Nebraska Synod ELCA

Many of us of a certain age can still remember when there were separate water fountains, bathrooms and even swimming pools for blacks and whites. I was too young to understand why this state of affairs existed, only that it did. My understanding of the tensions between the races was obviously shallow as I was a fairly privileged child (though I didn’t know it at the time) who got to attend a nice school in a nice, mostly white suburb of Chicago, named Wheaton.

My father was a lawyer with his own little practice. He was elected to the Illinois State Legislature in 1962 when I was in 3rd grade. Little did I know that my family, in a few years’ time, would be caught up in the throes of history and the Civil Rights movement. The Civil Rights Act had been passed in 1964, but while it proclaimed civil rights for all, it had no real teeth to enforce it.

So my father was asked, as the Majority leader in the Illinois House, to co-sponsor a Fair Housing Bill for Illinois. My dad knew that as a Republican he was likely to draw some criticism for this, but he believed that it was the right thing to do, and people would understand. This was to eliminate the practice of red-lining of neighborhoods by real estate companies, utilities and banks so that blacks would not be allowed to purchase or rent houses outside of certain areas. I only knew that my black friends lived in a ‘certain area of town’, south of the tracks. Little did I know of the rules and systems that were deeply in place to make sure that would be the only area they would dwell in our town.

Well…my dad was wrong. For the most part, people did not understand.

The first clues that my father had truly upset the hornet’s nest was the hate mail that we began to receive. There were tirades, tears and then threats–even bomb threats. My parents hadn’t shared those with us, I’d come across them. We also received ugly and threatening phone calls. Eventually, on the eve of an election 1968, we received a call from the police that a neighbor had seen a man in our bushes in all black—we were told to evacuate our home for the night.

This is absolutely nothing compared to the hate and prejudice directed at black or brown folks who tried to live somewhere new. I do not consider what we experienced as anything in comparison, but it was eye-opening and frightening. My heart became broken after enduring just a teeny bit of all the hate and ugliness always directed at my black friends. And so, I was changed.

My family’s experience was only a miniscule part of the struggle for Civil Rights in America—only a footnote; yet I am proud of my father for having the courage to try to do the right thing during his life. May we all have some of that same courage.

This article was written by Rev. Barbara Morgan Oshlo. Rev. Oshlo currently serves at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church in Valley, Nebraska.