Covering the business of education and training

Cleo Junior’s father was a barber on the east side of Cincy. It was Cincy’s bad side was the rumor that went around school. But no one clearly said why. The perpetrator had gone into Cleo Sr.’s barber shop and shot Cleo Sr. for no reason that could be spelled out on the radio. The east side was also where the black people lived, the grown-ups said. When I asked J.J., Cleo, Maurice and the others where they lived, they pointed and arched their arms to the other side of the hill.

    I didn’t really grasp the implication that black people were bad. To be sure, young and naïve as I was, I am not sure I realized that my best friend, Cleo Jr., was black till that morning. I noticed a lot of things for the first time in those days.