The work for SCLC, in North Carolina and Washington, D.C., remains a privilege of my life. I was with SCLC/SCOPE in North Carolina and afterward worked at the Washington, D.C. Bureau of SCLC. I also worked with the SCLC/Poor Peoples Campaign and with the Far Northeast Neighborhood Association, Washington, D.C.
Several years after graduating from Howard University, I was accepted and was a graduate student at the University of Michigan for four years. It was there that I developed an understanding of racism that I had not learned while working with SCLC. Michigan accepted me, as a Howard graduate, thinking I was black. On arrival, and finding out I was white, and during the time I was there, repeated efforts were made to get rid of me, because of my race. That experience became a part of my world view and, to this day, offers a foundation for why I remain committed to civil rights and the need to confront racism wherever I find it, which is everywhere.
The Michigan education, which was superlative, allowed me to begin to connect dots in a new way, for which I am forever grateful. I still doubt Michigan has appreciation for what I was taught.
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