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Kerry F Meehan's avatar

Now, Bob, I have to read the essay and your biography of Evans. Thanks.

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Robert Hamblin's avatar

You recall him as the director of the Faulkner conference, I'm sure. He was also a very fine writer. I edited a collection of his fiction and essays, An Evans Harrington Reader, after I did the biography.

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Liz Lockhart's avatar

This is powerful. I remember my parents trying to reconcile their upbringing and the changing times following 1964. As a teenager working as a carhop and raised in a white town in 1964, I also remember my boss (who as a Greek had encountered a lesser version of discrimination) cautioning his carhops not to treat Negroes any differently than white customers.

I had previously seen Whites Only signs by water fountains in my Grandparents' town of Pocahontas, Arkansas, and I asked Mom why in the world those signs were there. As a sheltered white child, that was my first encounter with racism. Mom gently explained that it was the way of the South, but it didn't have to be our way.

I thought back to those signs when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, and I knew that the law was necessary while also hoping it would change the world.

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