I've heard some of the horror stories. Black friends raised in Ohio have told me about going to shoe stores and having to buy shoes without being allowed to try them on. These are people our age...this isn't ancient history. I can't even imagine the indignity of taking my child to a store and explaining to her that "our" people can't try things on or buy on credit like her white classmates. Another friend from another Ohio small town tells me things like having to go to a back window of the town diner to purchase a hamburger. It wasn't Happy Days for everyone. The churches were part of the problem rather than the solution. Sunday morning was the most segregated part of the week. I can remember a priest expressing his horror as he related the story of the time he had to place the communion wafer on the tongue of a black man! A priest! Communion...they believed (and still do) that the little wafer was the actual body of Jesus Christ...the person to whom their religion was dedicated.

I have questions for the black citizens of Milford from those days. Why in the world didn't you develop a sense of racial superiority? You would have been entitled, you know. According to the white thought process of that time, you demonstrated the very qualities some claimed made them a superior race. Turnabout would have been fair play. You persevered in the face of blatant injustice...almost criminality. You achieved marvelous things in the classroom, the athletic field and the community. You raised your children and worshipped God. You helped build America and you defended it with your lives as your ancestors always had...even when the white community demanded a segregated armed force and separate everything else for returning heroes. Is it finally a level playing field today? You would know more than me but it would seem to me that nothing is better as long as people are still being recognized for being the first black person to accomplish this or get accepted or appointed to that. And not as long as there are still people alive who remember being denied anything because of their race. Yet, you continue to achieve and aspire. Why aren't you bitter and more angry? I would be. It's a better world because you put principle above hate or revenge. It is our shame that we didn't...and can't. Some white Americans have a fatal flaw when it comes to race. It permeates every aspect of how they view things. Black crime is talked about as a problem...but crimes attributed to whites are discussed as being committed by individuals. A program to open opportunity to minority students is un American but a policy where the sons and daughters of prestigious college graduates get preferential treatment is the American way of equality. It permeates the employment world also. People still gets jobs and opportunities because they (or their parents) "know somebody." There has always been affirmative action for certain white sons and daughters. Everyone else is invited to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. We're sorry this happened.

We are sometimes quite inconsistent people. We view the mistreatment and killing of Europeans as a Holocaust and we vow to never forget...even though this happened to people in a distant land. Millions of American people were mistreated and killed as we conquered this continent and millions of people were enslaved, mistreated and killed to build an economy on this stolen land and we call both things "unfortunate historical eras." We preach patriotism and God's holy fairness from the pulpit and then we choose our sports and our favorite teams based on the number of whites involved. We're pleased when an African American scientist does something special but we're secretly threatened when an all black team wins something important. Aren't they all simply Americans? Aren't they all "our" people? White people invented the American version of discrimination and prejudice. We established these things as the law of the land officially and unofficially. They die hard...and slowly. Milford was a microcosm of the big picture. It was happening everywhere but it would have happened nowhere had people like us not cooperated. Was it better in Milford than other places? I can't answer that; I didn't live in the other places. Besides, I'm white...I can't even begin to know how bad it was here. I know this though. Had Milford been such a great center of equality and fairness there would have been a great migration of black families to the area. It never happened.

There is a different playing field today. It's better and it's worse. You don't hear white people yell the big racial slur too often today. They reserve that for private conversations. "Whites Only" signs have gone away and been replaced with a system of code words. Comments about affirmative action, quotas and reverse discrimination are the wink and nod of the white man's exclusivity and superiority complex. The airways are filled with the mantra: "Nobody ever gave me or my ancestors anything because we're white." That's correct, as far as it goes.. However, we should qualify the thought with the reminder that we whites, and all of our ancestors, were given a world of opportunity because we were not black. That's not a subtle difference. There have been proposed solutions. We're a money driven society. We love those tax cuts and call them incentives to spark the economy. We're taking money from our grandchildren to pay for what we're spending on ourselves now. We've established the principle. It's OK to take from one group to right a wrong or create benefits for one group or another. That's right. I'm talking about the suggestion that Slavery AND Discrimination reparations be paid. It has been suggested that we forego these tax cuts and use the money to pay down our debt and to begin paying off our debt to a group of citizens upon whose backs a country was built! It has been proposed that we give those famous tax cuts earmarked for tax relief for the rich to our black citizens as reparation for the wrongs we've done or allowed. It is argued that this will stimulate the economy just as well as if we give the money to the rich. At the very least it would seem that it's time to live by our principles and to finally say we're sorry. And it's past time to say thank you. There was once talk of each slave getting "Forty acres and a mule" as compensation. It would have been a nice inheritance to pass along. Unfortunately, the closest anyone got to this compensation of land and a mule was the rear view of an ass braying as he turned his back on justice and scampered back to Washington. Some hope reparations can begin to heal the wounds. It sounds like something that needs to be explored. Our money always looks nice where our mouths (and our conscience) should be. Whatever we decide, we might do well to imagine God watching.

PAGE THREE...AN INDOMITABLE SPIRIT