Books that impacted your worldview?

[RandomNumbers]

89. 1. The Autobiography of Frederick Douglass, 2. The Life of Gandhi

The first appears now on Amazon under the title "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass", but I am sure I remember my copy being called "The Autobiography of Frederick Douglass". But that was decades ago and I doubt I still have the book to prove it.

I got it off a school bookmobile, I believe when I was in elementary school. I was a precocious reader. I am white and went to a school where I maybe saw 3 black kids my whole time there. One or two rode my bus. They weren't from my neighborhood and I didn't interact with them much if at all.

Reading about Frederick Douglass profoundly changed the way I viewed the concept of race and how black people were treated in our society.

When I was in high school my parents moved to an area that was much more mixed, and the bus I rode had mostly black kids. Now I and my sibs were in the minority, and there was initially some conflict - not intentionally initiated by any of us, for sure. That worked itself out and I got to be friends with most of the kids. I would say I was more comfortable around a lot of the black kids than some of the really stuck-up white kids. I credit the understanding I had learned from Frederick Douglass that impacted a lot the way I saw this situation.

Another key influence was The Life of Mahatma Gandhi, by Louis Fischer. Combined with an elder sib's involvement in non-violent protest and handing that book down to me, in my early life I was able to handle conflict much better than I may have otherwise.