Room 222 Took On Issues of Tolerance

With student activism now so prevalent, I thought back to the days when my generation was in school. We didn't have the super communication of today, with cellphones or the Internet, and while I can't cite a poll or a study, my feelings are, from having lived through those times, most Americans didn't know much about other Americans, especially about Americans who were from a different background than their own. And as for the peoples of the world, knowledge was likely even far less, as we sat here, between two great oceans, seemingly protected from any adversaries, but also closed off from other parts of the world, unless you were fortunate enough to have traveled to other parts of the world. Of course, in those times, there were literally millions of Americans, mainly men, who might not have considered their travels to have been fortunate, as they had served overseas in World War One, World War Two, Korea, or in the then ongoing war in Vietnam. But in the 1960s, an activism arose in a number of Americans, an activism that grew in size, and an activism that did make changes. The 1960s saw antiwar activism develop over the war in Vietnam, a war that gradually lost support among the American public by the late 1960s and early 1970s. I lost friends in that war, two right from my neighborhood. I still find it tough to think of them, because the pain doesn't go away. The other activism was over civil rights and the very right of Americans of any race to be treated fairly in all matters of society. The two activist movements pretty much gradually joined together.

"Room 222" was a mixture of comedy and drama that dealt with the issues of the time, issues that were altered by the activism of people in the 1960s and 1970s. The show was set in a racially diverse school, "Walt Whitman High School." Besides the Vietnam War and racial issues, the show also delved into the then hot topics of school dress codes, marijuana, air pollution, student teaching and the very meaning and role of activism in American society (in one episode, the students proudly get arrested at a protest). Anyway....   

Basic information about the show: 
Cast
Lloyd Haynes as Pete Dixon, a history teacher whose classes are held in room number 222 (Hm, that must be how they got the name of the show! See, give me close to 50 years, and I can figure it out). Pete is a steady influence on his students. He's not afraid to listen to their concerns and he's also not afraid to admit mistakes of his own. The students have great respect for Mr. Dixon, as I did too. This series made Lloyd Haynes a favorite of mine, and sadly, he died in the 1980s, when he was only in his early 50s.

Denise Nicholas, as Liz McIntyre, guidance counselor and Pete's girl friend.

Michael Constantine, as Seymour Kaufman, the always weighed down by his duties principal. Mr. Kaufman likes to complain about the school cafeteria food. Michael Constantine won an Emmy for Best Supporting Actor for his role.

Karen Valentine, student teacher Alice Johnson, working in Pete Dixon's class (she won an Emmy for Best Supporting Actress for her role)

The show won an Emmy for Best New Series for the 1969-70 season

One outstanding episode was used to highlight the different life views we have, and to symbolically talk about race and family backgrounds in the United States in the late 1960s. While we continue to struggle with racial issues in the country to this very day, the 1960s saw more and more of a dialogue develop, although often a contentious dialogue, which would have been fine, but there was a lot of violence too. In this one episode, Jason, a black student (played by Heshimu Cumbuka), is interested in dating one of the girls at the school. She is black too, so this is not about the hot button interracial dating of those times... or, hm, maybe it is? The girl's family is solidly middle class and her father is more to the conservative side in many of his views. He naturally wants the best for his daughter. Jason is from a poorer background and he talks with much of the modern hip talk of those times. He's not an ambitious student and he's moody. When Jason goes to the girl's home to take her out on a date, he wears a flashy modern style shirt, and this begins the generational and class conflict between Jason and the girl's father. The father asks Jason if he is studying so that he can go to college, to which the ever blunt Jason answers, "No." So the father asks if Jason is on one of the high school's noted sports teams, which brings the answer from Jason, "I ain't innerested (interested) in that jazz." The uncomfortable father decides to go in a different direction and he asks if Jason would like a cup of coffee, to which Jason, again in his blunt manner, says, "Don't drink coffee." The bad vibes draw to a conclusion when the girl and her mother finally appear, and the father makes up a story to keep his daughter at home for the evening, thus canceling her date with Jason.

