I must have stuck out like a sore thumb.
Maybe that's why Acel Moore noticed me.
I fancied myself as something of a writer. I found myself attending classes at Lincoln University. Let's just say it wasn't hard to spot me on campus.
When I saw at Acel Moore was scheduled to give a talk on campus. I decided to take it in.
As usual, I was one of the very few white faces in that room.
Maybe Moore drew on his own experience when he called on me during a question-and-answer session.
Afterward, he took the time to talk to me.v
Acel Moore likely knew something about being a minority, which is what I encountered for the first time in my life. I always tell anyone who asks that it was an eye-opening experience, and one I wish more people - especially young people - got the opportunity to experience. I think we would be light years of where we are in race relations if that were the case.
Acel Moore was a pioneering presence in breaking the color barriers in the news business.
Moore did two very important things. He changed the way news outlets looked at - and covered - the minority community. And he opened the doors to many of those newsrooms, allowing and encouraging people of color to actually take part in that process.
He won a Pulitzer Price for his stores on the abuses in the state hospital system.
In 1975, he co-founded the National Associated of Black Journalists.
In 1984, he launched the Acel Moore Career Development Workshop, giving high school students a five-week crash course in what it means to be a newspaper journalist.
But it was a talk he gave 10 years earlier on the campus of tiny Lincoln University in Chester County that left a lasting impression on me.
More than anything else, Acel Moore was one of the first people who shed some light on the difference between being a writer and a journalist. Believe me, there is a huge difference.
We lost Acel Moore over the weekend. He died unexpectedly at his home in Wyncote.
But his spirit lives on in countless young people he inspired to get into the journalism racket.
Including one kid who stuck out like at sore thumb at Lincoln University.
I will forever be grateful.
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