Americans live and work in close proximity with one another. We are engaged in common efforts in the local community. Yet, racial tension and struggle continue daily in our communities, in our country and in many countries of the world. Unfortunately, in some cases these strains have spilled over into bloody conflict.

In our own country, African Americans are unique because their ancestors arrived here largely against their will and under the dehumanizing conditions of slavery. Each year, as we celebrate the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Black History Month in February, we continually need to remind ourselves of King's extraordinary vision: "I have a dream that my four little children may one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

Race should be the last thing a person sees when they look at each other, however race is the first and sometimes the only thing we see when we look at each other. Minorities are treated differently because of their color, their heritage or just where they came from. For hundreds of years here in the United States, prejudice has been an issue. Sometimes that issue has been black or white, male or female, American or non-American.

In America, we say we are culturally diverse and the land of the free. When in fact, we are culturally mixed and only free if we have the right skin color or gender. We are proud to live in America because we are safe from harm and defended by brave soldiers. Those proud soldiers are every color, gender and culture in the book. They fight side by side without seeing the color of the soldier standing next to them on the front line.

In America, we should look at the person, not their color or gender. It should not matter if the person was not born in the United States. It should not matter that the person is of a different religion. All that matters is that we are all humans and all want the same things. We all want families, money, food to eat, homes and transportation.

America needs to unite in the fact that we are all different and that is just fine.

Every one should have the same rights; no one should hear they couldn't do something because they're not the right color. No matter what color you are, whether you're African American, Mexican, Native American, Asian, etc, you are equal and that is all that is important.

Here are some simple ideas on how to create racial harmony:

Each and every person can make a difference. You can choose to love each other or to hate each other. However, you all have the power; you have the power to make this world a better place, by simply living in it together. Isn't it time for a change? Why not start the healing the pain caused by racism? Why can we not start that healing today?
Brenda Odom lives in Eight Mile, Alabama.

How AIM Magazine Came to Be

By Ruth Apilado

AIM... America's Intercultural Magazine... How did it come to be? After having worked as an elementary teacher in the Chicago Public Schools for 40 years, and at the age of 65 finding myself forced into retirement, I knew positively there was something important that I should try to do. As a 5-year-old, I can remember when my sister and I were singled out when my mother tried to enroll us in the all-white Brown Elementary School on Chicago's West Side. It was as if our brown skins were a contamination and that (at all cost) our presence there had to be avoided. We were sent to Hayes School on the comer of Leavitt and Walnut streets in a completely black neighborhood.

True, in the years of my teaching, there was evidence that America was making some progress in treating Afro-Americans fairly. Restrictive covenants in housing had been removed and one's racial identity on job applications were no longer required. Segregation, however, was as evident in Chicago (northern city) as the squares on a checkerboard.

At Hayes School and at Deneen on the South Side where I worked before retirement, I tried to show my students that Afro-Americans had contributed much to the development of this country. To stimulate their pride, on the stage at monthly assemblies, in plays that I had written, they portrayed Afro-Americans who had made great contributions. The students were the actors and actresses. The stage was set and they performed. Dozens of Afro-American characters were brought back to life. Among them were Crispus Attucks, hero in the American Revolution, Frederick Douglas, foremost figure in the abolition of slavery, George Washington Carver, botanist and agricultural chemist who developed hundreds of uses for the peanut. As a teacher, I thought it was my duty to create within my students the feeling that they belonged in America and were entitled to every advantage it had to offer.

As I keep looking back wondering why AIM ... America 's Intercultural Magazine, came to be, incident after incident that happened to me comes to mind. At McKinley, in my high school geometry class the teacher, with utter disbelief in his voice asked, "Miss Rummel, would you let a colored girl beat you?" I had explained a proposition that the white girl didn't know.
As I stood in a gym line at Chicago Teachers College, for some reason that I still don't understand, the teacher told the students to take off their shoes, that their feet were to be examined. Immediately I obeyed. When I got to the examiner she said, "Oh, you didn't have to take off your shoes. We know your feet are flat." I was puzzled. What did flat feet have to do with anything in a gym class, I wondered. When I got home I took off my shoes and examined my feet. There was an arch under each one.

I had noticed that Afro-American girls with light skins and straight hair were more attractive to boys. My hair was crinkly. When I washed it, it drew up, got bushy. To keep strangers from knowing that I didn't have the so-called "good hair", if I were washing mine when the door bell rang, I wrapped a towel tightly around my head and then opened the door.

I was shy. I don't think having a brown skin had anything to do with that. Perhaps some people naturally are not as out-going as others and get branded as abnormal or weird. Anyway, in a group where people were talking, usually I was the silent one.

