A Little Bit About My 'Hood...One of the Most Integrated Neighborhoods in America

Hello People,

Please take the time to read about these amazing twin sisters who almost singlehandedly managed to make West Mt. Airy - the Philadelphia neighborhood where I live - one of the most integrated neighborhoods in the United States.

From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

When twin sisters Doris Polsky and Shirley Melvin launched a real estate company in 1965, they had a vision for West Mount Airy, the Northwest Philadelphia community where they lived.

They envisioned a neighborhood where whites and blacks, gays and straights, could live in harmony.

"What we wanted was an integrated community," Polsky said. "We had wonderful neighbors who were right with us."

Their dream has blossomed into a national model.


Sadly, this article was written because one of the twins recently passed, but it is a wonderful retelling of their life's work. And it shows how the actions of a single human being can make a world of difference.

What really strikes me is that these two women, using little more than common sense, compassion, a sense of justice, and a few good potluck dinners, were able to accomplish what arguably the rest of the United States with laws, protests, riots and violence could not and still can not. Why is that do you suppose?

I hope you are inspired by this story, enough to push forward with your own agenda for living in harmony. Me? I'm thinking this would make a very good book...what do you think?

Enjoy the weekend.

Peace!

(photo of twin sisters, Shirley Melvin and Doris Polsky with a dance teacher they hired )

Dancing Across the Color Line

Guess What? The students of Turner County High Schol in Ashburn, Georgia fianlly get their first integrated prom this year! Up until now, the Black and White students in this small town of approximately 4000 residents have always had separate proms, separate homecomings, separate homecoming kings and queens, all divided down the color line.

This has been the year to change. A mixed race girl was named Homecoming Queen. How's that for progress! And in May for the first time they will have an integrated prom. They've tried to do the integrated thing before, spearheaded by the teachers and administration and it failed miserably. Now the students have taken up the banner of integration and are hosting a prom where people of all colors can shake their rumps together.

Of course not everyone is happy. Some bitter White kids are planning a protest party the same night down by the lake for those who just don't believe we can all just get along.

I'm just curious what these kids do when they leave the limits of Ashburn and see the rest of the world in its technicolor glory. Do they freak out? Head for the hills? Or maybe that's just it, maybe they never leave.


Peace.