and I was in high school (60s), there was something called the American Field Student Program. Students from all over the world went to other countries for a year, to educate themselves as well as educating their host country about their homeland.
One of the AFS students who came to our western (caucasian) Cleveland suburb high school was a young man from Ghana. We called him Robert and no one could pronounce his last name. When a "kt" follows an "n," American tongues don't know what to do with it. But I remember something like: Nkteia.
Robert was like no one any of us had ever met before. He was 19, old by our standards for a high school junior. He was very talented and perceptive of American culture. He was a whiz at math, physics and chemistry. Also played piano and spoke six languages, including the "King's" english. He had a wonderful sense of humor, and he made us all laugh. Robert was charismatic in the way that everyone wanted to be a part of his orbit, to listen to him, to learn from him. He prepared several "lectures" for us to tell us about Ghana, its culture, its history, its people, its food. He had a smile bigger and brighter than the sun.
It's been 50 years, but I will never forget him.
It was at the height of the civil rights marches (and violence). Robert was the darkest-skinned person any of us had ever seen. We constantly worried about him going into Cleveland proper. So, whenever he wanted to venture into the city, about a dozen students and some adults would accompany him. I guess you could call us all his "posse" because we were NOT about to allow anything to happen to our Robert. Despite his worldly intelligence, he was an innocent and somewhat naive about the tough streets of 60s Cleveland.
While he was with us, there was an outbreak of racial violence in the city - cops and civil rights marchers clashed. We struggled to explain this to Robert. Racial oppression was not something that made sense to a young man from Ghana.
The day before he left us, he addressed the entire school. He spoke of his time with us and what he had learned from us and about us. Addressing the violent night that had occurred, and racialism in general, he used the piano as a metaphor for people. You cannot make music on the piano without both the white keys and the black keys working in harmony. He spoke for over an hour. When he concluded, there was not a dry eye in the auditorium. At the end, instead of shaking his hand goodbye, we formed a line of 400 strong of teenagers (and teachers) who simply want to hug him.
We formed a committee of students who would write to him in Ghana to keep him informed and involved with us. (And yes, he wrote back, long letters of reflections on his time with us and his preparations for college.)
It was so hard to let him go. Over 100 students accompanied him to Cleveland-Hopkins airport the day of his departure. No dry eyes there either.
He had opened our eyes and touched our hearts, and we were so much better for it.
It was 50 years ago, and I still remember him and that smile.
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