The inspiration to write "Black friends" came to me while auditing Professor Julie Saville's class: History 28201: 'The U. S. Civil War and Reconstruction, 1846-1898, ' taught at the University of Chicago during the winter quarter of 2011. To be sure, I was aware of the 2011 sesquicentennial marking the beginning of the Civil War, and I have since been further motivated by reading Salman Rusdie's non-fiction piece 'The New Empire within Britain' from his book of essays and criticism "Imaginary Homelands," but "Black Friends" was completed long before I began reading Rushdie. As I read the books and articles in the Civil War class, I began to reflect back on my upbringing and subsequent life. I realized that there were points of contact throughout that life with black friends. These encounters -- ranging from individuals to groups and extending across age groups, locations, social organizations, and unequal time periods -- added up to a very warm and moving set of experiences. I felt privileged to have lived all my married life in Hyde Park in Chicago and, despite my poor attempts to assist those around me in areas where I felt I had some ability, one feeling I recognized was present throughout: my sense of pride of place by having resided in a community that was given to me as a legacy from earlier times. The fact that Hyde Park was an integrated community together with my course readings further reinforced what I had known all along -- my residence was a blessing -- I would not have exchanged it with any other location in the world; it remains an uplifting experience, something I have always been proud of when I told strangers where I come from. "Black Friends" focuses on the major elements of my relationships with black friends but there are numerous and constant minor interactions, often with unknown black residents. These occur on a daily basis and are very difficult to capture; they form what I would term an 'atmosphere of community collegiality.' I have then, as a consequence of these experiences, tried to capture the way in which these feelings were engendered over a period of seventy-three years. I hesitate to say that my words form a piece with the celebration of the sesquicentennial as that event was not in the forefront of my consciousness until long after I had finished writing. It would be more correct to say that I wished to set down what I felt might be an often unwritten sequence: reflections on the unique experiences that formed the sensibilities -- with respect to the black race -- of a white boy who grew up in a privileged and segregated environment, and how, by the grace of circumstance and his own actions, he came to thankfully embrace a dimension of his life that, if lacking, would have made him less complete as a human being.
About the Author: Earl Ronneberg, author of the trilogy, "Old Friends and Other Stories, Stories of Identity, and Stories of Groups," grew up in Chicago and attended Princeton on a NROTC Regular scholarship before serving three years on active duty on the destroyer USS Hank (DD-702). After the Navy, he earned a Master's Degree from Stanford, married and moved to Hyde Park in Chicago where he completed an MBA (while employed by IBM), and the four year certificate program in Great Books (The Basic Program) both from the University of Chicago. After thirty-two years with IBM, he retired and completed a MLA (Master of Liberal Arts) degree from the University of Chicago. "Work -- A Memoir," his first non fiction book, chronicles a span of thirty-four years of work spanning the period of May 1964 through June 30th, 1997. "A Love Affair With Flowers Fair" is Ronneberg's second non fiction work. It is a book of 365 poems, mostly sonnets, culled from over 500 poems, and organized by assigning each to an appropriate day of the year. Organized in monthly groups, readers will recognize natural themes -- such as wildflowers, the seasons, plants and birds -- within the month appropriate to their inspiration and genesis. "Black Friends" is a third non fiction work that chronicles what Ronneberg felt to be an often unwritten sequence: reflections on the unique experiences that formed the sensibilities -- with respect to the black race -- of a white boy who grew ip in a privileged and segregated environment, and how, by the grace of circumstance and his own actions, he came to thankfully embrace a dimension of his life that, if lacking, would have made him less complete as a human being. Ronneberg has spent almost all his summers since the age of six at Bass Lake, Pentwater, Michigan. His fiction is strongly indebted to that environment; so is his poetry. "Work -- A Memoir" is principally concerned with his thirty-two years of employment at IBM. In addition to writing he audits classes in history, philosophy, literature, and art at the University of Chicago. Many of his short one-act plays have been incorporated into his stories.