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Kenneth ClarkKenneth Clark
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Session:         Page of 763

arrested, and he accuses me of getting him arrested. And we always laugh about the present crop of black students, who think that they invented protest, you know.

I wish I had a reprint or clipping of those articles. I think I'd blow them up for my son.

Q:

Had you ever been South before you went to Howard University?

Clark:

I'd never been below the Mason-Dixon Line before I went to college. The South was an unknown foreign land to me.

Q:

Were you aware, before you went to Howard, though, of the problems pecular to the South, compared to those in the North?

Clark:

Verbally. You know, I was aware in terms of Uncle Tom's Cabin you know, the Northerner's view of Southern prejudice and segregation.

I wasn't aware in my bones, in my guts. I was just aware up here. I didn't become aware of the meaning of discrimination and segregation until I went to Washington.

I remember very vividly the incident that made it part of every cell in my body, in my guts. In this house that I lived in, my freshman year, there was another fellow who was not a medical student. He got killed in an airplane crash, by the way. He told me about the fact that we could get a job in the Postoffice, during the Christmas rush, and obviously I was interested. I told my mother that I was going to do this. She said, “OK. Don't let it interfere with school.”





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