Prejudice Across America

310 Pages·2000·8.34 MB·English

by  James Waller

PREJ UD IC E
ACROSS
A M E RlCA

www.upress.state.ms.us
Copyright 0 2000 by lames Waller
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 4 3 2
@
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-PublicationD ata
Waller, lames, 1961-
Prejudice across America / lames Waller.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-57806-269-1 (cloth : alk. paper)-ISBN 1-57806-313-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Prejudices-United States. 2. Racism-United States. 3. United States-
Race relations. I. Title.
E184.Al W216 2000
305.8’00973-dc2 I 00-035195
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
To my mother, Billie Jean Waller.
It's not a Silver Star, but every page reflects your loving
guidance and influence on my life. Thank you.
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COn ten ts
Foreword ix
Preface xiii
Acknowledgments XXV
Introduction: The Making of “Prejudice Across America”
I. The Preparations i7
2. Los Angeles: Taiko Drums, Blues, and the Banana Bungalow 41
3. San Francisco: The Goodness of Uncle Guy 75
4. Chicago: Arvis Tells It Like It Is 101
5. Memphis: A Grief Observed 137
6. New Orleans: An Interlude 161
7. Birmingham: “Bombingham” Revisited 175
8. Atlanta: “Don’t Tell Me It’s on Peachtree, Again. . . . ” 20 I
9. Washington, D.C.: The Beginning of a Country
and the End of Our Line 237
Afterword 279
Appendix A: Itinerary of the 1998 Tour 289
Appendix B: Bibliographic Essay 29 5
Index 305
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Foreword
“0 Public Road . . . you express me better than I can express myself.” I
first read Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass as an Ohio schoolboy. The
great Democratic chant struck me hard, a lightning bolt of simple, au-
thoritative words proclaiming that only in motion do people really have
a chance to turn dreams into reality. Even as a fourteen-year-old, I had
already suspected such. After all, my favorite reading, be it Jack London’s
Alaska stories, Mark Twain’s Mississippi River tales, or Jack Kerouac’s
highway antics, had adventurous escape as a subplot. What sense did it
make to be trapped in Perrysburg Junior High School reading Huckle-
berry Finn when the white bass were running in the Maumee River? If
Huck had the good sense to discover the river by “lighting out for the
territories,” then why shouldn’t I be exploring along the banks of mine?
As London wrote in 1ohn Barleycorn about his own youth, “I wanted to
be where the winds of adventure blew.” Although this was obviously an
immature perspective on what constituted an education, it is also true
that I learned more about American history by taking field trips to
Thomas Edison’s birthplace and Johnny Appleseed’s grave than I did in a
traditional classroom setting.
Memories of childhood longings were swirling around my mind when
I created a new kind of course at Hofstra University in New York in
1992.W ith universities being run like failing businesses and the art of
teaching often considered antiquated, it seemed important to inject the
joy of learning back into the college curriculum. A solution that appealed
to my sense of adventure was to abandon the classroom altogether and
take to the open road in a forty-foot-long sleeper coach with my students.
Instead of fidgeting in a Long Island classroom reading about the Civil
Rights movement, we would visit the Ebenezer Baptist Church in At-
lanta and the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, hold politi-
cal seminars on Martin Luther King Jr. at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis
and his crypt in Atlanta, and discuss the African American struggle with