Big Optimism is a bit different today. Bear with me.
Michael Korenblit was born in Ponca City, Oklahoma on July 30, 1951. His parents, Meyer and Matl Korenblit, were Holocaust survivors: Jewish teenagers from Hrubieszów, Poland, who fell in love before World War II, survived the Nazi occupation in separate camps, and found each other again afterward against odds that are almost impossible to calculate.
Their families — parents, siblings, cousins — were almost entirely murdered. They married in Germany in 1946, arrived in America in 1950 with $100 and one suitcase each, and wound up in Oklahoma after a small Jewish community agreed to sponsor them.
Michael grew up working at the family’s Dixie Dog Drive-In restaurant. He and his wife Joan — whom he met in Hebrew class at the University of Oklahoma — eventually founded the Respect Diversity Foundation, through which they have shared his parents’ story and reached nearly 450,000 students, teachers, and community members.
Joan also pushed Michael to sit down with his parents and record their full story, which became a New York Times-bestselling book called *Until We Meet Again.*
I met Michael because he’s a Life Story Magic customer. After our interview, he asked if we could work together to share his story more widely. This is part of that effort.
As you’ll see, our jumping-off point is sort of a different angle on the story I wrote about her last week: Clara Luper’s students and the Oklahoma City sit-in.
Here’s Michael in his own words.
Respect Diversity
by Michael Korenblit, as told to Bill Murphy Jr.
I was 6 years old, sitting in the living room with my parents, when I first noticed a K and an L tattooed on each of their wrists. On the inside of my mother’s forearm was the letter A, followed by the number 27327.
I asked them what those were, and they tried to explain, in the least horrifying and simplest terms, that they were both survivors of the Holocaust.
What I understood — even at age 6 — was that this was why I didn’t have any grandparents, or lots of aunts and uncles and cousins. That was in 1957.
The next date that affected my life was in August of 1958. My dad came home from work, sat down in his favorite chair, and watched the news. There was a story that really bothered him. He didn’t have a day off until about five days later.
I was playing in the backyard when he said, “Mike, come take a ride with me and your mom.”
We drove to a park in Ponca City, and my dad walked me up to a water fountain and asked me to take a drink. This was August 23rd or 24th, 1958.
He said, “How did that taste?” I said, “Great.”
He asked me to read the sign on the water fountain. It said: WHITES ONLY.
My dad and mom then walked me to another water fountain, not ten feet away, and asked me to take a drink.
“How did that taste?”
I said the same as the other one. This sign said: COLORED ONLY.
We drove down to the bus station. We went in — hot August day, ceiling fans going, nice benches where people waited for the buses. They asked me to read the sign: WHITE WAITING AREA.
My parents then walked me to the back of the bus station — not so nice, broken chairs, no ceiling fans. There was a sign tacked up on the wall. Again, they asked me to read it: COLORED WAITING AREA.
My dad looked at me — his seven-year-old son — and said: “I want you to always remember what I’ve shown you here today. Because that’s the reason you don’t have any grandparents, or lots of aunts and uncles and cousins. It’s because people look at them as being different and inferior human beings.”
What my dad had seen on the news that day was thirteen Black kids, aged seven to sixteen, who walked into a drugstore in downtown Oklahoma City, sat down at the counter, and ordered thirteen Coca-Colas — and were refused service because of the color of their skin.
That started the sit-in movement, which spread across the country and eventually led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But it was those thirteen kids that so bothered him. He wanted to make sure his son understood what was going on.
A year later, in 1959, we drove to Tulsa to visit a family friend — a Holocaust survivor. After lunch, the man looked at my dad and said, “You ready to go now?”
We all got in the car and drove to a place in Tulsa called Greenwood. That’s where the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre took place. It was a Holocaust survivor who taught me what had happened in Oklahoma before people in Oklahoma were even talking about it or studying it.
Those three things — those three dates — are the reason for what we do today.
I would say my life’s work is telling my parents’ story, because of the ramifications and what that means for the world today. The fact that people are learning about the Holocaust — as much as we can teach about it — because the lessons are there for us to learn. Unfortunately we’re still not learning them.
The reason we started the foundation was because of my parents and their story. We built a whole speakers bureau. The first four people on it were my mother, my father, myself, and Joan — who was a writing instructor, teaching poetry and short stories.
The fifth person — the very first outside person we asked to be on the speakers bureau — was someone we had become very good friends with: Clara Luper.
She is considered the mother of civil rights in Oklahoma, and she was the one who took those students to that drugstore counter and started the sit-in movement across this country, before Greensboro ever thought about it.
Somebody asked me once if I was ever going to retire. I said: how do you retire from telling your parents’ story? The answer is no. I will keep telling the story because of how it relates to the issues of today — whether it’s Ukraine, whether it’s taking away the vote from people who are different from us. It’s still going on.
And we will continue fighting it for as long as we have breath in our bodies.
7 other moments from history this week
Sunday, August 23: “I stood in the chain; we were no longer afraid.” — Estonian President Kersti Kaljulaid, recalling August 23, 1989, when two million people linked hands across Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in a roughly 400-mile human chain demanding freedom from Soviet rule. The protest, known as the Baltic Way, helped set all three nations on the path to independence within two years.
Monday, August 24: “In a glider, you learn to read the air.” — Captain Robert Piché, whose training as a glider pilot let him land Air Transat Flight 236 safely in the Azores on August 24, 2001, after both engines failed and the plane ran out of fuel over the Atlantic. All 306 people on board walked away.
Tuesday, August 25: “We can now answer the question we’ve all been asking — are we there yet? Yes, we are.” — Voyager project scientist Ed Stone, on NASA’s determination that Voyager 1 crossed into interstellar space on August 25, 2012, the first spacecraft in history to leave the solar system. The probe, launched in 1977, was still sending data back 35 years later.
Wednesday, August 26: “One of the great days in the history of the women of the world.” — Suffragist Alice Paul, on August 26, 1920, the day the 19th Amendment was certified and took effect, guaranteeing American women the right to vote after more than 70 years of organized struggle. The certification happened without ceremony, signed by the Secretary of State in his own home before dawn.
Thursday, August 27: “Did you see it, Butch? I did it! I did it!” — Tiger Woods, 19, shouting to his swing coach Butch Harmon after making the winning putt to capture the 1995 U.S. Amateur Championship at Newport Country Club on August 27, 1995, his second of three straight national amateur titles. He dedicated the trophy to his caddie’s father, who had died a month earlier.
Friday, August 28: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” — Martin Luther King Jr., speaking to more than 200,000 people at the March on Washington on August 28, 1963. The speech became the defining moment of the civil rights movement and helped build momentum toward the Civil Rights Act the following year.
Saturday, August 29: “We hit bottom at 40 miles an hour — we hit like a major road crash.” — Roger Mallinson, describing the moment the submersible Pisces III sank to the ocean floor off Ireland on August 29, 1973. He and co-pilot Roger Chapman were rescued three days later from 1,575 feet down, still the deepest successful submarine rescue in history.
A great story to start the week!
Thank you.