My Life With and About African-Americans 1944-2024

<p>I was born in 1939 in Alton Illinois. Alton was the home of Elijah Lovejoy the famous abolitionist who was killed there by a proslavery mob while he was defending his printing press. It was his fourth press the other three having been dumped into the Mississippi River to prevent him from publishing his antislavery newspaper The Defender.</p><p></p><p>After three days my mother and I returned to our apartment in Gary Indiana. Gary was a steel my we of Elijah Lovejoy who was anufacturing town and was an attraction for many Black familieslack people who couldn't find jobs in the South. Many poor Whites did the same. When World War II broke out Gary became even more of an attraction and was one of the main focal points for the Great Migration from the South to the North.</p><p></p><p>My mother supported us by working at G. C. Grant one of the largest five- and ten-cent stores in the country. Consequently I became a latchkey kid at the tender age of five years.</p><p></p><p>My father and mother were divorced at an early age and I seldom saw him during my very early age but from five years old on I saw quite a bit of him and I became the object of a bitter ongoing custody battle that lasted until I was in high school.</p><p></p><p>During that time we moved a lot and from first grade until I graduated from high school I went to fourteen different schools. Consequently I knew many kinds of people of differing complexions and religions. When I joined the Air Force I couldn't help but notice the many ethnic groups filing past the examining doctors.</p><p></p><p>The story of my first encounter follows.</p>