Early in the career of The Boondocks cartoonist Aaron McGruder, I happened to catch part of a television interview in which he was holding forth on the subject of racism against blacks in America. When he made mention of how it was not the same in Europe, my thought was “Ah, the innocence of youth.” I realized it was the ignorance of inexperience that allowed him to believe such a fallacy, and that someone as smart as he would one day learn otherwise. In my youth, I had learned otherwise, and my teacher on the subject had been Maya Angelou.

My lesson began one evening in Rome. I had traveled there from Vienna by train. Earlier that day, while waiting to change trains in the northeastern Italian seaport city of Trieste, I made the fateful mistake of drinking from a water fountain. By the time I arrived at the station in Rome, I felt so weak I had to sit on the floor while waiting in line to exchange currency. My first evening in that city was spent entirely in bed. Fortuitously, I had traveled abroad with a copy of the third volume of Ms. Angelou’s autobiography, Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry like Christmas, which – coincidentally – included an account of her first trip to Europe. It was both medicine for the sick, and an eye-opener.

While touring as a member of the cast of Porgy and Bess, she experienced first-hand what Mr. McGruder thought he was explaining to a TV host and audience: how “wonderful” blacks were treated in Europe in contrast to in America. Ms. Angelou, who had been treated quite well, believed this to be the case also – until she learned differently. She had been invited to a party in the home of a Parisian doyenne. She was greeted warmly upon her arrival, but when her hostess learned that the two men accompanying her were not black Americans but were French West-Africans, the atmosphere cooled considerably. It was at this point Ms. Angelou learned the French held people like she in high regard, but did not extend such regard to blacks from the French-held colonies.

All of this happened before the Information Age in which we now live. I’m sure that, had she been privy to documents later made available to the world, Ms. Angelou would have had no reason to invest in the myth of an egalitarian Europe welcoming to blacks. During World War II, which had been over barely a decade before Ms. Angelou’s trip, the Germans already had given the lie to such notions, as evidenced by how black Germans were treated under the Third Reich. Also, while German soldiers had no reason to be welcoming toward enemy soldiers of any color, blacks often were singled out for special treatment. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum reports “Black prisoners of war faced illegal incarceration and mistreatment at the hands of the Nazis, who did not uphold the regulations imposed by the Geneva Convention (international agreement on the conduct of war and the treatment of wounded and captured soldiers). Lieutenant Darwin Nichols, an African American pilot, was incarcerated in a Gestapo prison in Butzbach. Black soldiers of the American, French, and British armies were worked to death on construction projects or died as a result of mistreatment in concentration or prisoner-of-war camps. Others were never even incarcerated, but were instead immediately killed by the SS or Gestapo.” (This last point is reminiscent of what Confederate soldiers did to captured black Union soldiers during our Civil War).

I had read and heard stories of how great things were for black Americans in Europe. I suppose it was no different for the young Mr. McGruder, who is now forty. For many black American writers, painters, dancers, singers, musicians, and intellectuals (as well as the odd traveler), it was all true. It was the work of a great writer who taught me how much more there was to the story, and the importance of looking for the “more” to be found in any tale. Ms. Angelou has been dead for four days as I write, and still she rises.