Friday morning, Early December 1967, Concordia College, Moorhead, Minnesota-

“The college administration, and my department, would like to give you the opportunity to be one of five seniors selected to be the first to do their student-teaching assignment in the all-black high school, Armstrong High, in Richmond, Virginia.  It will be part of a unique trial student exchange program with the all-black Virginia Union University, also in Richmond.  You will be living in a dormitory on the VUU campus.  Think about it over the weekend and let me know your decision on Monday morning”.

-Education Department Chairperson, Concordia College

Monday morning, Early December, 1967, Concordia College, Moorhead, Minnesota-

“I have given your request a lot of thought over the weekend.  I decided that this is an opportunity to learn much more beyond just starting the process of becoming a good biology teacher, so YES is my answer”.

– Me, a 21-Year-Old Senior Biology Major, Concordia College

I have reflected often on this pivotal point in my young life.  It has proven to be a valuable decision, as well, insofar as the 53 years since then are concerned.  The past couple of weeks since George Floyd was murdered on a street in south Minneapolis, a city I knew well, have caused me to think a lot more about that 9-week experience in early 1968, and what insights I might have for people in Maine, the wonderful state that has been our home for all but 5 of the 46 years since 1974, when I finished graduate school at Duke University in North Carolina and came to Maine Medical Center in Portland with my wife and our 6-week-old first son as a freshly-minted physical therapist.

I would like to start with a bit about my background in Minnesota from the 3rd Grade (when my mother and I returned to her hometown in Minnesota from my birth state of Montana) to that decision point in late 1967 noted above.  I will then try to highlight my 10 weeks in Richmond, VA…, which will be difficult, because there were many memorable and rich experiences.  Finally, and most importantly, I want to make a couple of suggestions based on that Richmond experience years ago to the people of Maine…and the other 49 states as well, actually.   Here goes:

I lived in the small Minnesota town of Carlos, along with its other 300 or so residents.  It was a classic little Midwestern farming community with the added bonus of about 20 of Minnesota’s 10,000+ most prized lakes nearby.  Therefore, it was a summer tourism town as well.  My high school class size numbered 320 students, since the school was in a town, Alexandria, 10 miles away that was about the size of Farmington.  I was not only the first in my family to attend college; I was the first to graduate from high school.

In case you might think that I lived in the lap of luxury because I attended a fine private liberal arts college, Concordia, and a world-class university, Duke, you would be mistaken.  My undergraduate years were paid for thanks to a mix of large grants-in-aid because our family income was so low (my mother was a clerk for decades in the little town’s only grocery store), scholarships, loans, summer jobs, and I worked during the college’s academic months in the athletic department.

Four years later, after two years of teaching high school biology and coaching baseball, and two years in the U.S. Army, my veteran’s education benefits at the time almost exactly paid the tuition at Duke University.  My wife’s work as a medical technologist in the Duke Medical Center’s pathology research department paid our living expenses, with little to spare.  However, I digress.

I, and the other four student-teaching candidates, showed up in Richmond in early January, 1968.  Like today, that year was a tumultuous one for America.  You may recall that a few months earlier, during the summer of 1967, our country was rocked by dozens of riots in cities that were the result of racial injustices, and of course, the escalating Vietnam War.

My time teaching at the large, Armstrong High School whereby every student was black and the outstanding faculty, except one, was black as well…was very gratifying.  My supervising biology teacher was a very caring and brilliant educator.  The school, centered in the essentially black half of Richmond, maintained a very mutually respectful relationship between students and the teachers.

Classroom discipline was never an issue for me…even during my first couple of weeks when I was very unsure of myself.  I truly felt that everyone was impressed that I was willing to come there from essentially all-white Minnesota to learn not only how to function as a beginning teacher, but also to learn first-hand who they truly were as fellow human beings…so they cut me some slack, I think.

My experience at Virginia Union University was essentially very positive as well.  My roommate, Frank Doggett was, of course, black….and a very bright and likable guy.  We had many serious conversations in the evenings, before and after the lights were turned off. We were incredibly interested in each other’s perspective regarding the many misunderstandings between the races in America at the time.

Frank made sure that my reasons for being there was fully understood by the other guys in the dorm.  There were tense moments on a couple of Saturday nights when guys came back to the dorm after a few too many beers off campus, and thinking it would be fun to give the white guy on the first floor a hard time.  Those times were very much the exception and not the rule.  Apologies always followed on Sunday mornings.

The real low points during my weeks in Richmond came when I went downtown with friends to the commercial center located along Broad Street, which was the unofficial dividing line between the black and white halves of the city.  When I went into stores with my VUU friends, I truly felt the unspoken condescending, non-service discrimination that was everyday life as usual for my companions.  On the occasions when I became separated from them in large department stores, I was eagerly waited on by the white staff.  The contrast was striking.

On my last day at Armstrong High, my four classes of sophomore biology students had taken up a collection and presented to me a Kodak “Instamatic” camera (as ubiquitous then as the iPhone camera of today).  My first four photographs with that thoughtful gift were of those four classes of very wonderful students.

Of note:  About two weeks after I returned to Concordia to finish my last semester before graduation, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis.  I was told by friends I kept in touch with in Richmond that I was very fortunate that I was no longer living in that dorm at VUU.  Racial tensions, and another round of riots, had erupted again in cities across the country, including Richmond, considered to be the Capital of the Confederacy a hundred and four years earlier.

So what have I come up with after reflecting on my experience at Armstrong High in 1968 that would be of value to Maine today, …and Minnesota and the rest of America for that matter?  It would have to be a message to parents.  We cannot erase the persistent and hurtful racist attitudes that continue to plague America in a day, a month, or a year.  But we can begin the process by looking to the future through the eyes of our children.

Insuring a home that never houses a negative comment about someone based on little more that the color of his or her skin.  Being a parent that truly welcomes an open-minded child’s new friend brought home from college or technical school or that new first job away from home…a new friend who may be black or brown on the surface but one who you will find is just as much a thinking, caring, and sensitive individual as you are if you take the time to really get to know him or her.

It is almost as simple as that.  But for many of us it may take some extra effort before old, baseless attitudes can be put aside.  Saying “YES” to an opportunity to do the right thing and to truly grow as a thoughtful, accepting person is always worth the effort that might be required.

We need to write, otherwise nobody will know who we are.

                                                                  Garrison Keillor

I’ll be ridin’ shotgun, underneath the hot sun, feelin’ like a someone….

                                                                              Pomplamoose

Per usual, your thoughts and comments are always welcome.  Jot them down on a 3”x5” card and attach it to a copy of the current U.S. Constitution, as amended…and slip it inside the log door of our mudroom on the rockbound west shore of Gull Pond, or simply launch an email to [email protected] .  Thank you.