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glencoeanchor.com life & arts
the glencoe anchor | August 18, 2016 | 17
Glencoe native’s novel looks back on racist incident
‘The Lynching
Waltz’ revisits
1947 Glencoe
controversy
Fouad Egbaria, Editor
Some events in history
stick with
you forever.
For Glencoe
native
Stephen L.
Kanne, a racist
incident
that occurred Kanne
in the community
while he was a student
at Central School stuck
with him forever.
“It was more than in my
head,” he told The Anchor
earlier this summer about
his memory of the incident.
“It was like a very heavy
brick in a knapsack on my
back which I carried with
me throughout my life.”
Kanne, 82, was so affected
by the incident that
he wrote his second novel,
“The Lynching Waltz,”
published in June, a work
of historical fiction drawing
from that incident in the
fall of 1947. His work was
well-received, so much so
that Kanne was asked to
be a presenter at this year’s
Juneteenth celebration in
Washington, D.C., an annual
event celebrating the
abolition of slavery in the
United States.
In the late 1940s, Glencoe
youngsters, black and
white, enjoyed Friday ballroom
dance classes, called
Fortnightly. The classes
served as a fun departure
from the regular routine,
particularly in a time when
boys and girls were separated
at school assemblies and
other functions, Kanne said.
However, a dark cloud
was cast over the dance
floor by one decision, a decision
that forced the community
to make a choice.
Then heading into eighth
grade, Kanne recalled there
were maybe six black students
in the 80-student
class at Central School —
but as kids, he said none of
them paid much attention
to skin color.
Skin color did become
a talking point, however,
when the instructor of the
class (who was independent
of the Glencoe school
district), said that the black
students would not be allowed
to participate in the
ballroom dancing classes,
which took place in the
ballroom above the Central
School auditorium.
“When this happened, it
was like an A-bomb going
off in Glencoe,” Kanne said.
“It was really a big deal.”
As a result, members of
the community organized a
meeting to decide what to
do: whether the class should
be allowed to continue,
with the black students excluded,
or, if it should be
canceled. Ultimately, the
class was discontinued, but
the effects of the decision
rippled onward in Kanne’s
life. Kanne said he was unable
to find documentation
of that community meeting
in Glencoe Historical Society
archives or in archived
news coverage — that,
combined with the fact that
the attendees of that meeting
are all likely deceased,
Glencoe native Stephen L. Kanne’s second novel, “The
Lynching Waltz,” was published earlier this summer
— a work of historical fiction, it draws from a racist
incident that occurred in Glencoe during his youth.
Image Submitted
inspired Kanne to write a
book based on the incident,
but fictionalized.
After later graduating
from New Trier, then
from Harvard University,
Kanne worked as an Army
journalist while stationed
in France. He then got his
law degree from Stanford
University, later going on
to practice real-estate law
for three decades, moving
to Los Angeles because he
couldn’t handle the Midwestern
winters, he joked.
Through all his travels,
he carried that fateful saga
buried in Glencoe’s past
with him.
“I’ve always carried the
story which inspired ‘The
t h e s u m m e r
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