This column originally ran on March 2, 2018. Look for an update at the end.
Sue Bowling-Hill remembers the tension.
It was awards night for the drill team at Everett Junior High and the ninth-grader was a high achiever.
Time after time she rose to receive an accolade — Drill team captain! Honor roll! — and before long, the parents in the gym bleachers were looking over their shoulders, nudging each other.
Who was this girl?
Who was this Black girl?
It was clear in 1971: The Black girl wasn’t supposed to be the best.
But Bowling-Hill had been raised to excel. “There’s no such thing as you can’t do it,†her mother always told her.
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And she was raised to know truth: Love has no color.
It was a lesson preached from the pulpit of Christ Temple Mission Church by the Rev. Trago McWilliams and modeled by her parents, Bernice and Obasi Onuoha.
It was a lesson she and her husband, Sonny, modeled to their four daughters. A lesson her seven siblings -- Alice, Charles, Pam, Tedy, Angie, John and Niki -- modeled to their children.
That old story was one of many I heard sitting in Bernice Onuoha’s living room — in the same house where a neighborhood petition had circulated to force the Black family out in the early ’70s.
I could have listened all day, but instead I went back to the newsroom and wrote the final installment in a series honoring Lincoln’s African-American leaders.
I grew up in Lincoln and have spent the last 24 years as a reporter, and Bernice’s was a story I did not know — one of many.
I’d started Black History Month with a long list of worthy subjects, assisted by Pete Ferguson at Lincoln Public Schools and Marthaellen Florence at NET and historians Ed Zimmer and Jim McKee.
It’s a list that remains long, filled with untold stories and stories worth repeating — the lasting legacy of Lela and Hughes Shanks, the bravery of Lt. Col. Paul Adams, the trailblazing of Joann and Albert Maxey, the wide roots of the McWilliams family, the Crumps and the Christies and so many more.
Here’s how it turned out: I wedged a vacation into the middle of the month and ended up with 11 stories.
Stories of early members of the Black community, like photographer John Johnson and Ruth Cox Adams, adopted sister of Frederick Douglass.
Stories of quiet leaders like Forrest Stith, who in 1955 became LPS’ first African-American teacher, and Lenora Letcher, who served up dinner and love to fraternity boys for 43 years.
I wrote about Pete Peterson, Lincoln’s first Black city councilman, and John and Melanie Ways, the only Black Realtors in town 40 years ago.
I wrote about well-known civil rights leaders like Leola Bullock, who took up the cause of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and Olympian Charlie Greene, once the world’s fastest man.
I wrote about unsung heroes like Nate Woods, who toiled anonymously at the Malone Center changing light bulbs and young lives, and Brittney Hodges-Bolkovac, who spends her days making a difference in a middle school classroom.
I heard from readers who shared their own memories.
A few stand out. Like this one from a woman who’d once lived in the apartment across the hall from John and Melanie Ways in the early ’70s.
“I lost track of them, although they crossed my mind and heart each time I dusted their wedding gift to us,†she wrote. “The John and Melanie I knew didn’t change over the years according to your article and made Lincoln a better city, although I’m not surprised by that.â€
And this from a reader remembering a favorite teacher:
“When I was in 8th grade (1964) I decided to research what kind of discrimination existed in Lincoln for African-Americans (naive) and interviewed Mr. Stith, who I liked so much at Lefler.
“I remember him telling me that he didn’t experience discrimination but he also mentioned that he ate his lunch in his car. He didn’t say why but that was troubling to me, a red flag and always stayed with me.â€
We know why he ate in his car.
More Cindy Lange-Kubick columns from 2018:
I was put in my place writing these stories with the realization of how narrow my lens can be, how quickly I am to default to white.
And here’s that I know: In a more perfect world, Black history would've gotten a longer month.
In a more perfect world, Black history wouldn't need a month, because these many contributions would be woven into our history books.
But the world isn’t perfect.
And neither are newspaper reporters, whose job it is to document a community in all its multi-hued splendor.
Let me say now, I vow to do better.
And let me also say, I’m not sure how much our city and our country has changed since 1971, when Sue Bowling-Hill, now a grandmother, was a girl who reached high and was judged by the color of her skin.
±Ê´Ç²õ³Ù²õ³¦°ù¾±±è³Ù:Ìý I've written dozens of Black History Month columns since 2018 and learned amazing things about amazing people who call -- or called -- Lincoln home. They have made my life and our community infinitely richer, and it was my absolute honor to tell their stories.
When the photo that accompanies this column was taken, Sue Bowling-Hill had been diagnosed with colon cancer but was in remission. The cancer returned, and she died on July 15, 2020, a mother of four, grandmother of three, wife, daughter, sister, friend, inspiration.
May we continue to live her truth: Love has no color.
Cindy Lange-Kubick counts down her final summer at the Journal Star with one column from each of her 25 years on the Lincoln Life beat with a …
Reach the writer at 402-473-7218 or clangekubick@journalstar.com.
On Twitter @TheRealCLK