Friend of Liberty (cont.)

Many years before there had been a sign. It had stood at the entrance to Lafayette, the town just across the Illinois River from Osborne, but it was taken to apply to all three of the closely tied communities. The sign said, very much to the point, “Nigger, don’t let the sun set on you in this town.”

Blacks . . . African Americans—in that day they would have been politely called colored or Negroes—didn’t eat in our restaurants, they didn’t stay in our one hotel, they didn’t attend our schools, and they certainly didn’t buy or rent homes anywhere within the borders of our three towns. Negro entertainers might pass through as part of our community concert series, but if they did, they sang or played their instruments or whatever else they might do for our entertainment and kept right on passing through.

My family’s standards were not those of the town. I grew up knowing that the sign was wrong, that the discrimination that continued in the long years after the sign remained only as a memory—and then a rumor of a memory—was terribly wrong. But I also grew up believing that we, my mother, my father, my brother and I, had nothing to do with that injustice. The town was at fault, not us. We were the ones who knew better.