Junior Year—Autumn Term

Returning to college after an eye-opening summer in Europe, I was a different person. For the first time, I paid attention to America’s actions in Vietnam and the civil rights movement.

The music of Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, James Brown, Tina, and Aretha filled the dormitories. On the weekends, in downtown ballrooms Black bands from Memphis and Clarksdale had us jumping to R&B, and what came to be called soul music.

Like most of my classmates, I finally began to really listen to what Black people were saying in the protest movements and in the songs. When Aretha Franklin sang Otis Redding’s “Respect,” she turned it into an anthem for the civil rights movement. And she helped me to begin to understand that white people, like me, needed to show “respect” to Black folks.

I belonged to a fraternity. It was our tradition for “brothers” to nominate candidates to join. We listed our nominees and on election night, we turned down the lights in the room and passed around a box with a hole in the top. Each of us dropped in a marble: white to accept, black to reject. If there was one black ball when the president opened the box, that candidate would not be invited.

Several of us nominated a good friend, who happened to be Black. The voting box was opened, and there was one black ball inside. The member who dropped it in later told me, “I just can’t call a Black guy ‘brother’.”

Within a few weeks, several of us quit the fraternity over that racist discrimination. It was a minor act, but a decision to stand up and show respect for a friend who was a different color.

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