“In Georgia I had to go through two home-stays in a week at the beginning because they just weren’t good placements. My first one with the son of the mayor and he was a young bachelor, swinging guy, and he was out all the time. He was never home. He was always out partying so I never saw him basically and so I said to Rev. Perry McNeal, who was our contact, that I’m not sure this is the home-stay theory that we’re supposed to have and he talked to Gaudino and he agreed. Then they placed me with a single woman, grandmother type. She was like 75, very religious, but she reminded me so much of grandmother I couldn’t stand it. And it wasn’t a family experience. So I said, “Can we try one more time?” And so then I got with a black family that was three generations and by the second week I was there Gaudino was coming through town and he was talking to me about the experience and he started pushing me, “Well, have you questioned these people about what it’s like being black in the South?” And I was sort of horrified like, I’m living with these folks. You don’t just come in somebody’s home and say, “What’s it like being black?” or what’s it like being Jewish or fat or whatever. I said, “No, I haven’t asked them that.” He said, “Well, that’s what you’re supposed to be doing.” It was like a wake-up call. Again, this is not just living with people but you were actually supposed to be sort of studying them a little bit and that was hard. Waycross, Georgia, right by the Okefenokee Swamp. I don’t know that I ever asked them per se what it was like being black.

–Jeff Thaler '74