A descendent of slave parents, continues his journey into recently integrated society, still impacted by the phrase, “That’s how white folks do it,” a phrase commonly used as a measure of behavior when he was growing up. He had endured and survived the humiliation of racism as a pioneer in integrating his state university. At the request of his upper middle class white mentors and over the objection of his parents, he took a job working in Chicago after college. After enduring several years of discrimination on that job, he accepted a job in New York in the advertising sector where he fell in with an upper middle class white girl who was a product of the sexual revolution of the sixties. Although unacknowledged issues of race permeated their relationship, they were married to the chagrin of her parents and his. His employer used him to qualify for a government contract requiring an affirmative action agreement, then forced him out of the company after the contract was secured. After the death of his mother and father, he was faced with the reality of a delusional marriage; the possibility of returning to his hometown to assume the management of a jobs program for underprivileged minorities; and his perceived obligation to his alcoholic brother and his bright promising young nephew.

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