Tom Johnson is the former head of CNN and was once the publisher of the Los Angeles Times. He's traveled the world and left his own mark along the way. Yet despite all his accomplishments, there was something he'd never done: reach out to the African-Americans of Macon from 1959, the ones he never knew because of segregation.
An idea was born. He wrote to graduates of the black school, Ballard-Hudson; the white girls' school, Miller; and the white boys' school, Lanier. "We all have deep personal memories of our high school experiences that will remain with us forever," he wrote. "We had lived in a separate black and white world in Macon. ... It is a different world today. We no longer are separated, except by personal choice."
One white graduate responded with hate mail, a reminder that racism still exists.
But on a day in early October, more than 200 people gathered at a Goodwill banquet hall....
They took out notepads. They scribbled ways to take action. They began making a to-do list of 59 things for the Classes of 1959. Their goals range from building a home for Habitat to Humanity to writing letters to service men and women from Macon serving in war. They'd love to persuade the one who sent the hate mail to attend the next gathering.
