Education Of A White Boy - Morgan State College

1955

I was a sophomore in high school when the first Black kids integrated the place. My parents' decision: you're going to school. Walking through that venomous mob of protesters was bloodcurdling. I prayed, “Please, God, don’t let them find out I’m Jewish.” About that same time, Gwynn Oak amusement park, a great date place, a Caucasian crowd, foam and spittle from their twisted mouths, massed violently and threatening at the entrance. I watched from across the street with fear in the pit of my stomach. Even so, it was hard to turn away. It was the ugliest thing I’d ever seen except for all the other ugliest things exactly like this. I’ve come across photographs of lynch mobs leering at the camera with Black bodies hanging from trees, same faces of the mob that assaulted the Capitol, proud and stupid and murderous. Look at those photos side by side - proud and stupid and murderous white people. I’ve had an entire spectrum of feelings (sometimes within minutes), but it’s hard to imagine feeling that much hatred. If I were an actor I think I’d go mad trying to recreate such a vile and nasty cesspool for my character. A plague came to our shores in 1619, metastasized, and infects everything we do from fixing potholes to walking on the sidewalk. And everything else. Remember “Love it or leave it”? Leave it. I don’t want you here.

OK

Morgan State College in Baltimore, Maryland is an historically Black college, now a university. I graduated Morgan in 1964, the only white guy matriculating there at that time, with a BA in English and minors in philosophy and German, well prepared for my next stop - Yale. I am grateful they took me, and fortunate to have stayed. It was shortly after I was discharged from active duty Marine Corps. Then Yale? Who da thunk it? I still carry the pain and humiliation from years of academic failure. I failed out of college three times, high school as well. My average for ninth grade algebra was Zero. Zero! I didn’t get one single question correct for one entire year. Not kidding. Not one. Jules Older, a friend and former classmate, and I covet the honor of being the only two Jewish boys to ever fail out of the “A” course. Jewish boys simply didn’t do that. A serious “shanda”. And that was only the beginning. So, how the hell did I get into Yale? Truth is, I admit to having been a bit nervous about all those students from Harvard, Dartmouth, Berkeley, Sarah Lawrence, Tufts...Yeah, so what, big shot, you graduated magna cum laude? But, you didn't go to those schools. You went to Morgan. Was Morgan Triple A? Great players but never the majors? I knew full well the brilliance of my professors and the serious pursuits of the students. Didn’t matter. A latent virus, a feeling I would rather have done without yet there it was. 

Our first serious exam at Yale was dreaded by my class, but no way to avoid it. I studied as if everything were at stake, which it was. I worked as hard as I did in the Corps because everything was at stake, which it was. At Morgan we’d have our arms around each other’s shoulders, swaying gently in a circle, singing “We shall Overcome” with such hope, such yearning, such kindness.On Parris Island we’d stand at attention in front of our racks before lights out singing “The Marine Corps Hymn” at the tops of our lungs. Both will bring me to tears. I enlisted in the Corps because my life seemed to be at a dead-end. I graduated from Morgan feeling I could do anything I chose to do as long as I chose wisely. 

  

Folks have been urging me for years to write about my days at Morgan. I understand their enthusiasm. You’d think it’d be a cakewalk. No lack of material, right? Morgan always crackled with energy. The days were vibrant. Even so, college was day to day normal. Campus wasn’t on fire; my brain, finally, was. I was happy as I hadn’t been since kindergarten. Yet, it was so normal. I don't know what else to call it. Men carried briefcases, wore sport coats and ties. Women wore Jackie Kennedy pill box hats, purses, and white gloves. Football rallies, fraternities and sororities, lectures, labs, exams, papers, ROTC, grad school applications...Fact is those years at Morgan were intellectually lively but politically, with one major exception, fairly uneventful. Of course, civil rights was an issue all over campus, but it hadn’t yet become radicalized. Black Power was not yet a meme. Really, Morgan, was no different than any other campus. I'd been tossed out of enough schools to attest to that fact.

  

Yes, the civil rights years were brewing. Kennedy was assassinated. Stokely was in the wings. Rafer Johnson visited campus to pitch the Peace Corps. Of course, most of the students were politically sophisticated and angry, itching to get into it but not yet, as I remember, truly radicalized. Selma was still years away. Malcolm X traveled to campus to debate Professor August Meier representing Morgan. Dr. Meier, a Caucasian sociology prof, a passionately devoted if bumbling Leftist, way before it became popular. I remember him rushing across campus like Groucho Marx, arms bursting with papers, disheveled, dogmatic. Martin Luther King, Jr. at that time was the major political and philosophical influence. A goodly portion of the audience left the debate still partial to Dr. Meier’s arguments which, basically, were Reverend King’s. They wanted the american dream but a dream that included them. The student body then determined to integrate a nearby movie theater in a shopping center only a quick walk from the school where students were not allowed to eat, not allowed to shop in the department store, not allowed to try on clothes. They endured arrests and venom, but damn well did it, three weeks of blood, sweat, and tears endured by the students that broke down that barrier and integrated that place. Ironically, the theater was owned by the father of a guy I knew socially. One further irony: my cousin Peggy’s father-in-law, Phil Goodman, was mayor of Baltimore at the time. Feisty guy. Wrestling champion. Local legend has it he marched into the theater, confronted the owner, and bellowed, “You will integrate this place now!” However, no politician did this. Morgan students did. It was an act of devotion and determination pulled off by a student body determined to be polite yet determined not to budge.

Go, Bears!

And that fearsome exam at Yale? I scored highest out of some two hundred others. I consider those years the beginning of my life. From then on, I didn’t know everything, and neither did anybody else.