The border is not the problem

WHEN MY FATHER ARRIVED IN AMERICA FROM ETHIOPIA in 1978, he was resettled, with the help of an immigration agency, to Peoria, Ill.

- DINAW MENGESTU

He found a job working on the factory floor of a Caterpillar Inc. plant, and by the time my mother, sister, and I joined him two years later, he'd already found a two-bedroom apartment two blocks from the Catholic school my sister and I would attend.

It was a startlingly American childhood, made more so by the fact that we spent our weekends at a Southern Baptist church on the other side of town. My parents, raised in the Ethiopian Orthodox church, had never heard of Southern Baptists before coming to America. But every Sunday, there we were, in the front pews, the first and only Black family to have ever attended the church.

On a recent cross-country road trip, my wife and I decided to take our two children on a detour to Peoria. My family had left the city at the tail end of the 1980s recession, when unemployment hovered near 20%. I wanted to see if we could find Sharon, one of the members of the church my family had been especially close to. I hadn't spoken to Sharon in at least 10 years. We arrived unannounced at her doorstep just in time to take her to lunch. It was the first and most likely the last time she would meet my family. On the drive to the restaurant, Sharon pointed out the Greek Orthodox church near her home.

"Your mom and dad tried to go there," she said, "but the priest or pastor told them not to come back. He said they would be more comfortable somewhere else." I was about to ask Sharon how they were able to do so at a Southern Baptist church, but she saw the question coming.