Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
It's been 18 years since Joseph Banks III found a cross burning in his yard.
Since then, Banks said, that type of hostility has not been as bad.
"It's cooled down quite a bit. I think there's been a lot of maturing in the community. I've noticed a wide variety of cultures gravitating toward Kosciusko County," he said.
Banks and his family moved to Warsaw in February 1980 after the Cleveland, Ohio, company he was working for went on the slide. He wanted a job at a growing company in a small town where his three teen-age children could attend school together.
"Warsaw came out as a good match," he said. Banks took a job at Zimmer.
The church the Banks family attends welcomed them to the community with open arms, Banks said. At work, people were accepting.
In the community itself, Banks said, "that's where the problems would come."
Besides the cross burning in 1981, there were also other problems his family experienced after moving into Kosciusko County.
"In 1982, the lives of our sons were threatened because one of them was dating a white girl. In that case, police did get involved," he said.
"We had a discussion that you can't control other people's thoughts and actions but you can control your own reactions," he said.
He said he and his wife told them they could be devastated or could choose to ignore them. It was important for them to move on with their lives, he said.
Banks has gone on with his life, being active in the community his family calls home. He was responsible for the minority supplier development program in the '80s, which involved helping minority business owners interact with business owners in Kosciusko County. Banks also is the Democrat on the Kosciusko County Voting Commission and on the workforce development subcommittee for the Warsaw/Kosciusko County Chamber of Commerce.
But from time to time, Banks is reminded that not everyone has gone on with their lives and matured. The Ku Klux Klan rally held about two years ago in Syracuse was one such reminder.
"I don't think we can just close our eyes and pretend it wasn't there, nor do I think we can just think Syracuse is an isolated part of the community," he said.
Syracuse, however, did respond well to the race discourse by supporting such events as Wawasee Cares Week, Banks said.
Members of the Amy VanLaningham Society of Wawasee High School held Wawasee Cares during the week of Nov. 14 with a walk through each of the three towns comprising Wawasee School Corp. At the end of the march, they held a kickoff and rally at Wawasee High School. A community church service was held Nov. 18 at the Oakwood Spiritual Center.
"It got good press and support from the northeast part of the county but it should have been all of the county," Banks said.
As long as the problem of the "invisible man" still exists, that support may not come for a while, Banks said. The invisible man problem is that at 5:01 p.m. every day after people get off work, there is no interaction between whites and African-Americans in the community. Blacks are left isolated from the rest of the community. But, Banks said, things are changing.
"I think that we are making some good process," Banks said. "I talked to some people who lived in Warsaw in the '50s. We had the Hayes Hotel and blacks were only maintenance and janitors. Now, blacks have access to all areas."
An area that minorities now have access to work in is the local educational systems. However, even though the school corporations are trying to actively recruit minority teachers, there are but a few in the community. The only African-American, and only minority, teacher in the Warsaw School Corp. is Marsha Cook, who teaches at Leesburg Elementary School.
She first moved to the Warsaw area in the 1960s because her husband lived and worked in Warsaw. Her first job was at Murphy Medical Hospital in the billing department. She knew she wanted to teach again, having previously taught for 1-1/2 years in Fort Wayne, so she applied for a job in the Warsaw School Corp. The superintendent at the time was Carl Burt.
"His concern at that time was that he didn't know what the community would think," Cook said.
He did interview her for a job at Lincoln School, though.
"It appeared to be positive, but (Burt) didn't know if that's what was best," she said.
The superintendent told Cook that she could be a traveling teacher, meaning that she wouldn't have her own classroom but would go from school to school to teach reading.
"My personal feeling was that that wasn't what I wanted to do," she said.
After talking with her family, they told her she had to first get her foot in the door. She accepted the job opportunity. Over the following summer, the superintendent died of a heart attack.
The new superintendent, Wilmer Bugher, asked Cook if she wanted her own classroom. Classrooms were overcrowded and there was a place for her at Leesburg to teach third grade. She took the job in August 1968 and has remained there since.
And when she took the job, Bugher told her that they didn't expect her to have any racial problems. If she did, he advised her to talk to him and he would take care of it.
"The first year, the principal was pretty congenial, the staff was pretty congenial and the parents were surprised," she said.
Her students would always talk to their parents about "Mrs. Cook," but they never mentioned that she was black. When parents met her, they were surprised to find out she was African-American.
"I questioned whether I needed to be here. I could be working in the inner city with children. In Warsaw, children would always have opportunities," Cook said.
She counseled with her parents and uncle, who all were teachers.
She said they told her, "Maybe you need to stay there because you will be an ambassador for black people."
They also told her she would be a positive role model. The only black people most of the children saw were negative stereotypes on television.
"I was glad I did because a lot of children had a lot of questions about black people," she said. "I kind of established my own clout. Parents began to request having their children in my class."
Cook said it is important for all children to have a minority teacher. It is also important for minority children to have a minority teacher they feel comfortable with to talk to about issues and concerns.
"I try to encourage them to do their best. Color shouldn't matter. If you're qualified, they can't shoot you down," she said. "I tell them to be prepared. If you're prepared, you can compete with the best."
Cook said her own background of being raised in a Christian, education-minded, strong and large family has helped her to be the person she is today.
"It doesn't matter what color a person is, you have to look at their inner qualities," she said.
When the KKK rally was held in Syracuse a few years ago, Cook said, her students wanted to know how she felt about it. She said because she tries to talk to her school children about current events, she talked to them about it.
"People like that need to be prayed for. I discussed with them that it hurts and it feels bad, and I wish they didn't feel that way," She said.
"I find that the younger people have less trouble with dealing with diversity of people," Cook said.
Now, more and more people, not just the younger generations, are becoming more open-minded.
"It's better than it was, but it's still here. That's evident with the situation in Syracuse," she said.
