Word: mcphersons
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...first calls went to a loyal McPherson alumna, Rozella Switzer, the town's Democratic postmistress. Rozella, a widow in her 40's, runs an efficient post office, smokes Pall Malls, drinks an occasional bourbon & coke, likes politics and people. She was curious about the African students and invited them over. Two nights later they sat comfortably around her living room, sipping coffee, browsing through her books, listening to her records-and talking...
...Rozella told the story: "Discrimination always makes me mad. But this was different. This made me scared. All they knew about America was what they knew about McPherson. For the first time I really saw how important little things, a long way off, can be. We had to fight a one-town skirmish away out here in the middle of the United States...
...following weeks Rozella moved through McPherson as relentlessly as a combine, trying to straighten things out for the Nigerians. She ran into trouble. Shorty the barber agreed to cut the boys' hair, but other barbers began spreading the word that "Shorty is cutting niggers' hair." Said Shorty sadly: "It hurt my business. Even some preachers told me I was doing the wrong thing." One minister warned Rozella: "We must be careful we're not called Communists...
...Measurement. Last week the Nigerians-some of them in native costume-went caroling with the other college students, wound up at Rozella's house to help her decorate the Christmas tree. Elsewhere in McPherson there were no miracles to report, but Rozella's skirmish was gaining ground. At the Ritz theater the boys can now have any seat in the house. Luther Palmer and the three other merchants have promised to ask the Chamber of Commerce to look into the barbershop situation. (But the boys were still going 35 miles away to Hutchinson to get their hair...
...biggest change of all was one that McPherson itself would be the last to recognize. In a short twelve months, the town had cast aside its old measurements of comfortable solidity. Challenged by a fragment of the world's demands on the U.S., McPherson was trying-as a whole humble people was trying-to "act like Christians" and measure...