By sheer coincidence, today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and also my 75th birthday. I don't celebrate my birthdays any longer, for obvious reasons, but I will celebrate the life of one of the finest men to ever walk the surface of this earth - Dr. King.
I grew up in Massachusetts when bigotry was rampant. I was sheltered from most of it in the town of Reading, just down the street from Bill Russell. Russ had no such protection. A 6'9" black man in an almost-exclusively white town was going to be noticed.