Though I am a white woman of a “certain age,” I took/take the Supreme Court’s decision on affirmative action as a blow to the head and heart.

Growing up in a mostly all white community in Fairfield County, Connecticut and attending a mostly all-white Catholic college, I began a journey to a wider world when as a college student I attended the 1963 March on Washingtion (60 years ago this August!) where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous “I Have A Dream” speech. John Lewis also spoke at the March on the topic of voting rights. Later in the 1960s, I spent two summers in the South, under the auspices of the American Friends Service Committee, registering African Americans to vote in Orangeburg, South Carolina and in New Orleans.

Decades later, with a Ph.D. in hand from the University of Michigan, I began a now-treasured career in the English Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In addition to teaching women’s and multi-ethnic literature, I served for several years as associate director of Graduate Studies. My duties in this role included admissions of prospective students and in doing so, I did practice affirmative action and am proud of it. We assembled a talented, multicultural group of graduate students, several of whom have gone on to distinguished teaching careers of their own.

What has not been said often enough is that our current Supreme Court contains three justices appointed by Donald Trump, whose niece Mary calls him (in her first book) “The World’s Most Dangerous Man.”

Let us remember that as we vote to elect our next president in 2024.

Margo Culley

Professor of English emerita, UMass Amherst

Wendell

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