Tiger69
Postdoc
Posts: 2819
Reg: 11-23-04
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01-24-19 07:44 PM - Post#273480
In response to TigerFan
If ever one could honestly say, “He took the words right out of my mouthâ€, I feel that way about most of what TigerFan said above. I also grew up in Princeton, starting in the Nassau Street School, kindergarten through Third Grade, then transferring to a local private school through Eighth until being shipped off to a prep school which probably got me into Princeton just prior to coeducation. I can honestly say that I have nothing but pleasant memories of my innocent few years of public school. My best friends then were both black and white (although I’m pretty sure I didn’t think in those terms then). Today, if one were to ask me to name as many of my Third Grade classmates as possible, I would recall more black than white. Ironically, I would meet one of my young black friends again as another member of my class at Princeton. He, however, did not have my private school preparation. When I arrived in private school in Fourth Grade a few short blocks from Nassau St. School, I heard for the first time the derogatory names that white children of those days used for young black children. I recall being uncomfortable because I knew that they were talking about my closest friends of only a few months before. Princeton had, I am told, a wonderful public school system back in the mid 1950s. But, the Town was largely segregated as I remember where all my young black friends lived. As I have grown older I have sometimes wished that I had had the more “normal†(for that time) experience of getting a public education. I believe that I would have been a much more mature, and better adjusted, teen. I also believe that I would now have more close friends who are black. But, sadly, my spot in the Class of 1969 would probably have been filled by another marginal prep school student.
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