"I'm glad they killed that nigger"

Last fall when Obama was sworn in as the country's first black president, I couldn't help but think back to a time long ago when I was in college. A very different kind of day comes to my mind.

"I'm glad they killed that nigger," he said to me as the elevator doors opened on the sixth floor of the dorm where we lived. Henry was standing there with a smile on his face, celebrating the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It was 1968 on the campus of Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio. Henry was the most racist person on campus where only twelve of the 2,500 students were black.

He was a senior that year and I was a junior. He always tried to bait me into a fight and was known around campus for dousing small animals, cats or dogs, with lighter fluid, setting them on fire and throwing them, flaming, out of the sixth-floor window. So, I knew any fight with him would would be a fight to the death, and I wasn't prepared to go there. But get us on a football field playing intramural football and it was different.

The whole campus knew there was a bounty on my head payable to whomever was able to put me in the hospital. My friends feared for my safety and warned me not to take the field whenever we played. But I was determined that Henry and his friends would never hurt me and, except for one day when I was blindsided by two of the "bounty hunters" and briefly winded, they never did. Instead, I made sure they paid a physical price themselves whenever they tried.

One night I was with some of my friends at a local pub near campus that was frequented by students. Henry and his friends were celebrating their upcoming graduation. He came toward me and I was certain the "fight to the death" was at hand. Instead, Henry said, "You know, we wanted to really kill you on the football field, but every time we tried you hurt us instead. I like that. But I still hate "fucking niggers." I wonder where Henry is today?