“Put aside your guilt and I’ll put aside my anger, and we have a chance to learn from each other.”

Jimmie and I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s in Charlotte, North Carolina, a segregated Southern city. Although we were never friends in high school, I admired Jimmie because he was an outstanding football player who helped lead our school to the regional state championship in 1965. Each year, North and South Carolina pick the best high school seniors to play in an all-star game called the Shrine Bowl. Despite his amazing, Jim Brown caliber of play, Jimmie was not chosen, a decision that was obviously because of racial discrimination. One of the South’s best civil rights attorneys, Julius Chambers, filed a class action lawsuit against the Shriners, challenging the blatant racial discrimination in their all-star selection process. Although Chambers won his lawsuit, the decision came too late to affect the 1965 all-star team composition. Jimmie took all of this with great composure and grace. Some elements in our city did not. Chambers’ office and house were firebombed. I reacted strongly to these events, because it was clear to me that the Klan had entered the fray.

At the same time, I was applying to college. I decided to write my application essay to Harvard College about Jimmie and his omission from the Shrine game. In large measure, Jimmie’s journey got me into the Ivy League. Years passed. I never saw Jimmie again, until 2014, when he called me after I responded to a series of articles about him in the Charlotte Observer. Having engaged in some deep ancestral work about his family, he discovered his ancestor had been held in slavery by a white man named Hugh Kirkpatrick. Well, friends, Hugh is my first name and this slaveholder was my great-great grandfather. I am still recovering from this news. Subsequently, Jimmie and I have become fast friends, colleagues, and brothers. Our journey continues.