Education

MOORHEAD, Minn. (AP) ― Yvonne Condell says the inauguration of Barack Obama is a victory for all who share Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream of equal rights.

"I think Barack has benefited enormously from the goodwill of people of all colors," said Condell, a retired teacher who taught for decades at what is now Minnesota State University Moorhead.

Condell said King, whose legacy was honored Monday, deserves credit for pushing for civil rights on a national stage. But she said Obama has earned his own place in history for bringing people together.

Condell, whose teaching career began in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., in the early 1950s, recalls social, cultural and educational separation but also kindness.

"I felt there were courageous people who were afraid to let their kindness and their better thoughts come out," she said.

She recalled the formation of a race relations commission in Ft. Lauderdale, by a woman whose name she can still recall.

"To think that -- in 1953 -- there was a Mrs. Halvorson who felt it was time for the races to get together," Condell said.

In 1956, Condell's husband, Jim, took a teaching job in Jamestown, N.D.
At the time, she said, there were three African Americans in Jamestown: "a student at Jamestown College, my husband and I."

Still, Condell said, she and her husband were made to feel welcome in Jamestown, and they received a similar reception when they moved to Fergus Falls, Minn.

"Jim and I were viewed with a certain amount of unknown," she said.

The Condells later moved to Moorhead, where the couple taught at MSUM for many years.

Condell, whose husband died in 1998, said she never delved much into politics until Obama's campaign.

"I got involved this time because I felt that this is something that all of us need to see through," she said. She contacted people she knew and urged them to vote.

"They couldn't imagine my getting this worked up about anything," she said of her friends.

Condell agreed the country has come far since the days when activists like King suffered jail, beatings and worse for speaking of human rights.

King, who was assassinated in 1968, seemed destined not to share in the progress he worked so hard to bring about, she said.

"People who bring attention to problems can seldom go the next step, make the next move," she said.

"They have expended so much energy on that first step, they don't really reach the end benefits. I think that happened to him," Condell said of King.
His dream, she said, still needs tending.

"I feel that justice will be achieved when everyone has equal opportunity for an education and an equal shot at a job," Condell said. "Until we get those two, we've got to work hard."

The Rev. Art Johnson, who describes himself as "a very white Norwegian," was a newly minted graduate of St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn., in the mid 1950s when he went to work as a volunteer at a community center in a predominantly black neighborhood of St. Paul.

Johnson said the hardworking middle class families he intended to help ended up teaching him the meaning of acceptance.

"I found them more welcome of me than I was of them," said Johnson.

The affirmation Johnson experienced in St. Paul inspired him to finish seminary. He went on to a long career as a hospital chaplain at what is now MeritCare Hospital in Fargo.

Along the way, Johnson helped found an inner city youth center in Minneapolis, which celebrated its 50th anniversary last year.

Johnson, who is now retired and lives in Otter Tail County, said the violence and strife that marked the start of the civil rights movement gave way in recent decades to such improvements as greater access to education for all Americans.

"Finally, there is a chance for people of all races to be able to achieve their dreams," he said. "There are still a lot of issues and still a lot of struggle, but I think we've come an awful long way."

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