that my first grade teacher was a black woman. This little shy first grader loved Mrs. Foshee. She was engaging, kind, and creative. Of course I was too young to be aware of the fact that her children could not have attended my school.

Most black people in my town lived in an area commonly known as "The Hill". If you travelled to the end of town on the north side and went up...a hill, you would find our black residents. All of the town's black children attended "Booker T. Washington School". I didn't really know any black people as a young child. I knew they were there. I saw them in town. I was curious about them. I heard various stories and legends about black people and how they lived. Many of my relatives were at least mildly racist by today's standards...some of them more than mildly. I knew what the "N" word was and I also knew I wasn't supposed to say it.

Desegregation began in 1970 when I entered 4th grade. It began with high school students. Black kids came down from "The Hill" and enrolled in the local high school. Many teeth were gnashed. There were stories of "riots" and fights between students. I remember a flood of my classmates being picked up early from school out of fear that this violence would spread to my school, six blocks away. We of course just didn't understand.

Overcrowding in my elementary school led the school system to create an "annex" a few blocks away. It was housed in an old Catholic school building. There was one class of each grade in the school. in 1972 I entered 6th grade in Ms. Newton's class. This was to be the year that elementary-age black children would enter one of the six elementary schools in town. A few days after school started my class had a new student.

His name was Kerry Joe. He was the only black student in my class. He was also the only black student in the entire school. He sat down at his desk that August morning and cried almost all day. I didn't understand why. We looked at each other with puzzlement. Why was he crying? Its just school! The enormity of it all was beyond all of us. Kerry Joe cried some the next day too...and the next. I remember a boy named Joe asking at recess, "do all black kids cry all the time"? I didn't know the answer.

Kerry Joe eventually stopped crying. When he did, he started fighting. He must've been in half a dozen fights during those first couple of months at school. He won all of them. Why was he so angry? I went from feeling sorry for him to feeling scared of him. He appeared sullen and angry much of the time. I was a shy, quiet kid. I liked to read. I didn't want to fight him or anyone else, so I steered clear of Kerry Joe. I barely spoke to him at all that year. I did make the basketball team that year and played against mixed-race teams from the various city schools.

The next year I attended junior high school as a 7th grader. Now there wasn't just one black kid in my school. There were a lot of them. I struck up a friendship with a black kid named Benny. Benny was just funny as hell. I hadn't really ever met anyone like him. The way he walked and talked, his sense of humor, the way he laughed, and insights into his world just fascinated me. We used to be able to go off-campus for lunch. Those unfortunate students who didn't get across the street quickly enough often had to wait the entire lunch period in line. One day Benny got his food just as we heard the bell ring across the street. He ate his hamburger on the run, but still had a fresh, hot bag of french fries. He squirted some ketchup on them as we went into the building and stuck them in his jacket pocket as we entered class. Just as class began I heard Benny saying "ahhhh, ouchh" as he pulled the bag of fries from his pocket. They were so hot they were burning him through his jacket. Ketchupy fries spilled onto the classroom floor and the teacher was not the least bit amused!

I developed other friendships with some of my black schoolmates through basketball. We laughed and joked together. We played together. But there was always this barrier. We didn't socialize together. We didn't see each other much on weekends. Even when I played in junior college there was a definite social separation. There was a coexistence but we often occupied separate worlds.

My closest black friend as an adult was Janet, my former boss. She and I often talked about racial issues and I learned a lot from her. After my first divorce Janet decided that I had sat around without a social life for long enough. She was a member of a sorority and they were holding a Valentine's Day dance. She told me, "you have one week to find a date for this dance and don't even think that you're not going. You can't just sit around your house every weekend." True to her word she fixed me up on a blind date with a teacher from a neighboring school district. In a crowd of several hundred people our table had the only white people. I wasn't crazy about my date, but I had a blast dancing the night away.

I watched the kids playing basketball and four-square today. There were some kids of various races playing these games. But there were also some obvious groupings by race. A large group of Hispanic kids occupied one of the four-square courts. Out of the fifteen boys playing a 3-on-3 "tournament" on one of the goals, only one was not black. Tables in the cafeteria are largely segregated by race.

Most black residents of my town still live on "The Hill". Very few white people live in this part of the city. This is still true in a great many places I have lived. There aren't nearly as many racists around as when I was growing up. Many people I know have softened their ideas on race over the years.

Race still matters a great deal. So many things have changed for the better. So many things have remained the same.

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