(edited September 2023 for grammar and content from the original June 2020 essay)
Some people have been asking what my experiences are with racism and race, especially growing up in Glen Ellyn, Illinois after the heinous murder of George Floyd.
I’ve never shared much of this experience till now, but I think it’s time.
Of course, my experience is mine and in no way representative of the African American experience, but a patch in the quilt of African American lives.
There Goes The Neighborhood
My parents moved to Glen Ellyn in 1972. My dad was a young US Army Captain in the reserves stationed at the now closed Ft. Sheridan north of Chicago, and teaching ROTC at the very conservative and religious Wheaton College next door in Wheaton, IL.
He knew the area had a great school system, and he didn’t want us to have the hardships he and mom had growing up in the Jim Crow south.
Sadly my parents ran into trouble as soon as he started looking for housing in the Northern Illinois area after living in Fort Hood, Texas.
When my dad switched over from active to reserve duty in 1972, began looking for houses in the nearby suburb of Bolingbrook, which wasn’t far from Wheaton College where his…
