The civil rights movement was in full swing. Governor George Wallace had stood in the doorway at the University of Alabama only to be finessed by President John F. Kennedy federalizing the Alabama National Guard. The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. had delivered his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech from the Lincoln Memorial. It was a hot muggy summer in the early 1960s, and a Midwestern university was holding a special graduate program. Students came from all over, including the South. We looked upon the Southern students with suspicion and inquisitiveness. The particular group of four white males were always impeccably dressed. They weren’t quite viewed as the enemy, but certainly their Southern drawl seemed to grate on our sensitivities about racial justice. It took a while to get to know them. It started out like those middle-school dances where the boys congregate at one end of the dance floor and the girls at the other. Maybe we felt more comfortable...(Read Full Article)