Joe Biden by Beatrice Gormley (free ebook reader for iphone TXT) 📕

and so did public transportation. On buses, for instance, Black passengers were expected to sit in the back, in the “colored” section.

In the North, there might not have been laws requiring segregation by race, but restaurants and hotels often refused to allow Black customers. Real-estate agents in many areas would not sell property or rent homes to Blacks, and banks would not offer them mortgages. So Black people were forced to live only in certain neighborhoods, and their children went to schools only in those districts. The result was not only segregated housing but also segregated schools.

During the early 1960s, racial segregation was the unwritten rule in Wilmington. Many white high school students were unaware of the racial barriers. But Joe noticed, and the unfairness bothered him. One time, as Mike Fay remembered later, the Archmere football team went to the Charcoal Pit as usual. Frank Hutchins, the only Black student at Archmere, was in the group.

As the hungry team poured into the dining room, an employee stopped Frank. Frank couldn’t come in with the rest of the boys, he was told. If he wanted to buy a hamburger, he’d have to go to the take-out window.

Seeing Frank shut out, Joe, Mike, and the rest of the football team all had the same reaction. Without discussing the problem, they got up and left the diner.

Joe was elected class president for both his junior and senior years at Archmere. Valerie, Joe’s second-biggest booster after their mother, handed out flyers for his campaigns. Joe would have run for student body president, but Father Diny, the headmaster, discouraged the idea. Joe had built up a number of demerits, and Father Diny pointed out that a leader ought to be a role model too.

However, at Joe’s graduation from Archmere in June 1961, it was his charge as class president to give the class welcome. He stepped onto the stage in front of his classmates’ friends and families and performed this duty perfectly. “Without a single stammer,” he wrote later in his memoir.

Back in November 1960, during the first semester of Joe Biden’s senior year at Archmere Academy, Senator John F. Kennedy had been elected president of the United States. Since president-elect Kennedy was from a Catholic family, many Catholic Americans—including the Bidens and the Finnegans—were overjoyed. The United States at that time was mainly a Protestant country, with a long-standing bias against Catholics.

President Kennedy was also younger than any other candidate ever elected president of the US. He was forty-three, quite a contrast with outgoing President Dwight Eisenhower, age seventy. In January 1961, young people across the country were inspired by President Kennedy’s inaugural address, especially these words: “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”

This appeal spoke to Joe, drawing him toward a career in public service. His friend Dave Walsh later remembered his father asking Joe what he wanted to do in life. “Mr. Walsh,” Joe answered, “I want to be president of the United States.” To both Dave and his father, it seemed perfectly possible. Such a determined, talented, hardworking boy as Joe Biden might indeed grow up to become the leader of the free world.

Typical of Joe, he wasn’t content with having a dream. To reach his goal, he needed a plan. How did somebody like him, without any money or big connections, go about becoming a politician? Joe went to the Archmere library and looked up senators and congressmen in the Congressional Directory. Many of them, he discovered, had started out as lawyers.

That made sense, because trial lawyers got up in court and spoke to judges and juries. They persuaded their listeners by means of their knowledge and public speaking skills. Politicians would need those same skills to connect with voters, as well as with other policy makers. Joe, having mastered his disability, could aim to become a lawyer.

That fall Joe began college life at the University of Delaware, where he majored in political science and history. Those studies would prepare him to go to law school after college, and the law degree would prepare him for politics. These were the steps in his master plan for his life.

Of course, the catch was that Joe would have to actually study. There were so many social events at Delaware, and Joe loved getting together with other people. He went to dozens of dances and fraternity parties, in spite of the fact that he didn’t drink alcohol or smoke. He didn’t even belong to a fraternity.

Joe had seen alcohol abuse in his own family, especially with Uncle Boo-Boo. He didn’t admire the way his uncle would drink and then talk big about what he could have accomplished in life. Joe didn’t want to take a chance on becoming an alcoholic himself.

Besides, Joe could have a great time at parties without drinking. As his sister, Valerie, explained later, “Joe would do wild and crazy things but he was always sober. You couldn’t blame it [on] because he had too much to drink.” Joe was always the designated driver in his group of friends.

He always had a car to drive too, which wasn’t true of many students. By this time Joseph Biden owned his own car dealership, and he would let Joe borrow a car from the lot on weekends. Joe dated a lot of girls, often on double dates with Valerie and a friend of his. Outgoing, good-looking, and nicely dressed, Joe was elected president of his freshman class at the University of Delaware.

During the summer after his freshman year, 1962, Joe worked as a lifeguard at a public swimming pool. The pool was next to a public housing project, Prices Run, in a mostly Black neighborhood, and Joe was the only white lifeguard. One day a gang member started fooling around in the pool, bouncing on the high board. Blowing his whistle, Joe sarcastically called him “Esther Williams” (a famous movie swim star). Joe ordered the youth out of