<Begin Segment 17>

DC: And I was very fortunate to meet my husband at Roosevelt University, and I've had a very sporadic academic life after leaving high school, largely because I believe I had no confidence in myself, and I believe that I had received a poor high school education, and there was no way I could compete with the students around me at the University of Chicago. And when I met my husband at Roosevelt University, he had just returned from a stint in Atlanta, Georgia, and he was working with SNCC to integrate the lunch counters in Atlanta. And what they would do is the white students would sit down at the lunch counter, order their food, the food would come, and they would move away and then a black SNCC student would sit down in their stead. And my husband told me these stories, and I thought, wow, that's pretty special. And he said he remembered being knocked to the ground after sitting at that lunch counter and looking up and seeing one of the other black SNCC members sitting at the lunch counter, and a white girl about the same age sitting there, who wasn't involved in this protest, look over to him, his name was Taylor Washington, that's what my husband said, and handing him her plate of food. And he said, my husband said had he not been knocked to the ground, he would not have had that angle to see that transaction take place. And he said what he saw there was a pure act of love. And he was very grateful for that, and he's passed on that story. And I think about that and I think how we are all capable of this, but it was wonderful to see in children. With no adults around them to stop, stop this young white girl from doing the right thing, to speak from the heart, basically, to this other person who was also, she was valuing him and giving him dignity. And we are capable of doing this, and it's more important, that act is more important than any PhD you could ever attain. If you can't do that, there's something lacking in us that we feel constrained, either by our family or by our culture or by our society or by our government, to honor the dignity of another individual. And so I saw that in myself when I went to high school, and I've tried to remember it. I don't think that I'm a perfect specimen of humanity or diplomacy or kindness, but I'm very proud to know my husband did that, and he was a white person who had white privilege. And he chose to go down there because his friend had beckoned him down. His friend was a high school friend from high school in Lombard, Illinois, and he was going down so Wayne decided he'd go down.

When you take part in the movement like that, and, of course, the prisons were segregated at that time. So if you're white and you go into the white prison, you are not a hero, you're a bad guy. And so they beat my husband up, and to protect him, they put him in solitary, and my husband was very happy to go into solitary as a result of having been beaten up. And there he took part in a hunger strike, and he could hear his friend, who was also in solitary confinement, and they would talk, somehow, to each other. And my husband said the only time he was afraid was when the door opened because then you didn't know what they would do to you. And so they were on a hunger strike and were eventually released, and someone had put up the bail. And to this day my husband believes it was Harry Belafonte who had bailed him out, because evidently he had contributed to that cause a great deal. And so, yes, so we have a great deal of gratitude and respect for Harry Belafonte and his work. And so if you were a black person and you had participated in the Civil Rights Movement, and you went to the segregated part of the prison, you were a hero, so that was a distinct difference. And my husband tells me this very dramatic story about how when he was released, he was passing by a window and he looked in and he saw his reflection, and he was so surprised to see a white face. That his identity had become so fused with the black movement that he himself felt that he was black. So he had made this transition from white privilege in the suburbs to understanding what it is to be black person through that experience of the Civil Rights Movement and being in prison and working with black people.

And then the black people threw the whites out of the movement. So when my husband asked them why, "Why are you throwing us out? We want to keep working with you." They said, "Because at the end of the summer you will go back to your nice house with nice appliances, refrigerators, and we'll still be stuck here." So he was very hurt by that, but I guess that's how movements grow and develop and change. So he returned (to Chicago) that's how I met him at Roosevelt University. And I think had I not met William, I don't think I would have ever recognized what real character looks like. Not that my family weren't full of characters in different ways, but they weren't quite the individuals who were willing to stand up like that, as individuals. They were more interested in keeping the family together, which is also an honorable ambition given what could have happened to us in the camps. I guess we all have different ambitions given the circumstances we find ourselves in. But because of his white privilege, he was able to then transcend his personal life and to make that connection with other people who needed his help, obviously. And through that experience, I believe he became a better person, although I didn't know him before that.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.