We were the white parents of 2 daughters, ages 4 and 2 in 1971, when we decided to add to our family through adoption. We were living in Columbia, Missouri at the time and though we lived in a college town and our social network was made up of people linked to the University, it was not exactly a bastion of liberal thinking. The Civil Rights Act, essentially outlawing discrimination in public places, integrating schools, and public facilities, and making discrimination illegal, in regards to employment, did not exist until 1964. It was said to be the most expansive civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. I bring up the Civil Right Act because when we embarked on our plan to adopt transracially, it had only been 7 years since it had become against the law to be outwardly racist AND we were living in Missouri. When we told our parents that we were considering adopting a Black child, my mother, whom I had always considered a liberal’s, liberal took to her bed. It turns out that she was imagining crosses being burned in our front yard and her young granddaughters being attacked. My mother knew what concerning things the future might hold for our family, whether we lived in the Midwest where we were from, or in the once “slave state” of Missouri. (And did I mention that we are Jewish). Our 7 month old son came home to us from Decatur, Illinois. It took almost 2 years for our adoption to be final; as it turned out our attorney was not exactly on our side, and always seemed to find a reason to delay. And the United States was 20 years away from enacting the Multiethnic Placement Act that prohibited delaying or denying mixed race adoptions. By the time our son’s adoption became final, my husband had taken a position at another University and we were living in yet another college town, West Lafayette, Indiana. Our rationale was, that college towns, where ever they might be, would be less likely to be, at least outwardly, discriminatory and prejudiced. And no longer were we living in a midwestern “border state”, to be continued…