Leah Harper Bowron on *Colorblind*: School Integration, Racism, Bullying, and Growing Up in 1960s Alabama

Leah Harper Bowron on Colorblind: School Integration, Racism, Bullying, and Growing Up in 1960s AlabamaIn this episode of The Neil Haley Show, Neil “The Media Giant” Haley welcomes attorney and author Leah Harper Bowron to discuss the re-release of her young adult novel Colorblind. Inspired by Bowron’s own sixth-grade experience in Montgomery, Alabama, the novel explores school integration, racism, bullying, courage, and the complicated realities children witnessed while growing up in the segregated South during the late 1960s.Bowron’s professional background is in law. She worked in areas including real estate, wills and trusts, estate matters, and bankruptcy. Years of legal writing gave her a strong foundation, but she eventually decided she would rather tell fictional stories than spend all of her time writing legal documents.Colorblind became her first novel. Originally written approximately eight years ago, the book has now been re-released for a new generation of readers.The story is heavily influenced by Bowron’s childhood. In 1968, she was a sixth-grade student in an all-white public school in Montgomery when integration began changing the school system around her.Bowron remembers Alabama as an openly segregated society. Separate facilities for Black and white citizens were still part of everyday life, and racial attitudes were deeply ingrained in many communities.One of the first steps toward integrating her elementary school, she explains, was bringing an African American teacher into the previously all-white school before Black students were bused there.That experience became the foundation for Colorblind.The fictional teacher, Miss Loomis, is modeled after the actual African American teacher Bowron remembers from sixth grade. In the novel, Bowron intentionally makes Miss Loomis older, smaller, and more physically fragile to emphasize the tremendous pressure and fear surrounding her position.Imagine entering a school where many children had grown up hearing racist beliefs and suddenly becoming an authority figure responsible for teaching them.But the discrimination did not come only from students.Bowron remembers seeing racial separation among the adults as well. During lunch, the African American teacher did not sit with the white faculty members. According to Bowron, she ate separately in her classroom, something the students noticed.Those moments deeply affected Bowron.She remembers feeling uncomfortable watching a teacher she respected being treated differently while also dealing with bullying herself. Two large boys in her sixth-grade class frequently taunted her, and those experiences influenced the bullies portrayed in the novel.In Colorblind, the same boys also torment Miss Loomis, demonstrating how racism and bullying can reinforce each other when authority figures fail to intervene.Bowron says Miss Loomis taught English, which was her favorite subject. One of the teacher’s lasting influences was introducing students to poetry, including works by Black poets Bowron had never encountered before. Those classroom experiences helped expand her understanding of literature and the world outside the culture in which she had grown up.Although Colorblind is based on real experiences, Bowron stresses that it is fiction. She changed characters, personalities, ages, and circumstances to strengthen the story.She also conducted historical research to recreate the atmosphere of the era. Clothing, cultural references, social attitudes, popular trends, and major events help transport readers back to the late 1960s. Bell-bottoms, paisley clothing, mood rings, and other details allow younger readers to experience the period beyond simply reading dates in a history book.Bowron wrote the novel primarily for young adults because she would love to see it used in middle and high school classrooms.Her goal is not simply to tell readers that segregation happened. She wants students to imagine what it actually felt like to sit...