It’s amazing how some stories stick with you over the years. That’s the case with the story my older brother Marshall Noel Opie (named after Thurgood Marshall) told my family about his first meal as a Howard University freshmen in the fall of 1980. Marshal and I grew up in middle class predominately white school system in Westchester County. I believe my mother encouraged him to attend an HBCU like Howard because it’s a good school with a long tradition of excellence. Moreover it’s a school for giving a healthy dose of the black experience to black African American youth who grow up in white suburbs. My first academic job was at Morehouse College (the House) a HBCU in Atlanta and I found that students with similar backgrounds also chose the House for the same reason-tradition and a parent interest in seeing them gain an Afrocentric inculcation. Marshall tells the story that at the first meal—a formal southern fried chicken sit down with all the fixings—the students hesitated before eating. They were looking for clues from each other about how to eat the fried chicken: knife fork it or work it with your finger and mouth? Most started with the knife and fork. After a pause that seemed like an eternity, my brother said non-verbally, oh forget elitist customs and gripped his fried chicken with his hands and went to town. His response triggered a chain reaction and everybody followed suite laughing and enjoying the finger licking good fried chicken
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