school -- separate, and unequal, schools, segregated water fountains, employment ads in a large newspaper that actually said "Only Caucasians need apply," and much worse crud. But truth is, I still was at a point where I'd hesitate a bit to make sure I was using "integration" and "segregation" correctly because those issues weren't really talked about in classes.
I was very lucky. I went to a typical southern conservative university in 1967. We are talking about colleges where the fraternity houses had big confederate flags hanging on the antebellum houses. One of the reasons I avoided fraternities. The alumni did include the likes of Jimmy Carter, Sam Nunn, and numerous scholars. So, it was not totally rubesville, although a lot of students were rubes.
Anyway, my first quarter there I needed one more course to fill out my hours. Only thing I could find was a Sociology class at 8:00AM three days a week, including Saturday. I almost didn't take it because I hated early classes.
The first few sessions were pretty normal, although the professor was an odd, but likable type. One Monday he walked in with a big bandage on his head. He had been at the city park over the weekend for a large demonstration -- civil rights and Vietnam -- and had been arrested/beaten by police.
After telling us what happened, he said go ahead and sell your sociology books because we are going off script. The class turned into something very similar to Howard Zinn's book A People's History of the United States written over a decade later.
I never learned as much in any other class. Just a few years ago I saw where he had died in his 80s. I wrote a long response to the notice expressing my sincere thanks for his class and the risks he took teaching such matters back in the 1960s.
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