Boomers

African American Heroes, Brown v. Board of Education, and Martin Luther King

Having grown up in Topeka, Kansas, I have a profound and ironic connection to the nascent Civil Rights movement. Before 1954, which happened to be the year I started Kindergarten, racial segregation was common in American schools, as it was in Topeka, especially elementary schools.

Public school administrators forced African-American children to attend schools often encumbered by substandard facilities and many miles from their homes, although white-only schools existed in nearby neighborhoods.

This inequity of course led to Oliver L. Brown et. al. v. The Board of Education of Topeka, a precursor to sweeping cultural and political changes that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would facilitate and lead one decade later. 

Brown et al. v. Board of Education was a case that contested the Kansas statute of 1879 permitting the segregation of public elementary schools. At the very least, the national focus accorded to the Brown decision and its unprecedented outcome in the Supreme Court make it a legal landmark. The plaintiffs argued that separate elementary schools were an impediment to black children's education.

I had no awareness of this Supreme Court decision during my first few years in elementary school, and Southwest Elementary School (now Whitson Elementary) remained mostly white. There is not a single individual of color in any of my class photos from that time.

However, as we started the 6th grade, my class anticipated a special teacher, someone who had developed a celebrity status in our school—Mr. J. B. Holland.

A kind and erudite African-American teacher, Mr. Holland stopped by our class three times weekly to teach science. Up to that point, I had been an average student, demonstrating modest enthusiasm for learning, but Mr. Holland stimulated a dormant zeal for science; he set fire to my passion for learning about chemistry and biology. I remember rehearsing arcane and difficult biology terms, with atypical effort and repetition, to impress this extraordinary educator and to win his encouragement. He commanded attention in the classroom, and his wit and clarity opened minds.

I was not alone in my reactions to Mr. Holland. Here is how he has been described in historical background information concerning Monroe Elementary School, epicenter of the Brown decision:

J. B. Holland might have been one of the "supreme" black teachers of Topeka. Frank Wilson served as principal in the newly-integrated Whitson Elementary School over Holland, who had once been principal of Monroe Elementary School. Wilson praised Holland as "one of the most outstanding teachers I had ever come across." He also said that parents were anxious to get their children into a class with Mr. Holland because of his reputation as an entertaining and motivating instructor.

Growing up in a significant crucible of racial divisiveness, I nevertheless owe my lifelong passion for learning to a man who lived daily with veiled and obvious Jim Crow realities everywhere in Topeka but inside his magical classroom. I know from subsequent adult conversations with my classmates that Mr. Holland was an influential early mentor to most of us in our long-term educational quest.

Many Baby Boomers who received stimulating and inspiring lessons in life from Mr. Holland owe his memory a debt of gratitude.

My story of this teacher has been permanently encapsulated as oral history in the Library of Congress, my firsthand witness to the American Civil Rights Movement.

Others growing up elsewhere also had positive formative experiences directly or indirectly because of African-American mentors: coaches, ministers, college educators, physicians, civic leaders, professional athletes, Hollywood actors, and, of course, Dr. Martin Luther King.

Boomers sat on the front row of racial integration in America, and now it is our time to demonstrate our thankfulness for the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. and all the brave souls who led this nation's Civil Rights movement.

I encourage those who grew up during the 1950's, 60's and 70's to reflect upon their own discoveries and awakenings that were nurtured by African-American heroes, personal and public.

What Vincent van Gogh Can Teach Boomers (and everyone else) about Failure

Waking from a fitful dream, he struggled out of bed and stumbled to a barred window. From this perspective in the asylum, he beheld a clear night, a large morning star enchanting him. The sight of stars always inspired him. Just as we take a train from Paris to Amsterdam, he thought, we take death to go to a star.

About a year later, he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest. He was 37 years old.

Life started more hopefully for him. He was son of a country minister who valued education. He memorized more than three-fourths of the Bible. As a young man, he lived in Paris and worked for his uncle who was a successful art dealer. He learned and mastered four languages.

He also fell deeply in love with his landlady’s daughter, who rejected him in favor of another. This rejection devastated him and led to his being fired from his uncle’s gallery.

He decided to follow his father’s footsteps and devote his life to God. Preachers being punished by the Methodist Church were often sent off to southern Belgium to coalmining territories where retched conditions prevailed. He volunteered for this assignment, finding special inspiration working with the poor and oppressed. He was quite effective as a spiritual counselor, and the miners nicknamed him “Christ of the Coal Mines.”

Church leaders did not see him as an asset but rather as undignified, so they fired him. Again, he sought refuge in his family and even became captivated by his widowed cousin, Kate. He declared his love for her, which Kate and her parents found repulsive.

Finally, he decided to dedicate the rest of his life to pursuing art. His younger brother saw potential in his paintings and agreed to support him with a monthly stipend. An art dealer, his brother believed the older brother’s paintings might sell in Paris.

During the next ten years, he moved around Europe while befriending artist peers. He started an artist’s union in a town near Paris where notable artists visited and painted with him.

The stipend his brother, Theo, gave him was adequate for living expenses but not for models, canvases, and expensive oil paints. He often lived solely on coffee, cigarettes, bread, and the psychedelic liqueur absinthe. He had a habit of putting his paintbrushes in his mouth, exposing him to lead poisoning. He also sipped turpentine from time to time.

These horrible health practices and the hallucinogenic effects of absinthe contributed to occasional spells of madness and thus the asylum that I described at the beginning of this story.

Yet he worked at a feverish pace. He wrote, “The power of work is a second youth.”

During ten years of prodigious output, he created over 2,100 paintings. Yet he did not gain the favor of rich art collectors. People in the town where he lived treated him viciously and even signed a petition asking government officials for his removal.

During this decade of frenetic work, his younger brother was only able to sell a single painting for the equivalent of $2,300 today.

Vincent van Gogh, who preferred to sign his paintings with just Vincent, felt despondent, lonely, and rejected for most of his adult life. He shot himself in the chest as a final act of self-loathing, although he did not successfully kill himself outright. He died two days later in the arms of his devoted brother, Theo.

Today, we view Vincent as one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century. The 1889 painting inspired by the clear night while he was in an asylum became known as “The Starry Night” and is housed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His painting called “Irises” sold for $54 million dollars at auction. Another painting, a portrait of a doctor who cared for him in the asylum, sold for $83 million dollars.

Vincent’s story can be a lesson for all of us. He went to his grave seeing himself as a loser. He felt unloved, misunderstood, and rejected by all but his younger brother.

Most of us experience some of the pain that followed Vincent through his life. Maybe we fail to achieve our most private dream. Or we lose in love. Or we feel misunderstood. These feelings are part of the human experience.

Vincent’s story teaches us that in the end we may never know the full scope of our impact on the world. Our total influence may emerge after we are gone.

Next time things don’t work out, remember Vincent, an asylum and a painting called “The Starry Night.” It is a priceless masterpiece and one enduring legacy of a downtrodden and defeated man who created the work.