Michele Norris
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Deb Tiemens- Only Caucasian on the Bus

Only Caucasian on the bus. Epiphany

Growing up gay, I always knew what it felt like to be different. But my difference was hidden and I didn’t know what it felt like to visibly stand out. In 1989 I moved from northwest Iowa to the District of Colombia to do an internship for my master’s program. On the way to my first day on the job, I boarded the city

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Ken Fisher- Four generations Nigger Colored Black Friend

Four generations
Nigger
Colored
Black
Friend

In my own family the language has taken four generations to change, from my grandfather in 1920 to my children in 1990.
My grandfather and mother were from East Texas, but my children have lived in both the north and the south, as have I.

-Ken Fisher

 

Read more 6 word essays on Race @ The RACE Card.

 

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Elisabeth (2nd Grader)- My ancestors owned yours.

My Ancestors Owned Yours

Years later I remembered showing my Civil War knowledge to a classmate, and I was horrified when I realized what I had said. How I wish I could take those words back. Thank you for your project.
-Elisabeth

 

<SEE> Elisabeth’s Race Card @ The RACE Card.

 

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Marja Coons-Torn- I need to know your experience,

I Need to Know your Experience

My father was a verbal racist, yet numbered African-Americans among his friends. Can I explain? Not really. But I knew something was wrong with the language he was using. It may be that is what propelled me to develop a community that included numerous African-American friends. Then I went to work with Latino farm workers in Los Angeles. These are things that shaped me.

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Conversations at KCTS 9/Michele Norris

In 2010, NPR host Michele Norris reported on race relations in the United States, leading her to write a book about America’s “hidden conversations.” But along the way, she realized there was another hidden story – about her own life and family. In this episodes of “Conversations,” Enrique Cerna talks with Norris about her career as a journalist, and her new memoir, “The Grace of Silence.”

Chapter 1: Hidden Conversations …

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Judy Seymour- Dr. King’s Photo Behind a Folding Door

Dr. King’s photo behind a folding door

Anything else: I grew up upper class white outside New Haven, CT. ‘Bill’ and ‘JB’ cleaned my parents’ house for ‘Mrs. Seymour’, my mother. My mother hung a calendar photo of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the wall behind a folding door between our kitchen and family room that was only closed/unfolded by Bill or JB.
I sat in my family room

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Keith Johnson- No “card” in the human race!

No “card” in the human race!

I was always taught by my parents to treat people on the merit of their deeds and not on the color of their skin. They grew up in the late 1930’s and the 1940’s and early ’50’s in Birmingham Alabama and the almost southern town of Cairo, Illinois. They moved to Minnesota in the 1950’s when the population of people of color, specifically African-Americans,

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Henrietta Jenrette- Pearl Took Me to the Circus

I was born in Chattanooga, TN in 1934. My parents were white but Jewish so not quite white in the view of many whites.
They were struggling at the time to remain middle class. My father and grandfather (an immigrant from Lithuania) owned two movie theaters for colored (the term used at the time) people, the Bijou and the Grand. Also, my father was a promoter, bringing black bands to

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Grace Notes Blog- Match Book Fiction

Match Book Fiction

Shorts bursts of creativity are all the rage right now in the age of email, twitter and face book. It is hard to be profound in 140 characters or less, but lord knows a lot of people try. Given the success of twitter it’s no surprise that we’re starting to see adventures in micro-publishing. There’s a cook book called Eat Tweet in which more than 1,000 recipes …

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Grace Notes Blog- Listen Up! National Day of Listening

 

I juggle a lot of titles in my life. Mother. Wife. Daughter. Radio Host. Book Author. Occasional Room Parent. SisterFriend. Gardner. Cook. Chief bottle washer.

 

This season I get to add another title to that list: Ambassador.

My friend Dave Isay, the founder of the national, non-profit oral history project called StoryCorps has asked me to serve as the National Ambassador for another one of his wise contributions …

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