Jason then gets his friend Richie, a good student and a guy much more likely to get the approval of the girl's father, to ask the girl out. When the father meets Richie, he likes him and the two students go out the door. A little ways from the house, Jason is waiting and he now takes over. When the two return to her home, Richie is waiting to escort the girl to the door. Here the father is returning from the store and he confronts Jason, saying, "I sized you up from the moment I saw you." Jason quickly answers, "You didn't even know me." Bringing the angry father to say, "Don't worry, I know you. At least I know your type." The father presses on, ending with his order for Jason to stop trying to see his daughter. Jason is devastated, and he knows he did wrong by fooling the father, but he doesn't like the way the father put him down and how he never got to tell his side of things. Jason mopes around and stops going to school. Teacher Pete Dixon gets involved. He finds Jason and tells him, "Somebody's getting it socked to them every day, they don't just give up." Jason says, "No matter what I do, a man like that thinks I'm nuthin' (nothing)." Mr. Dixon says, "You've been put down before. So have I, 'cause (because) there's always somebody trying to step on your neck, but you don't give in." Jason says, "It hurts, Mr. Dixon." Dixon replies, "I know it hurts Jason, but you can't let that man keep you down, you're better than that, you know it." Jason explains that he just wanted to give his side to the father, but that he was cut off.
    
When the girl's father gives a little speech at a school event about kids getting a fair chance, Dixon tells his girlfriend and the school's guidance counselor, Liz McIntyre, "(The father) is a good speaker. I wonder how well he listens?" Dixon takes the father upstairs to meet Jason, and Jason tells him, "You hurt me pretty good the other night. I guess it's your business who your daughter sees, but that's no reason to put me down the way you did. You made me feel like nuthin' (nothing). For a while, I even believed I was nuthin'. No man has a right to do that to another man, because it's not true. And that's what I wanted to tell you, that you were wrong, I'm somebody, no matter what you say." Pete Dixon gives a prideful smile at Jason's words.

When I watched this episode, I cried. I really did. I didn't recall it from all of those years ago, but I'm sure I saw it. The thing is, we don't always comprehend the meaning of things as they happen, because it can take time to gain an appreciation for events from an earlier point in our lives. I looked through one of my high school yearbooks, and there was Randy in a picture of the interracial committee set up by the school administration at my school. They called it the "Student Advisory Committee," and they wouldn't have dared to call it "interracial" in those times, but that's what it was, and that's why it was set up. In the 1960s, there was much strife, and black Americans were seldom, if ever, "getting a fair chance." Many white Americans saw black Americans as beneath them, and the words and ideas used in this great episode of "Room 222" are so tied to those times. I hope the young people today of all races and backgrounds can unite and lead the way to drive a stake through the heart of hatred, whose ugly head has risen to prominent positions of power in the world today, like Putin, and including in the United States with Trump and others.    

Photo is of the 2009 Shout Factory DVD

WORD HISTORY:
Twenty-This numerical word, actually a compound, the first part of which is closely related to "two" and "twain," and the last part of which is related to "ten," with the compound literally meaning, "two tens," goes back to Indo European "dwoh/dwah/duwo," which meant "two." This gave its Old Germanic offspring "twaina," with the same meaning. This gave Old English "twegan," which was an old form of "two," masculine in grammatical terms, as English used grammatical gender back then. This later became "tweyne," before the modern version "twain." The second part goes back to Indo European "dekm," which meant "ten." This gave its Old Germanic offspring "tekhan," which then gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "tien/tene" (depending upon dialect), which then became ten. The Old Germanic form "tekhan," also produced Old English "teg/tig," which was used to form compounds for the numbers from twenty up to ninety-nine. Old English had "twentig," and this then became the somewhat contracted form, "twenty." ^ The other Germanic languages have: German "zwanzig," Low German Saxon and Dutch "twintig," and West Frisian "tweintich;" while Danish "tyve," Icelandic "tuttugu," Norwegian "tjue," and Swedish "tjugo" are all more closely related "two;" thus to the first part of "twenty."

^ The loss of "g" in English words passed down to later times was quite common, as for example, "day" was once "dæg," "may" (verb) was once "mæg," and rain (noun) was once "regn." Compare these to the modern German forms, as German is a close relative of English: "Tag" (some Germanic dialects often used "t" rather than "d"), mög (the root form), and "Regen" (the capital letters on Tag and the Regen are due to the German spelling rule that all nouns are capitalized). Further, the "tig" endings morphed into the later "ty."