"Cigars, Cigarettes . . .

[cowboyracer43]

. . . SAE pledge pins" was the slogan du jour on Fraternity rows in my day.  The morning news brought that back from the depths of long buried college memories.  SAE was not then at Murray, but I heard it at SUCK and at UDub.  I caught myself grinning when I heard on the TV news that members of that fraternity were being suspended for racist behavior at Oklahoma.  Most college fraternities were begun shortly after the Civil War in the South as a way to be racist (privately) among friends -- my own included.

[smidge34]

Mine didn't have anything to do with racism. I'm sure there are racist bakers too. Same with lawyers.

[cowboyracer43]

Huge, huge difference between the 60's and 90's, Smidge.  Racial "equality" was rarely mentioned.  A black face was extremely rare.  When Cal signed Stew Johnson (the very first "colored" basketball player in the OVC) the concerns were many.  Stew was married (and a young father) which contributed to his being recruited.  He and his bride lived in Fertile Valley and were not a part of much student social activity.  Murray was the most segregated place in which I ever lived.  Murray High/Murray Douglass (?) High did not even play sports against one another.  There was a separate Black HS basketball tournament.  Every town had a separate black school and separate sports.  The Smith brothers played for Dotson before Dotson merged with Caldwell ("Quell") County in '63.  Trust me, the races were strictly separate.  When black students decided to begin "their own" fraternity, the all white fraternities helped them enormously. (Because we did not want "them" trying to get in "ours")?  Calloway County was solidly Democrat and fewer than 10% registered GOP.  I had a roommate who later served in the KY General Assembly from Hopkins County as a Dem who was against the Civil Rights/Voting Rights legislation of '64 who used to lament JFK's murder by saying "if Kennedy was still alive, he'd keep those niggers in their place."

None of the Greeks had anything "to do with racism," smidge, but black students (as few as there were) were not rushed by either of our fraternities -- at all.