March 18, 2003 - When George Will and I were students
at University High in Urbana, Illinois the civics class required for
high school graduation was titled Principles and Practice of American
Democracy. Most high schools assigned the course to the football coach
who was expected to teach just enough to get the pupils to pass the
state mandated multiple guess test on the Constitution. Our school
had Dr. Ella Leppert who was a cut above and focused on the principles
underlying the founding of our Republic and the practices that challenged
it. Most Uni High teachers were graduate students working on their
doctorates and left after receiving their degrees. Dr. Leppert remained
and taught my Grandchildren before she retired. She died last year.
It was the fifties and the United Nations was young. It had just survived
its first great test – the invasion of South Korea and the see-saw
war that followed it. Eisenhower was re-elected the year that I graduated
and enrolled in the University of Illinois. Joe McCarthy had been
discredited but the movement he started was in full sway. The House
Un-American Activities Committee was in full cry in Hollywood The
infamous Blacklist limited the actors we could watch and the literature
we could be exposed to.
There were few Black students at the University of Illinois when I
enrolled– just 7 non-athlete undergraduates. No Black players
played for any Big Ten basketball program except for Iowa. Illinois
had just recruited a promising football player from North Carolina
– Jesse Jackson. He would leave school when he was not made
Illinois first Black quarterback. Mel Mitchell beat him out to become
the Big Ten’s first Black field general.
Dr. Leppert used the entire spectrum of current events to enliven
the students understanding of their country and the principles that
were the foundation of the Republic. She found in the Declaration
of Independence and Constitution, in the landmark decisions of the
Supreme Court that established the watersheds of American Constitution
development, and in the controversies that plagued our time one overarching
theme – the dedication of American democracy to the respect
for the worth and dignity of the individual. She had high hopes for
the United Nations, its ability to extend aid to developing nations
and to extend American style democracy to the emerging nations of
the globe. She saw that infant agency as the world’s best hope
to bring about an end to totalitarianism, to end the Cold War and
deliver the world from the ravages of hot wars.
She taught us that our nation, to which she was passionately dedicated,
was not structured to wage war as an aggressor nor to impose its will
around the world. Rather she saw America as defending the cause of
individual rights and liberty for all of the people of the world.
We never knew her political affiliation. Those of us who were Democrats
thought she was a Republican and our Republican classmates thought
she belonged with us. We were all sure that she was an unapologetic
American patriot. I am glad that she did not live to see America destroy
the world’s last and best hope in the New American Century.
