For Ethel, whose legacy lives on.

Ethel was born in Oklahoma in July of 1931 to a working class family. Her parents were good people who worked hard and provided as best they could for their young child. They were products of their environment; God fearing, church going, and everything imbued with the racial prejudices that were the norm for that time.

In 1939 the family moved west to California, hoping to escape the lingering poverty of the Great Depression. Ethel attended the local school, and found a true friend in a young Japanese girl named Tamika. They sat next to each other in class, and shared all of the gossip and giggles and fantasies that young girls share. They were inseparable. Tamika's family welcomed her young friend into their home, allowing her the opportunity to experience a culture very different from her own.

Ethel and Tamika were mischievous young girls, passing notes in class and whispering secrets to each other out on the playground. Every day in school they sought each other out and spent time catching up on all the news from the evening before.

Then one day, Tamika did not come to school. Her family had been rounded up and sent to the Japanese internment camp in Tulle Lake, California. Ethel was heartbroken, and did not understand why her best friend had been wrenched away without even having the opportunity to say goodbye. What did it matter that she was Japanese? Tamika was her friend.

This experience would color Ethel's life. The world she knew was defined by fear and racial prejudice. Shortly after Tamika disappeared, Ethel's family moved to Missouri, back to where her grandparents lived. She went to school, and had the life of a typical teenage girl, but she never was able to join in the hateful stereotyping of other races that was so prevalent amongst her peers.

Ethel grew into adulthood and married, and over time became the mother of a son and a daughter. She raised them to believe that a person's worth could never be determined by the color of their skin. When family from Oklahoma would come to visit, and freely throw about the word "nigger", Ethel would send her children outside to play while she had some choice words to say to her relatives. Later she took her children aside, and told them, "We don't like that N word. It hurts people, and is a sign of a closed mind."

In 1995, Ethel passed away, but her legacy lives on. Her children raised children with the same color blindness they learned from her. A lasting testament to the friendship that formed between two little girls.

(c) Tonia Goslett