Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
Fall 2011
Citation
Great Plains Quarterly 31:4 (Fall 2011).
Abstract
On February 9, 1969, the University of Oklahoma kicked off its annual Black History Week with an especially distinguished visitor, the noted African American author and television journalist Louis E. Lomax. After Lomax's public address, there was a reception at the home of George Henderson, one of only a handful of black professors at the university and the first African American ever to purchase a home in the university town of Norman. When Henderson escorted Lomax back to his room at the Holiday Inn, the two reminisced about the civil rights movement. "Then, as if speaking to himself, [Lomax] said in a soft voice, 'You know, George, we have spent the better part of our lives trying to gain our freedom so that our children can come to an almost all-white place like this and say, "I don't want to live or even go to a school here." I can't blame them. I'm tired of trying to live in communities like Norman too.'" George Henderson smiled and asked, '''It's about the right for them, and not some bigot, to make that decision, isn't it?"1
Comments
Copyright © 2011 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska.