I am a 54 year old white male and I wish today that I was 14, so I could live to see the coming changes. But, the first thoughts I had last watching Barack Obama last night were "I wonder where Joe Anderson is tonight?"
Joe Anderson was first black man I got to know as a child. "Mr. Anderson" was our junior high school custodian and he often drove the school bus to our away sporting events. His son was a well known basketball player at Simon Gratz high school who eventually played ball at Temple University. All of us athletes loved and respected Mr. Anderson.
One day, the head of the township transportation system got on my bus when we were celebrating our basketball championship and shouted at the whole school bus of my classmates to "Shut up! What do think this is, some sort of dago picnic!?" I stood up, as a 14 year old and told a fifty year old man in public that I was Italian and did not like the slur he just spoke. He strode up to me and told me that I was too sensitive and threatened me with expulsion, and that he would see me tomorrow in the principle’s office. I was scared shitless with the thought, not of expulsion but what my dad would do if it happened. The next day I walked to the principal’s office like a man walking to the gallows. But when I got to the principal’s office the principle was not yet in and I waited for him in the chair outside his door. When he turned the corner he looked at me and scowled and invited me into his office. But, what, I did not know is that some of the parents found out (my girlfriend, who was sitting with me told her mother who was on the school board) about it and called the principle to protest the actions of the transportation head and wanted him fired. The principle told me that he was proud of me for standing up to a bigot and that he hoped I always would.
Joe Anderson said nothing that day after his boss had shouted to us to shut up, but instead of stopping the bus and letting me off at the corner a half mile from my house, he looked over his shoulder and asked me where my house was, and I told him and drove me directly to my door.
I never, ever forget that and the look in his eyes when he said goodbye as I left the bus that day in February of 1969.
In 1992 I was the director of research for a chemical division of a huge American textile company with over a two dozen subordinates, several being black men and women. After a few months on the job my boss the president began referring to the black people working for me as "Frank’s ******" regardless of asking him not to do so, and he began calling me a" ****** lover" and repeated the phrase in front of several of the white men with whom I worked with. When I went to complain about this to the corporate VP of human resources, I got fired. Yeap, fired. this was still the deep South and the company was run by a good ole' boy network. Yet as I was unceremoniously marched out of the building with my box of personal stuff in hands, several of the older black ladies of whom I had managed stood in the halls quietly told the VP of human resources who accompanied me to my car, that he was firing the wrong man. I was really upset losing my job and hung my head in humiliation, but I stiffened up because each of those black ladies were looking at me just the way Mr. Anderson had done years before.
So I sit here a day from the election of a black man for President of the United States and hope Mr. Anderson has lived long enough to see it.
So this is for you, Mr. Anderson, wherever you are.
and excuse me not embedding these vides, I must be brain dead tonight because nothing's sticking.
http://www.youtube.com/...
http://www.youtube.com/...
http://www.youtube.com/...
http://www.youtube.com/...
http://www.youtube.com/...