When I was about two years out of College (that I was able to attend because of a tuition scholarship due to what I learned in High School, otherwise it would have been economically impossible), I ran into a guy I went to High School with. I remember it was over near Grand Central Station. We were both job hunting and decided to get some coffee and catch up. During the course of our conversation he made a statement that bothered me, " I feel that I was cheated in High School and didn't get the education I would have gotten if I went to a better school."

I didn't agree with him but could understand his assessment. First, you have to understand the make-up of our school and the time frame we are discussing. It was the Fifties. When people today rhapsodize about the Fifties, I think they're nuts. For me the "Fifties" was the "Korean War" (50,000 killed, 100s'of thousands wounded), the insanity of Senator Joseph McCarthy and the "House Un-American Activities Community" (1000s' of lives destroyed through slander and innuendo) and the fear of an Atomic Bomb attack. (The first Atomic Bomb drill we experienced was when we were in swimming class and we were herded into the shower room - a room full of half-naked, scared young men who were old enough to remember the "black-outs" of World War Two.)

In the "Fifties" you belonged to a gang that wore sateen team jackets with its name on the back. The "Top Hats," "The Nabobs," etc. and fought "turf" wars with the next block, or next neighborhood or even the next borough. Late at night you walked down the middle of the street so you could see what might be coming at you, including cars full of young men looking for trouble. You tiptoed in the Fifties. Combine "Mean Streets," "The Wanderers" and "Saturday Night Fever" and you have some idea of what I'm taking about.

My High School (Straubenmuller Textile High School, now called Bayard Rustin) was in the "Chelsea" area of "Manhattan." At the time it was not the yuppified, artsy neighborhood it is today. It was a rough, tough, dockworker neighborhood - mainly, Irish and Polish as was the neighborhood to the north, "Hells Kitchen" (now gentrified into "Clinton") and the neighborhood to the south, "The West Village" (where I grew up). The school itself, because of the type of classes it taught {Fashion Design and Marketing, Textile design, Engineering and Commercial Art), was an "open" school and students from any of the five Boroughs could attend. So, as a result, the make-up of the 1200 students (2400 today) was 1/3 Black, 1/3 Italian and 1/3 a mixture of Spanish (mainly Porto Rican and from Spain), Greek, Jewish and you name it. Today, it's 1/3 Black, 1/3 Hispanic and 1/3 Asian. (The Irish kids tended to go to Xavier and Cardinal Hayes, etc.) I immediately went into "culture shock." Up until that time I knew one, that's right, one black person - a boy in another class in Junior High School (P.S.3). His name was "Rooks." He was a nice guy and fun to be with, but we went our ways when we went to different High Schools. I knew two with a Hispanic background: "Manuel" from the next block who I also went to school with, and "Frank" my barber, who turned out an American success story if there ever was one. He went from one chair to six chairs, two by appointment and finally moved back to Porto Rico to have a shop in one of the big hotels. He had a shop on "Washington Street." He cut all the "in" hair styles, like the one I sported, a square-back, with a D.A. and a "Bop" in front, to go with the peg pants with 16 inch bottoms, pistol pockets, dropped belt loops into which we put skinny belts, the black shirt with white buttons, over which we wore a cardigan jacket with no lapels and pointy shoes with "Cuban" heels for dancing. So, as you can tell, I have a very hard time finding fault with the pants around your butt, shaved heads, piercing and tattoos!

I knew there were black and Spanish people. I saw them on the streets, the subway and I listened and loved their music on the radio and in the Movies. I had read about George Washington Carver, Booker T. Washington. I watched and listened to Joe Lewis, Jackie Robinson, Paul Robeson and Marion Anderson. But until the day I went to Bill Ford's house for dinner with his mom, dad, sisters and brothers Bobby and Buddy I had never broken bread with anybody other than my family. Until the night I spent at Pete Sanchez's in the Bronx, I had never slept in another family's house.

So, you know what I discovered? NOTHING! These "people" (except for beans and rice, at Pete's which I LOVED) ate the same foods I ate, had basically the same furniture we had at home, laughed at the same jokes and treated me with warmth and hospitality. These "people" were just like me. THAT probably was the most important lesson of High School. Whether it was the Spanish guys teaching me how to "Mambo" in the bathroom as we sneaked a smoke (which led me to go to the old "Palladium" where nobody cared if you were black or white, Jew or Gentile as long as you could dance) or Nat Valentine's teaching me how to play the "Conga" in the back of the art room (which led me to join the Haitian-American Artist Society and play in a small combo.) I discovered that I didn't have to be stuck in the provincialism of the Neighborhood I grew up in. I could become a member of the World. I didn't have to reject alien cultures out of fear, but embrace them. That growing up in New York gave me ample opportunity to do so and that going to my High School gave me a head start. Black, White, Yellow or Brown; Christian, Buddhist, Moslem or Jew we all had the same dreams, desires and destinies.

Edward Kovens Jenovese attended "Textile High School" from 1949 to 1952. Using the name Ed Kovens he went on to a career as an Actor, Director and Acting Teacher and Coach. (See www.edkovens.com)