Assignment 1

Jim McPherson: Father, Educator, Egalitarian, and Role Model

My family lived in Iowa during part of my childhood. Once, when I was about seven, my father heard me playing with my friends and repeating something I had heard my friends say, “Eenie, meenie, miney, moe. Catch a nigger by the toe.” Although he did not get mad or holler at me, he explained that “nigger” was not a nice word. “That’s a mean word. It hurts people’s feelings. Also, we need to be especially careful what we say because we are southern and people think all southerners are prejudiced.” I learned that day to say, “Catch a tiger by the toe.”

“I’m Jim McPherson.” That’s how my father introduced himself. Although he was known at work as Dr. McPherson, he always introduced himself as Jim McPherson and did not insist on people calling him doctor or professor. He believed that people who deserved the honor did not need to flaunt it. His way of introducing himself reflected his egalitarian view toward people and life.

One summer day when I was 13 my family was driving along Route 1 on the way to North Carolina, where my grandparents lived, from Arlington, Virginia, where we lived then. In those days, cars did not have air conditioning. Hot and hungry, we stopped in a restaurant south of Richmond to eat. I quickly ran into the bathroom and when I came out, I heard my father saying, “I’m Jim McPherson, and this is my family of six people. We were planning to eat here but now we will not because your restaurant discriminates against people.” I asked my mother what Dad was talking about and she pointed to a sign that said: “This establishment reserves the right to refuse service to anyone.” My mother explained that they were offended by the sign because it was a way of discriminating against people because of their color. We then all filed out of the restaurant.

Dad was raised in a wealthy home. His family had African-American maids. (He used the term Negro then.) He wore nice clothes, played tennis, and went away every summer to camp until the Great Depression. When the depression hit, his father lost his ice packing business.

At college Dad pledged a fraternity but later lost interest in and respect for fraternity life. He once told me he thought he would have matured a lot more in college if he had not been a member of a fraternity. He also detested the system of blackballing, where just one member of a fraternity could bar the entrance of a potential brother.

He was a democrat but not a dixiecrat. He worked for civil rights for Negroes in the 1930’s, long before the official “Civil Rights Movement” began in the fifties. As a photojournalist for a local paper in Norfolk, Virginia, he took photos and wrote stories about the living conditions in the Negro slums, trying to help improve those conditions.

Years later, when he was working at the National Education Association in Washington, DC, and in charge of arranging a conference for educators, he called the manager of a St. Louis hotel to arrange for the conference to be held there. “Hi, I’m Jim McPherson and am looking to bring a national group of educators to your city for a conference,” he said. After they talked a while and the manager understood who would be coming to the conference, he said, “We’ll be honored to hold your conference at our hotel, but, of course, your black members will not be able to stay in rooms at our hotel.” With that my father told the manager that the conference would not be held in St. Louis at all and he pulled the conference out of the city.

When Dad died at age 60 of a massive heart attack in 1972, I was devastated. I felt as though my feet had been cut off.

Today, I am a parent and educator too. I too am a strong egalitarian. And I hope to be a role model for my daughter.