My Introduction and Response to Discrimination

Vern Fein

Jul 22

My story starts pre-Civil Rights (in the ‘40s and ‘50s), as I was raised in a middle-class white household, fairly standard, though my dad was a tavern owner (a bit of an unusual job in our suburb). I was raised around more Black people than most because my dad employed them.

My father was a non-believing Jewish man and my mother a closet Catholic—that itself was an unusual combination for the times. Besides the prayer, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep…” etc, I was given no sense of the Lord or any idea that God would love all people and remained unaware of the dynamics of racism in our country. As I reflect back on growing up, I distinctly remember two Black men in particular who greatly impacted my life: Jimmy, who I met early in my childhood, and Buck, a man I would meet later on.

Jimmy was my dad’s handyman. As a child, I didn’t know that Jimmy couldn’t marry the woman (Wilma) he loved. I also didn’t understand that most of the world despised a Black man being with a white woman. Jimmy and Wilma, I found out later from my mother (who would talk about it when my father would not), couldn’t get married because no one would perform the ceremony. They wore wedding rings as disguises from the violence because, as my mother told me, she knew of interracial couples who were ambushed and killed. I found out from my father, one man had been lynched, a word I did not understand back then.

But Jimmy and I had a special relationship. He was a man I really looked up to, and I understand now that he acted as a kind of surrogate father, involving me in the handy work he was hired to do by my often-absent father. He would always include me in his projects to the degree I realistically could do, like spot painting or holding a board he nailed, holding the dust pan, or getting the mop for the bucket. Most of my work with Jimmy was done while I was out of school for the summer, but even after the school day, Jimmy gladly included me. He took away the boredom of summer days, and he made me feel proud of myself.

Jimmy had a saying, a little joke he often said to me. I thought it was a joke because my family always laughed whenever I told it, not knowing yet that my family, including my dear, sweet mother, was deeply racist.

Jimmy would say to me, “Boy, we’re like two ice cream cones. You’re the vanilla one, and I’m the chocolate cone.” And he would laugh loudly and cause me to laugh every time he said it, so it was an easy transition to a family joke. I told that joke several times at the dinner table, and, for a while, whenever relatives or friends came over, I was asked to repeat the line. Everyone always laughed when I did.

Then, suddenly, Wilma and Jimmy disappeared. The adults lied and told me they did not know why. Once I overheard (as children often do because adults don’t think they should have ears) that Wilma had done something. But the story of this couple was hushed, and I soon forgot about it. In no way did I connect it to racism. It was just not part of my thoughts, even when I heard the derogatory terms toward Black people thrown about.

It was not until we moved to a thoroughbred horse farm in another town that I understood racism; it came as a true shock to me. We had moved to the horse farm because my dad had become a very successful businessman—now owning five taverns—and became involved in the world of thoroughbred racing and gambling. In fact, he had won an enormous bet on his anniversary with my stepmother, enough to put a down payment on the farm.

Along with being successful and having 25 head of boarders in his stalls almost all the time, he had to hire farm workers with some experience. He hired a white man from Kentucky to be the manager, and this man, Frank, brought several Black men with him, including one called No Talk (who never stopped talking) and another nicknamed Buck, whose real name was James Payne. I was to learn later as I grew in my understanding of racism that it was common for white people to give and call Black people by nicknames or call them the infamous “Boy.”

At any rate, they both came, and my brother and I, as teens now isolated on a farm far away from much of anything and so unlike our old neighborhood where we had gobs of friends, often did chores with these hired men after school. As we got to know them, they became friends and, after that, kind of idols because they were worldly wise and paid a great deal of attention to us, something our very busy and often-absent dad did not. As time went on, Buck especially became like a hero to me, perhaps even a father figure.

Stories I heard around the farm made Buck heroic: one time, he tamed a mean stallion no one else could, and another time, Buck lifted a huge horse trailer all by himself. He became legendary in our small world, and I never thought of Buck in racial terms. I just really liked him, and we talked a lot. Despite dropping out of school in elementary and going to work, Buck was interested in my school and often asked me what I learned and urged me to go to college.

One event, though, opened my eyes to Buck’s reality and forever changed my perspective. When I became a Christian many years later and learned what God thought about all races, it strengthened my faith to know that Jesus was behind any effort for racial justice and that His church was to be as multi-colored as Heaven would surely be.

Buck, No Talk, Frank, my younger brother, and I met my dad for a horse sale at Arlington Park Race Track near Chicago, one of the most heralded of all race tracks. When we got there, Dad instructed Frank to have his men prepare the stalls and unload and bed down the horses for the sale the next day. He asked me if I wanted to come to the track kitchen with him, but I told him I wanted to stay with Buck and the others and would meet him there. Dad, Frank, and my younger brother went ahead. Only the Black men did the work, and I was just there to hang out because I wanted to.

Finally, the horses were bedded down, and Buck said it was time to go to the kitchen where everyone ate. No Talk had gone ahead of us, so Buck and I were the last to head that way. As usual, we engaged in lively conversation, me doing most of the chattering as usual. The track kitchen was a few barns over, and we arrived there in a few minutes. But once we got there, my life changed in a flash.

As we approached the kitchen, Buck stopped cold, right in mid-sentence. I remember looking at his face and seeing a look I had never seen. In hindsight, I think it was embarrassment, something so out of character for Buck that it shocked me. At the time, though, I couldn’t collect my thoughts and just felt strange.

I started to ask what was going on, but Buck took a few big strides and was gone through a screen door on the left of the whitewashed building. Above the door was a wooden sign painted COLORED. I just stood there for a bit, getting my bearings. Then I noticed on my right was another screen door: WHITES. Stunned, I went through that door and could immediately see a row of stools before a counter at the far end of the room. My father, brother, and Frank were each on a stool. I staggered to that area, a wall running down the center of the room but ending just before the counter. I slid into the stool near Frank and looked to my left.

On stools on the other side was a group of Black men, No Talk and Buck included. Buck did not look my way, and I knew instinctively not to try to get his attention.

I do not remember what we ate, but I do remember how uncomfortable I was, emotions from incredulity to anger coursing through me. For some reason, I knew not to ask my father then. I had heard of discrimination; I just had never seen it. It changed my life.

Later, I did ask my father about it. He said he didn’t like it either, but that was the way the world was. That’s the last he said on the matter.

Over the years, as a non-believing radical protester through my graduate school years in the ‘60s, I became one of the leaders in the anti-Vietnam War movement and a prominent white presence under Black leadership in the Civil Rights Movement. Involvement in those protests are something that now, as an older man, I am justifiably proud of.

In a few years, though, burned out by the lifestyle of that counter-culture and seeing the bankruptcy of violent protests, I met Jesus and have walked with Him for over forty years, been a pastor for social justice in two different churches, and was able to introduce and sustain racial reconciliation and justice groups for education and action in both churches before I retired.

I attribute my involvement in this part of our nation’s history—one that has recently exploded again—to that seminal event with Buck. Once my oldest grandson asked me what racism was. His teacher had mentioned it in school, and he had heard some about my involvement in Civil Rights, as my family was raised to believe and participate in mercy and justice.

I told him all about Buck. I will never forget Buck’s influence in my life, and I will always be indebted to them.