Kansas City Star Apologizes for Decades of Racist Coverage
That’s the NBC News headline I find earth-shaking in its implications.
Other papers are now looking into their own racist histories
If you think earth-shaking is too strong an adjective, you are not as old as I and haven’t the memories. I grew up in the very liberal environs of Evanston, Illinois—home to Northwestern University and a paradigm of forward-thinking. Or so I felt at the time.
And yet there was a great deal of subtle and perhaps even elusive racism going on there in the forties and fifties. An area of town where only ‘black folks’ were allowed to live—or perhaps the reverse, other areas in Evanston where there were no blacks. Movie theaters and restaurants were discreetly segregated. Blacks could sit on the main floor, but the balcony was more comfortable for them. And certainly no restaurant would refuse to seat a black family, but they might wait a very long time for service.
Evanston Township High School (where I graduated) was fully integrated, but the swim-team practiced…