Looking at the past, I am filled with a sense of pride. Pride, I have discovered, is knowing that you have given your all to a worthwhile cause.

In the small Tennessee town where I came from, where I worked my way through high school and my first years of college, numerous obstacles were thrust in my path. It was in 1938 when I came to Champaign, Illinois.

I came to Champaign with the idea that the opportunities would be prime and plentiful. But I discovered the same deep-rooted problems that I had left behind; that the plight of the American Negro was not restricted to my town or to the South.

Negroes had a certain place in the community. They were the domestic workers, working harder and being paid less than their skills were worth.

Negroes had a certain place to sit in the theaters. At the time, there were only two public places where a Negro could sit down to eat - - the ten-cent store and the Illinois Central Train Station.

And of course, the most powerful of positions that could be had was ever allusive to Champaign's 'Colored' population. This power was education.

In schools, Negro boys and girls were kept out of education's main stream. The opportunity to be recognized in school activities was not there; the honor to stand in front of their class as president was not their own; to see their faces in the newspaper in recognition for a worthwhile deed was an unreachable star. Why, there wasn't a single Negro teacher in the area school system. The result of all this: a generation that had nothing in the way of encouragement or motivation to pursue higher education - - the most precious gift in the world.

To the depths of my soul, I was sickened by the state of the world. It was all too hypocritical, you see. That those basic human rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness had exceptions when it came to something so terribly insignificant as the color of one's skin...

Yes, I was sickened, but I was moved into action as well.

The conclusion of Mary Alexander: Reflections on Life will be in the next issue.