In my third year at Teachers College, the class was assigned an essay to write. It's been such a long time ago that I can't remember the subject now. However, knowing that if I didn't get a good mark, I wouldn't get my credit and wouldn't graduate, I spent a lot of time doing research and rewrote the essay several times. Somehow when I finished, I thought I had done an acceptable job. However, after handing in my paper and having it returned, in the upper right-hand comer two words were written. They were: "Not Acceptable." If I say I was dumbfounded, that would be putting it mild. I was heart broken. If that essay were not acceptable. I knew there was nothing I could write for this teacher that she would accept. Somehow I got up enough courage to question her... "Miss Cabell, what's wrong with my paper?"

I remember her giving me a quick look and turning away. "You didn't write it," she said.
"Didn't write it?" I was mad and I looked her square in the eye. "I wrote every single word of that essay."

She stood there for a few seconds just staring at me. Then with the fore finger of her right hand jabbing downward, she said," You come to this room day after tomorrow at 3:30. Bring your pen. I'll see if you can write like that."

I was there. On the board she had written a number of subjects. "The Problem of Races in Chicago," headed the list. Races ... races ... I could not imagine what she meant. I had never been to a horse race in my life. My dad often went but he never took me.

Races races ... Finally it dawned upon me what she meant ... not horse races but human races......nationalities, the problems between black and white people. Somehow words began to flow from my brain through my pen to the paper. I began with my childhood experience when my sister and I were not permitted to enroll at the all-white school, how because of restrictive covenants my parents were still living in the slums. I wrote about a trial that I had attended where three African-American boys, charged with roughing up an old white man who had later died, were given stiff sentences. When approached by one of the mothers and told that she thought an eight-year sentence was too long for such young boys, without batting his eyes, the judge told her, "Lady, that was a white man that they killed." I finished that assignment ... handed it to Miss Cabell. The next day it was returned to me. No mark. She simply smiled and said, "Miss Mays, you have proven to me that you have the power of expression." I was given my credit.

Because I was curious about the South where absolute separation of the races was practiced, where lynchings were commonplace when Whites thought blacks had gotten out of their designated places, one summer when school was out, I visited a friend in Meridian, Mississippi to ask some questions. Theodore Bilbo, a senator lived there. I telephoned his office, told him who I was and asked for an appointment. It was granted. However, when I arrived at the appointed hour, his office was as bare as a cemetery. The doors were open but there wasn't a soul in sight. After feeling my trip was in vain, I knocked on some doors in a white community and was told that Negroes were not allowed to enter homes at the front doors.

"Are you a Christian?" I managed to inquire of one woman. "Do you think there will be segregation in heaven? "

"You know," she said, "I've never thought about that," and closed her door.

That night I wrote an article about my day in Meridian, Mississippi. In the article, I called Senator Theodore Bilbo, "Public Enemy Number One." Political leadership, "I thought, should not only be without prejudice, but should be honest. Senator Bilbo had made an appointment with me and had not kept it. I took the article to the Negro newspaper in Meridian. It was published. A few days after my return to Chicago I received a letter from the senator. He had read my article. In his letter to me, he said, "Get your self a job as a char woman. You can't write." The Chicago Tribune published the letter.

The press! Mighty instrument for social change! In many American cities, newspapers owned by Afro-Americans were publishing ... the Chicago Defender, Pittsburg Courier. .. telling the stories of deprived Americans, how the so-called land-of-the-free was prejudiced against them! It occurred to me in 1942 that a magazine dedicated to Afro-American expression needed to be published. We called it "NYPS" Negro Youth Photo Script, a monthly, and for twelve months it hit the news stands. Many of the people who helped with the magazine's one-year's existence, went on to become famous, no credit due to me or the magazine. It's gratifying to mention some of them here ... Oliver Cromwell Cox, noted sociologist whose books are used in sociology classes in universities around the world, Gwendolyn Brooks, Pulitzer-prize poet, Margaret Boroughs, founder of the DuSable Institute in Chicago, George Lee, noted cartoonist, Joseph Johnson, writer.

After my retirement as an elementary teacher, in 1972, I had time and a pension to spend in any way that I chose. Still believing in equal rights for everyone regardless of racial/ethnic background, and with encouragement from my son Myron, I started AIM, nearly 35 years ago, as a quarterly. Many have assisted me ... Mark Boone, Henry Blakely, Bill Jackson, Michael Adams, Betty Lewis, Elon Jordan, Leon Minor. Artist, Gay Berrien, (refusing all compensation), did a remarkable job in illustrating fiction. I'm especially grateful to her. For all who have contributed, I'm thankful. Some of the early helpers have passed on. Now, at age 98, I find it difficult to continue. Perhaps others somewhere will take up where I leave off. I hope so. Ruth Apilado