- Autobiography
- A Break in Family
- Childhood Years
- Judging People on My Experience
- At Home
- Parents, Home, Neighbors
- Early Lessons about Race/Ethnicity
- Early “Organizational” Life
- Church and Christian Contradictions
- Silent Prejudices
- Classes and Class
- College & the Beginning of the End of Innocence
- War without War
- A Lesson in Manipulative Power
- Decision for Ministry
- Preparing for Ministry
- Academic Major at Amherst
- Extra-Curricula Learning at Amherst – Enter Bill & Alice Wimer
- Unrecognized Introduction to Feminism
- Sylvia
- Andover Newton Theological School
- Church Pastorates
- Denominational Staff Ministry
- Wakefield
- From “Black Problem” to “White Problem”
- Stealth-Like Learnings: “Sexism”, “Racism” and Institutions
- Shifting Sands of Faith Demand Action
- Advancing “dis-ease”
- Changing View of the World
- The New Beginning
- Genesis of Community Change, Inc.
- The Early Years at CCI
- Boston’s Struggle for Equal Schools
- Attention to National Issues
- People Participating = Hope
- Enter: James Baldwin
- White Identity Challenged
- Urgency Requires Anti-Apartheid Action
- Suburban Operations Simulation
- Police Brutality
- Local Organizing and Seeking Ways to Combat Racism
- The Move to Boston
- “People”, “People”, “People”
- Moral Man and Immoral Society
- The “office” not an “OFFICE”
- Probing History Moves to the Center of Work
- Affirmative Action
- Little GIANTS
- Expanding the Work
- National Day of Mourning
- Chinatown and Beyond
- “People” not “leaders”
- 1492 Becomes 1992
- Harassment of Black Leaders
- Immigrant Action
- The Photography Collective
- Following (not very well!) Freire
- Enter Derrick Bell
- Using “Privilege to Subvert “Privilege”
- Becoming a Historian
- On the Trail Where Yesterday Inspires, Challenges Today
School memories do not often occupy my thoughts today. One thing I was learning as I approached High School was not to trust negative attributes which others gave to teachers. I was learning to judge them from my own experience. In seventh grade I sat in home room with Miss Haseltine, who in appearance was grim, and everyone said the experience with her would be grim also. My strongest memory of her today is the time when she took me and one other student to visit the home of John Greenleaf Whittier, on the outskirts of Haverhill. I thought of her recently as I encountered the words of Whittier while studying his role in the Abolition Movement, with Garrison, one of my “heroes” of history. That visit may have been the first seed of my present focus on the history of that nineteenth century movement! Miss Haseltine was never a favorite teacher, but I discovered one who cared for her students. I was learning not to quickly accept the negative predictions of others.
A similar learning occurred as I moved into eighth grade. I heard stories of “dynamite” Russell, the tall, “piano-legged” woman whose dictatorial style dominated her room. “Everyone hates her” was the common judgment. My actual experience with her gave a “lie” to all I had heard. An able teacher, she taught me the value of discipline in attention to assignments. I came to admire the once-dreaded!