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Historians try to be objective. That means that when I tell a story I’m supposed to shine a light on the facts while doing my best to hide out in the shadows, as if the story were telling itself without me. But I found a light already shining when I got here, and it’s been changing the way I see things. That’s the story I want to tell. For a change, I’m really just a witness.  There’s plenty of history here, of course, but it wasn’t history that got me hooked on this place at the start. It was talking with a secretary when I applied for a job. The voice that answered the telephone gave meaning to the phrase “bursting with good humor,” and it glowed with warmth and good will. To me this one woman was the voice of Alabama State University, plus the entire city of Montgomery, the whole state of Alabama, maybe even the South itself, all wrapped up together. The funny thing is that, like me, she isn’t from around here at all. It turns out she’s from Chicago. They come from everywhere, the people who call this place home, and they can make others feel at home here, too. I like knowing that most people I’ll meet are not so consumed by worry for tomorrow, or anger about the past, that they can’t make time for one another in the moment. It’s a nice change from just about everywhere I have ever lived. I share a lot of values with the people I meet here, and that’s important to me. As in my native New York, people here look to the future—eyes on the prize. To me, the future matters a whole lot more than the past anyway, 8 / City on a Hill Karl E. Westhauser and change is the name of the game. Change may not happen fast here—not much does—but it’s what’s on people’s minds. You can hear it in this motto from a student club I’ve served on campus: “What determines our future is not what is before us, nor what is behind us, but what is within us.” I like to believe that, and being with others who do helps me feel that my optimism about the future might be justi¤ed. I ¤nd it easier to hope that all may yet be revealed, which is why I study history in the ¤rst place. It’s also why, every fall, I look forward to walking back into the classroom. Most eighteen-year-olds have not the slightest intention of taking history seriously, but the young people I meet know at least that history matters. That’s because heritage matters here. Roots mean something to people. It seems everyone here, young or old, black or white, grew up knowing that much to be true. I know my students will ¤nish my sentence for me when I say, “You can’t know where you’re going (if you don’t know where you’ve been).” It means I have more common ground with the young people I teach here than I could expect at many other schools these days, and that gives me a lot to work with.  Not that I haven’t had my doubts about the place. I didn’t realize how deep my prejudices ran until I landed in Georgia and caught myself expecting to be picked up for talking funny by a fat, cigar-chewing, white sheriff, grinning from behind a dark pair of sunglasses. But whenever I’m in a new place, I’m all too aware of being different from everyone else, who all seem to me to be a lot alike. Down here, it seems everybody’s family name is of English or Scots origin, and mine stands out. Few people are comfortable pronouncing my name for the ¤rst time, and frankly, some hardly seem to try. When one student mauled it more brutally than usual one year, her classmates surprised me by recognizing her mistake and actually chided her until she got it right! At ¤rst I worried about just how much of a barrier my difference would be, and my experiences let me know it wasn’t just a matter of getting over or glossing over my own preconceptions—my difference was real and my difference mattered. So I was, and still am, acutely...

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