At a party he told me that if I really cared about civil rights, I too should head out to California. He said something about big things happening in the East Bay, as if I would certainly know where the East Bay was and what was happening there. I didn’t know, or at least not until it was far too late to impress him with my up-to-the-minute command of the black protest scene. I just smiled, hoping he wouldn’t notice the blank I was drawing, and waited for him to make his point. But there was to be no point. He took on the pained look of a man who would have loved to talk forever were it not for all the pressing calls on his time. He made a quick apology, and then he was gone. I never saw him again. Only later that night did I remember that the East Bay meant Oakland, California, the home of the Black Panthers. But it was also surprising even to hear the words “civil rights” pass from John’s lips. Like many young whites of that era, he seemed to have been untouched by racial matters.
