The interviews conclude with these thoughts by Tom Jones, one of the leaders of the Straight occupation, who later served as CEO of TIAA-CREF, the huge teachers and professors retirement fund.
JONES: Frankly, I do not think Barack Obama would be president today without what we did in Willard Straight Hall in 1969. I believe Barack Obama stands on our shoulders. The Straight was part of a series of historical events that began with Rosa Parks in 1955 and continued through the Sixties with the Freedom Riders and the marchers at Selma, Alabama, and made possible this magnificent thing that happened in January 2009. I think we're part of a chain of history. I'm not saying the most important part, but we're one of the links.
Last night I received an e-mail from a high school classmate asking if I had contact information for Homer "Skip" Meade who grew up and attended school with us in Madison, New Jersey. Having nothing recent I turned to Google, found so much about Skip I hadn't been aware of, and came upon your blog. I'm pausing here to share a bit because I also happen to be a '68 graduate of Butler University.
ReplyDeleteIn the 4 years I attended Butler as a vocal performance major (at a time when we were encouraged to choose teaching, nursing or secretarial school), with the exception of school breaks spent in NJ and off campus social events, I never left campus. I was very protected, very isolated. I read no newspapers and watched little TV. My time was spent in practice and classrooms. Butler was an oasis of calm for me. My senior year I lived 2 blocks off campus in the home of a woman who rented out her bedrooms to Butler coeds. She kept her house immaculate, was a tiny woman, quiet, a grandmother, light complected with a face full of freckles, and African American. I, a typical white Protestant college girl, felt comfortable and welcome there.
I met Homer Meade in the early '50's when we both attended Kings Road Elementary School. He was one of the many of us who walked to and from school each day. One day he ran by and kissed me on the cheek, and I remember thinking it was very sweet coming from him. He was not obnoxious like the other little boys.
In the '50's and '60's Madison, NJ, just 24 miles from NYC, was a charming, small commuter town with a lot of transplants, a lot of Italians, and very few blacks. I don't know whether we had a kind of reverse discrimination thing going, and, to prove we had no prejudice, heaped responsibility and honors on our black classmates, or if we just got lucky with the high caliber of their make up. Our black students ended up being captain of the football team, head of the cheerleaders, President of the Student Council, and so on.
Here's what my former classmate wrote about Skip when he asked me for his contact information:
"I've been meaning to write to ask if you have contact information for Skip (Homer Lee) Meade, who graduated a year behind us at Madison. He was my best friend in 7th-8th grades... he was captain of the football team and president of the student body -- but had no time left for classes and stayed back a year...."
Staying back a year in high school was no indication of a lack of ability on Skip's part. He graduated from Cornell with a degree in philosophy, holds 2 graduate degrees from UMass Amherst and went on to accomplish a great deal in the field of education.
I can't help but ponder the significance of my life and that of the little boy who kissed me on my cheek one day. He had such important work ahead of him. I continued to live a life protected from so many of the harsher realities of life. Skip has been a strong link in an important chain of events. I, well, I recently vote for my first Democrat - Obama.
What a delightful reflection, Sharon! I also knew Skip Meade--his room was just a few doors down from mine in my freshman dorm at Cornell. I remember him being a good-natured and easy-going guy that year, so it was a bit of a shock to find out he was among those occupying the Straight in senior year.
ReplyDeleteYou growing up in New Jersey had a much more healthy and diverse environment than I did growing up in northern Virginia. When I graduated from high school in 1965, there were still no African-Americans at the school. So in many respects, Cornell was my first introduction to Blacks, and Skip was one of the first I actually knew.
Like you, I was also curious about his life after Cornell. As far as I can tell from my web research, he received a master's degree and an Ed.D. from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst; did research (including on W.E.B. DuBois) for a while; and is now a senior administrator for a national educational testing firm.
It was interesting that you (Sharon) and I have a common tie to Butler University. I began teaching there just a few years after you graduated, but even now, it is a relative "oasis of calm" and a very nice place to spend time (33 years in my case!).
There must be a small Homer Meade revival going on. I thought of Homer for the first time in almost 45 years last night when discussing a variety of political topics with some conservative friends from Cape May County, New Jersey who had voted for Obama. The context was post-racial society (is it a reality now that Obama is president) and I argued that it is not, even though as a member of American Legion Jersey Boys' State, I voted along with the majority to elect Homer "Governor" in 1964. My point was that we idealistic teenagers then had deliberately chosen to make a statement about race and its unimportance to us in selecting leaders but that the choice (in an admittedly hothouse atmosphere, and self-defeating because by making the choice we were ~underlining~ its importance), did not really translate very far into our personal lives in the years that followed. I grew up in an all-white New Jersey suburb-- plenty of such addresses up north, Virginia has no monopoly there -- and, like you, Mr. Mason, did not really encounter any black people my own age until going to Rutgers. Despite a few friendships here and there down the years, I still effectively live in an all-white bubble, even though I now reside in Philadelphia, a city with a black mayor and a majority black population. I suspect that there have been strides down the post-racial road in the intervening years but doubt that we will ever really get there, perhaps never even know what "there" is. At any rate, I was happy to see that Homer has done well, even happier to learn that he was able to grow beyond the bland ALJBS vision of American politics so far as to participate in the takeover of a building! I doubt that the American Legion would have approved...
ReplyDeletePaul Rossi, Paul.Louis.Rossi@gmail.com
Hi David. Don't know if you still check your blog or receive notices of comments on it, but I wanted to let you know that a while after our exchange about him, Skip contacted me via facebook. He just happened to Google himself and came across your blog. It was wonderful to reconnect, share old memories and viewpoints. He even e-d me some of his writings. It's so lovely when life gives us little gifts like this. Wish I'd thought to let you know right after it happened. Thanks for the part you played in it.
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