There were 700 students in my sophomore class at Parkersburg High School in West Virginia in 1957. None of them were African-American.

There were 225 students in my senior class at Mount Pleasant High School in Delaware in 1959. None of them were African-American.

There were 200 students in my freshman class at Bowdoin College in 1960. Two of them were African-American.

When comedian Jenny Yang brought her act to Bowdoin College in April, 2018, she got lots of laughs with her opening line. “I always wondered what L.L Bean made. Now I know. They make white people.”

Those statistics and that line came to mind during a recent dinner on the sidewalk at Joshua’s Tavern in Brunswick. Our waitperson was an attractive red-haired young woman named Hope, a fitting metaphor for the evening, as it turned out.

A mixed-raced couple sat at a nearby table with their two young boys.

Another table included an African-American woman and her dining partners, one of whom wore a shirt with AOXOMOXOA on the back. Google later informed me that AOXOMOXOA was the name of a Grateful Dead album. At that same table sat a woman feeding popcorn to her grateful bulldog Buster.

So there at that one patio outside that one restaurant in a small Maine town sat more African-Americans than were in my high school and college classes combined. During the evening, several non-white people passed by on the sidewalk; and many people sported tattoos or hair died with a rainbow of colors.

Clearly, the town of Brunswick has changed significantly from my college days in the early 1960s. Moreover, 40% of the students entering the Bowdoin College Class of 2025 are students of color; 8% of the class are international students.

The day we were at Joshua’s, President Biden had signed legislation to make Juneteenth a federal holiday. Union troops arrived in Texas on June 19, 1865, to bring news of freedom to Black men, woman and children. The date came to be known as “Juneteenth” in the African-American community and has been revered as a day of remembrance, celebration and hope.

That experience at Joshua and that new Juneteenth legislation give me hope for a better, more inclusive future — in Brunswick and around the country. We have come a long way, although we still have a long way to go.

David Treadwell, a Brunswick writer, welcomes commentary and suggestions for future “Just a Little Old” columns. dtreadw575@aol.com. (David’s latest book co-authored with Anneka Williams, who graduated from Bowdoin College this past May, is entitled, “A Flash Fiction Exchange Between Methuselah and the Maiden: Sixty Stories to While Away the Hours,” is available at Gulf of Maine books (Brunswick) Mockingbird Books (Bath) or on Amazon.)

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