What is the point of this article?
Simon came out of Baltimore, where I grew up at approximately the same time. Music united a lot of people when nothing else could.
I appeared twice on the Buddy Dean Show, a dance show in the afternoon for teenagers. Unfortunately, Dean was a southern racist who didn’t believe in race mixing, so he had what was known as “Black Thursday” for the black kids (so that they could appear on his show after some pressure was put on him by the public).
If you see the movie “Hairspray” with Rickie Lake, you will see what this was all about.
While whites and blacks may not have danced with each other, we certainly danced in the same place at high school hops, and there never was any trouble. We knew each other and respected each other, for the most part. Then again, our educational level was a bit higher than at other schools).
In college, there really wasn’t any racism. Again, music/dance united people instead of dividing them.
For his part, Checker did more to promote respect and unity than did a lot of the rabblerousers who wanted division and anger (Jackson and Sharpton, among the leaders today, plus that NAACP leader in No. Carolina).
When Mary Wells came on to sing “My Guy”, there were no racists in the audience. All we saw was a beautiful woman with a beautiful voice in a beautiful white dress.
And if you have ever seen Tina Turner perform, you know damned well that race had nothing to do with it. She was the Queen of Nutbush City and Donna Summers was the Queen of Disco.
It just didn’t get any better than that.
RESPECT! Aretha said it all.