Peter Kranz (center) surrounded by his first class of students enrolled in “Human Conflict in Black and White.” of his academic career about what makes people behave the way they do. Only a few years earlier, in 1964, his childhood friend, Michael Schwerner, had taken time off from college to volunteer to help blacks register to vote in Mississippi, during a time when Jim Crow efforts to restrict voting was at fever pitch and local Klu Klux Klan activity was surging. Kranz recalls how Mickey, just 25, and his wife, Rita, stopped by his work at a department store to say goodbye before going on to Mississippi. “And that was the last time I saw him.” Schwerner and two other volunteers were killed weeks later by members of the KKK. Kranz says that up to that point, he was living in the 14 UTAHSTATE I SUMMER 2018
peripheral of the country’s civil rights unrest. News of Mickey’s death, however, smacked him between the eyes. Following graduation from USU, he began working as an assistant professor at Fresno State College in 1970 and got involved in social services in Bakersfield. He had heard about an upcoming workshop in San Francisco focusing on race relations that appealed to him, consisting of two-day seminars led by Cobbs and Bill Grier. It involved getting black and white participants to sit down together and confront their thoughts and fears about race. Kranz remembers the discomfort he felt as participants angrily spilled their feelings without mincing words. But by
the end of the sessions, he was amazed by how enmity turned to empathy. It was cathartic. And Kranz had to take it to the university level. That was in Jacksonville, where he was a new 32-year-old professor at a college just starting up. He knew nothing of the community at the time, but being at a fledgling university felt energizing. His novel approach to teaching race relations by encouraging non-violent confrontation in a community grappling with desegregation intrigued administrators. To his surprise, Kranz says, they gave him permission to proceed. The course he created, “Human Conflict in Black and White,” was a first. He had no idea the gray areas