Nothing’s Sacred by Lewis Black & Hank Gallo

Author:Lewis Black & Hank Gallo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon Spotlight Entertainment
Published: 2005-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

The University of

North Carolina

Again

“Living La Vida Loca”

By my junior year, war protests on campus had started to move into full swing. And these weren’t the only kind of protests being staged. Black students had seriously begun to question their educations at predominantly white universities, and ghettos in major cities were torched out of frustration with an economic system that left little mobility for those in poverty. This, of course, was seen by many as the end of the known universe.

There was definitely a schism, and it wasn’t just between those who were for the war and those who were against it. It was between those who felt there was a way things always had been done and those who believed there was a way things could be done. Both sides were wrong. Both sides were angry. Both sides were arrogant.

But God, they were breathless, exciting times. I imagine this was the way Hemingway must have felt when he ran with the bulls. Things were changing. My first year at school there was a parade down the main street of town, led by a fraternity guy dressed in a Confederate uniform. This was in 1967. The Confederacy had lost the war just over a hundred years before, but tradition dies hard in the South. By the following year, that nonsense was dead and buried. No one was going to wear a Confederate uniform on that campus unless it was Halloween and he wasn’t going out that night.

As had happened at many other campuses throughout the country, the black students took over the administration building at Duke University to protest the lack of a black studies program. Many of the white students sympathized and gathered in solidarity, hoping to keep the police from taking the students out of the building until their demands were met. This was at a time when segregation was still pretty much the norm in Durham, North Carolina. Jesse Helms—yes, the one who later became senator—owned a television station and came on one night with a gun in his hand and told his viewers that they, too, needed to arm themselves in order to protect their rights.

Like I was saying, the fun never stopped.

So I went on over to Duke to see my friends Ray and Tom and to find out what was going on. Within a few hours, as darkness fell, the cops made their move, and for the first time I smelled tear gas and felt the power of authority when it doesn’t understand what it is up against. I awoke the next morning a different person, as the tear gas still hung in the air over the Duke campus.

During the summer of 1968 the fateful and riot-fueled Democratic National Convention was held in Chicago. I really wanted to go. I walked out the door of my house, suitcase in hand, prepared to sneak off and do my part to change my country’s destiny. Once again my mother stopped me.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“Chicago, “I replied.

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