re: For anyone with parents/grandparents alive during segregation

I'm 51, grew up in MS, and the schools were integrated when I was in 2nd grade. In 1st grade every kid on my bus was called into the principles office because the older kids hung out the bus window and flipped off the black school bus when it passed by. The principle just said quit doing that.

I remember separate water fountains & stuff. Weidmann's Restaurant in Meridian, MS still had the black/white dividing line on the floor the last time I was in there around 1992. I think it's closed now.

My ancestors owned slaves (NC starting in late 1700's) and paid taxes on them. My home town in FL had a colored town across the railroad tracks called the 'quarters'. Blacks weren't allowed in our part after dark. The big ugly that owned the mid town barber shop was a grand wizard. All the bathrooms in town had signs saying whites only or blacks only. Had a black mammy and played with her son 'pumpkin' all the time. Schools integrated in my jr yr and our football team began much better over night. None of the students really cared and there were never any race problems.

Before desegregation we used to love to go to the HS football games on Sat night in the quarters. Every one was drinking and the cheerleaders were really hot and doing really slinky cheers. I'm not sure anyone was sober.

Their football coach had a paddle which he used on their behinds on the sidelines if anyone screwed up. It was a different world.

Charleston, MS had their first integrated prom in 2008.

There is a documentary movie about it called Prom Night in Mississippi.

LINK

I was in the first class that was bussed in Monroe

This thread makes me glad I grew up in Hawaii. All we had to worry about were the Hawaiians who didn't like the haoles.

My dad saw some bad stuff in the late 40s that obviously affected him in a negative way. I have never heard my dad issue a racial slur or demean anyone of color and he would frown on those who did. Interesting that you pose this discussion now as I asked him recently to recount a story that he told me about 25 years ago. When he was 7(1949), a black man accidentally ran over and killed his female cousin. He recalls the older men of the family in one room talking heatedly and the women all in another room crying. The local Sheriff had taken the black man into custody and had told my great uncle the exact time they were going to "turn him out" of the jail. The men in the room were organizing a posse to scoop the man up so they could go and administer their form of justice by way of hanging. Dad remembers watching them all get in the bed of a truck to go lynch this man. It scarred him then and likely still does. To this day, he try's to forget that day and that era . Much like veterans of the World Wars and Vietnam choose to try and repress their war memories. It effected him badly as he has always had a gentle soul.

As someone who grew up in the 50s and 60s, I can tell you that race relations were much better back then. Segregation was wrong and I'm glad it's over. But people respected each other a lot more then than now.
I would ride my bicycle through a black section of town to visit a friend on the other side of town and never had a problem. That would not be the case now.
People get riled up when someone says they miss the 50s and 60s because they want to bring up segregation but I just wish people respected each other now like all people did in those days.

My grandfather was superintendent of the school system here in Alabama during segregation. He spoke before congress about the problems that would come with it for our state and his school district....namely that a brand new state of the art school had been built for the blacks 4 years before integration and it would sit unused (whites refused to send their kids to the black part of town) for 20 years.....when it was turned into the vocational school. The county couldn't get funding for a new high school (opened in the thirties) until 1989.
Just like Papa testified in 1967....All those years a perfectly good school sat unused and largely neglected. He wasn't a segregationist but he did think it was dumb to force kids to go to an older school with less resources all in the name of "progress".
FWIW, my mom was part of the first segregated class to graduate there and she said there were no problems and everyone got along well. The town only had around 5,000 people so most everyone knew everyone on some level which she said helped out a lot.
Her example was; It's hard to be mean to the new black kid at school when his dad worked with/for your dad at the lumber yard.

quote:

---

Why does it have to be people with grandparent's alive then only?

---

I was very much alive. How many stories do you want? I saw crosses burned. white only signs, good friends that suddenly didn't like me, all people worked to survive, whites had much better chances to make more money, we all got along better, inequality in schools, and much more. I saw both sides of a situation. I see it now and have what is perceived by many as a racist attitude but I've seen the potential of what can be achieved if we work together AND under all being treated equal. Stories? I can give you stories. I was raised in a small community of near a 50/50% black and white.

My dad was a college prof at Northwestern State and the youngest member of the Natchitoches Parish School Board.

When the board voted on desegregation he was the only white member that voted "yes". After two days of death threats me, my mom and sister went to live with my grandmother for a month in the country.