Even in 1960s Detroit, race isn't everything.

Tom Daniels and "Cookie" Marsh will be the first to tell you that race isn't everything. But it did shape the way they experienced the world growing up in Detroit in the 1950s and 60s. Tom "Cookie" Marsh grew up in a black neighborhood on Detroit's west side. Tom Daniels grew up in a mixed, working-class neighborhood on Detroit's east side.

Both men grew up in strict households where they "always got what we needed, and sometimes what we wanted" and both saw their city, their country, and their...