Click on this Social Security life expectancy calculator. Enter your sex and date of birth, and, in a nanosecond, Social Security will give you the additional years left for a person born on the same as you and the estimated total years before you kick the bucket. Fortunately for me, that isn’t guaranteed in writing. George Burns was also born on January 20, 1896, and died on Marth 9, 1996. I also plan to reach the century mark and die on or after March 10, 2043. Thus, I lived longer than Burns. Most people alive today have never heard of George Burns. This is a picture of Burns in his twilight years.

George Burns

However, I was in college in the early 60s and took a group of high school students to Ozone, TN, on a church work camp for a couple of weeks. We stayed at an old white clapboard church in the hills near Ozone. I drove from Pittsburgh to Ozone in a rented station wagon with a Pennsylvania license plate. Late one evening, I was driving my student back to the church late in the evening where we stayed. As I drove on an old two-lane country road, I noticed a car following me. The driver never attempted to pass. I slowed down a bit to let the car pass, but the driver slowed down, also. It did not take long to be concerned for our safety. The guy noticed a car full of whites from Pennsylvania driving in Tennessee. I feared a Klan member could run me off the road and kill us. The guy wanted to teach Northerners to stay out of his segregated South. He followed us for an hour, but I finally reached the church.

I told a pastor of the church about being followed and worried about being killed. I added that I had made a mistake. The person was probably just drunk. The minister said the driver was probably from the Klan and wanted to warn me to get out of town. That was my first personal contact with racism. Fortunately, the guy hadn’t killed the high school students and me. I could have been killed in my early twenties because I was some white guy from the North traveling in the South during the civil rights movement.

One additional thought. In the years since I was in Ozone, I have been pulled over several times for driving above the speed limit. When I noticed the flashing lights of a police car behind me, the only thing that ever entered my mind was that I would get a ticket. If I were black, I would have been concerned about getting shot or beaten to death. As a white person, it has taken Ozone and being stopped for speeding to learn something that blacks learn as soon as they observe our world.

The Civil War didn’t address racism. It merely moved America from slavery to segregation. We learned about fire drills in elementary school and practiced getting under our desks in case the Russians dropped an atomic bomb near Collins Tract Elementary School in Pennsauken, NJ.

Today, students learn to shelter in place if a shooter comes to school with an AK-15 assault rifle. There have been 89 gun-related incidents in K-12 schools. It is, on average, a daily shooting. Since the school shooting in Nashville, 74 people have been killed or injured. That doesn’t include the shooter.

These are our children; listen to them.

The gun issue is a political issue. Those not wanting to control guns are Republications. I’m ashamed of them. They need military weapons like AK-15 for what? To stop a burglar from entering their home or to go hunting for deer? Think about the reason why the Republicans want guns. It concerns white supremacy and returning to the good old day of the antebellum South.

This is a home of slave owners.

An antebellum home

The slaves live in these cabins.

Living quarters of antebellum slaves

This interactive map shows where Confederate statues of soldiers and other Civil War tributes to the South are located.

White supremacists have issues with blacks and guns. Those issues have morphed together with sexism and telling women about their reproductive rights. White males feel they must be in control. The motivation to dominate relates to their personal feelings of inferiority related to communities of color and women.

One final thought, when I was in Ozone, this song expressed the reality of that time. We need to work toward change in our time today.