I believe that I was transformed fifty years ago today:
On a hot summer day a ten year-old PCIntern was playing outside in the front yard when a medium-sized truck pulled up to the curb. Out came three men who walked across the lawn and knocked on the front door of my house. My mother answered the door and let the men inside and I followed, curious. It turned out that my family wanted the piano which my virtuoso brother played to be moved to another room and had arranged for it to take place that day.
While standing in my living room, the TV was on, and a live broadcast of the March on Washington was on and there was a black man speaking to a reporter. I have no idea who it was, but it was clear from his position and his authoritative nature that he was important somehow. Even I realized that. The three men stopped in front of the set and one said to the other two, "Oh, an educated n-----." My mother didn't hear them: she probably would have asked them to leave. I knew that that was a bad word and never used by anyone in my family, but that somewhere I somehow knew that it was extreme.
I as a child had always thought that those who lived in the North were on the side of integration and civil rights, and those in the South were against them. That is precisely how limited education was in elementary school in those days. I realized that there was a lot more to all of this than I had ever realized. It was my political awakening which was punctuated and exponentially accentuated just a few months later in November of the same year.
I have never been the same since that day. I realized that I had largely repressed this memory until a few days ago. It became crystal clear in the last 48 hours.
