Goats and scapegoats

The first time I visited Koinonia, where The Class of '65 is rooted, was in October 1980. I'm the guy on the left scribbling notes for an Atlanta Constitution story, oblivious to the goat munching on my jacket. One of our staff photographers, Louie Favorite, captured the moment. I had heard about Koinonia during my first job, at Presbyterian Survey magazine, and was keen to go there after I started at the Atlanta newspaper. Journalists had been visiting the farm, outside Americus, Georgia, since it was being persecuted for its integrationist beliefs during the civil rights years. When I made the pilgrimage, Florence Jordan, the widow of the community's co-founder, Clarence Jordan, was still living there and showed me the bullet holes where Klansmen had shot into the farm buildings during the 1950s. One of the residents that fall was Margaret Wittkamper; I didn't know then that I would later write a book based on the experiences of her son, Greg, who became a scapegoat to many of his classmates when their high school desegregated during his senior year.