84 SCENE | JUNE 2017 on the town Where were you born? Gary, Indiana. What’s the most important thing you learned from mom and dad? To be the best. In my time, when I grew up and was raised, there were very few opportunities and we were all aware of that. We should be prepared to take advantage of any opportunities by not letting any obstacles get in front of us, by being the best. If you’re the best, you can get through them, over them, around them and under them. I was the fourth of five children and our parents encouraged all us to get an education and go through life with that attitude. My dad, Homer, a World War I combat veteran, had a third-grade education, and my mother, Fannie, graduated from college magna cum laude at 17. What we learned from mom and dad was that things were not fair. In this country, black people don’t get treated the same as other people. There are all kinds of obstacles put in front of you, but that should not stop you from doing the things that you want to do. To do that, you have to work hard, be good, and you have to try to be the best in whatever you do because you have to be twice as good as a person who is not black. Please recall a memory from your childhood that you will never forget. The War and the Great Depression. I was born a year before the Great Depression started. My second job with my older brother was taking a wagon that my father built and we went to the surplus distribution center set up by the Department of Agriculture all over the country. People could pick up fruit, corn meal, flour and perishable items that were given to them for free. We would go there and as people came out, we would offer to take their food in our wagon to where they lived. They in turn would give us a dime or 20 cents. That was one of my first jobs. There is an incident in 1949 at Indiana University, a turning point in your life that thrust you into becoming a passionate voice for racial equality. Please take me back there. That was a critical moment for me, but it didn’t turn me into anything. I was that way before I got there. I was president of the freshman and sophomore class, vice president of the student government, a sports editor, and president of the chemistry club and the Spanish club. I was involved in everything. We had a big school and I loved school. When I went to Indiana University, blacks could not live on campus. Understand that I was there with the veterans of the War who had enlisted, black men who had been pilots and officers, and they could not live on campus. Veterans. No blacks could live on campus. We finally got that cracked. There was a special dorm where the first blacks lived. We didn’t get the black women on campus until two years later. I was very active in that kind of thing. You could never have anybody run for office because that was all run by the fraternities and organized groups. I read all the rules and there was a little paragraph in there that said there could be a minority The Watson Family: Bernard, Lois, Barbara & Bernard Jr.
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