Organizing, one door at a time

The neighbors who stayed, got organized. Donald, a young black man who lived next to Terry, and Ronald, my white, next door neighbor and I went door to door inviting neighbors to meet and talk about the problems on the block.

Donald was the extrovert, so he went up the steps ahead of us and knocked on the doors. After watching the hostile response Donald received when he knocked on the door of a house with a white guy in it, I pushed up the steps ahead of Donald at the white-occupied houses and Ronald and I hung back and let Donald go first at the black-occupied houses. We didn’t talk about it, it just worked out that way.

At least we pretended that. It was about race and we all knew it but we didn’t want it to be about race; we were neighbors who were friends with a common problem. Race was too big and too painful and too shameful to talk about. Besides, we had an immediate problem to deal with. We didn't have time to open a wound made generations earlier. We heard gunshots every week.