Black and White Like You and Me: Parallel Lines Sometimes Intersect

Even in 1960s Detroit, race isn’t everything.

Tom Daniels and Cookie Marsh will be the first to tell you that race isn’t everything. But it did shape the way they experienced the world growing up in Detroit in the 1950s and 60s. Tom Cookie Marsh grew up in a black neighborhood on Detroit’s west side. Tom Daniels grew up in a mixed, working-class neighborhood on Detroit’s east side.

Both men grew up in strict households where they always got what we needed, and sometimes what we wanted and both saw their city, their country, and their world transform around them through the Civil Rights movement, riots, and the Viet Nam War.

But sometimes parallel lines intersect.

As each man tells his story, it is apparent that race isn’t just black and white but it is part of what makes their friendship extraordinary. Their experiences will show you that race made for huge differences in their experiences, while, in spite of race, there are also touching similarities that made it possible for two men, in their older years, to overcome decades of racial turbulence of their upbringing to become lifelong friends.

Follow Tom and Cookie. Hear about their lives, their upbringing, their successes and regrets growing up in black and white Detroit - and how when it boils down to it, the things that are truly important are actually black and white, like you and me.