[Photo: Larry in 1965]<\/p>\n
I was speaking with a young man recently whom I had not seen since his time in the Navy. As we spoke of certain current issues, I suggested that he might view certain current events \u201ca little less white\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I am white\u201d<\/b>, replied my young friend, \u201cAm I suddenly supposed to be ashamed of that?\u201d \u201cNot at all\u201d, I tried to explain. \u201cHowever, whether it be the immigrant experience or the black experience, we can allow ourselves to be better informed by not dismissing the life-story of those not exactly like us. We have much to learn.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was during the early 1960\u2019s<\/b> that I first came into substantive contact with Charlotte\u2019s black community. My uncle owned a small supermarket in the Greenville area of the then segregated city. Located on Oaklawn Avenue directly across from Fairview Homes (the city\u2019s first affordable housing project long-since removed), our store served an African American community.<\/p>\n
It was there that I first experienced the value of stepping out beyond my own white culture. For me, this area became something of a \u201csecond home\u201d, where I grew up under the protective and watchful eye of the customers I sought to serve.<\/p>\n
I would soon realize that I probably knew more people of color than white. I recall waiting for a bus on Trade at Tryon, and realized that if I crossed Tryon I would find many of my customers. (In those days all buses parked facing the Square, pointing North, South, East, or West.) So I left the white folk at my bus stop and crossed over. There I could visit until my customers would remind me that my bus was coming.<\/p>\n
I grew to adulthood working at the little Piedmount Super Market, often managing the Produce Department. I recall fondly when after I was newly married, that one of my customers recommended that I take home some collard greens to my wife. She even sent me home with written instructions on how to prepare them.<\/p>\n
To this day, I think of her every time I prepare collards, following her cooking directions .<\/p>\n
Over thirty years later <\/b>I was teaching an introductory computer class for the building maintenance staff of UNC -Charlotte. After class one of my students, a black man about my age, asked if I could show him how to use the internet to research the area where he grew up. When I told him that I used to work in his old neighborhood, he responded with excitement, \u201cI knew it! I knew it was you. I remember you when we were both teenagers. I lived in Fairview Homes.<\/p>\n
He even described how I used to leave marks above my apron\u2019s pocket where I kept the black or red marking crayons after writing the price on the bag of produce that I had weighed for my customers.<\/p>\n
Feeling a connection with this \u201cwhite guy\u201d who had visited his world decades earlier, he shared details of a troubled life, complete with a failed marriage and loss of his family, of despair, and a stint in prison where he had seen several others that I remembered. I later visited in his home and met his current family. There I found a man of religious faith, a survivor of the old neighborhood.<\/p>\n
Embracing and being embraced by people of color does not make me an expert on, or participant of, the black experience. <\/i><\/p>\n
Nonetheless my interactions outside of my white culture have become a part of my personal story. If we truly are the sum of our experiences, then this has changed who I am.<\/p>\n
It changes how I view others. It also allows me to feel no shame in thinking \u201ca little less white.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From age 14-21 Larry worked at his uncle’s grocery store which served Charlotte’s first housing project. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Larry’s experiences there allowed him to transcend the segregation of the city, and step into a culture not his own.<\/p>\n