A national shame.

Growing up. In a small town (population 10,000). In Wisconsin. Sheltered me from the real world. I had little clue of the racist divide in America. After all, we had only one black family in town. A token oddity. But my eyes began to open. When we visited relatives. In Chicago.  Sad to say, I had racist relatives. I heard the slurs against blacks and Jews. When a black family tried to move into white suburban Chicago, the whites protested. Threw rocks. Set fires. And destroyed the apartment building. A blatant message. To blacks. To stay away. To stay in their ghettos. Yes, that was the late 1940s. After World War II. When hypocritical Americans castigated the Nazis for their genocide. Twenty years later, in the 1960s, I went to work as a journalist. In Florida.  And I saw segregation at its worst.  Separate schools. Separate restaurants. Separate swimming beaches. Separate drinking fountains.  Separate everything. In fact, black families didn’t live in exclusive white communities. They resided in the adjoining black ghettos.  Didn’t take long. For me to join the local chapter of the NAACP. Yes, the civil rights movement was underway. Things have changed. For the better. But still, there’s a long way to go. America is still racist. At the core. Lingering forms of racism remain. Yes, fellow Americans. It’s a national shame. Time for action. --Jim Broede