An interesting Malcolm Gladwell article in the most recent New Yorker has complicated my views of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, which I posted on last week. I now better understand why the book, while a comfort to me as a child going through the desegregation battles, proved so inadequate when I went […]
Tag Archives: racism
Mockingbird’s Race Limitations
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“Even the Best” Whites Don’t Get Race
In yesterday’s post I mentioned that a noted poet once mentioned me in a poem critical of whites. The poet is Lucille Clifton, formerly a colleague at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, now retired. The poem appeared in her book quilting. I’ll quote the poem and then give the backstory: note to my self it’s […]
Sand and Fog in the Gates Affair
Police intimidation in House of Sand and Fog The House of Sand and Fog, by Andre Dubus III, came out in 1999, was a National Book Award finalist, became an Oprah selection, and was turned into a film. I mention it here because it gets at the way that cultural differences and misunderstandings, combined with […]
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Desegregation Tales from My Childhood
I mentioned yesterday the debt I owe to the NAACP, which this year is celebrating its 100-year anniversary. Today I will talk about some of my past history with the organization, along with a discussion of how Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird helped me in some difficult years during the Civil Rights era. I’ve […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged desegregation, Harper Lee, NAACP, segregation, To Kill a Mockingbird Comments closed
Huck and My Desegregation Battles
Here’s a personal story of how a literary classic came to my aid at a critical time in my life. When I was in sixth grade in Sewanee, Tennessee (the year was 1962), I was a plaintiff in a civil rights case. School systems all over the south were defying the Brown vs. Board of […]
