General Discussion

… despite Joe McCarthy’s witch-hunt for Commies scarring her for life. She was afraid of activism — I had to figure that out for myself.

But the foundation she gave me was there: treating people unequally was wrong and integrating schools was right; the Civil Rights movement was right and people being attacked by police dogs and fire hoses showed how necessary the movement was. The wartime internment of American Japanese was wrong — and how many white mothers in this country do you think told their small girls about that?

I didn’t have the wherewithal in high school to really distinguish the two political parties at first, because conversations in the home were not framed that way. After all, President Eisenhower set out to force the integration of public schools, and he was a Republican president. But JFK was a Democrat, and that meant lot — and it was LBJ who brought forth the legislation that changed the country.

The first years of college were seminal, and I built on what I knew. My friends taught me activism. Thus, my life.

In memoriam, Mom.