re: For anyone with parents/grandparents alive during segregation

quote:

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My grandma still won't let black men in the house.

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Whoa.

-One of my great-grandfathers who was a doctor killed a black man who was a real life pimp because he kept bothering my great grandpa trying to get him to deliver his pregnant hoe's babys. I've heard the story many times.

-My grandparents call black people coloreds in front of the maid and she calls them coloreds right back. She is pretty old too though.

Funny story that's not exactly racist: One of my gramp's younger cousins who is still alive worked together with him on the police force back in the fifties. He told me about how one late night on patrol, they were riding together through the black part of town running off the black prostitutes that were hanging out on the corners. They passed a parked car with Louisiana plates and decided to park ahead of the car up the street and walk up quietly. When they got to the car they found some black dude in the car nailing a prostitute from behind. Neither of the occupants heard them walk up to the car, and the car door facing the sidewalk was open with the guys arse pointing that way. Ole gramps decided to whack the john in the nuts with his slapjack that he carried, and the party was over. Didn't arrest anyone, just told the guy never to return to Mississippi.

We moved to a small town in South MS in the mid 70's when my father retired from the Army. There were stories about a klan meeting hall out in the sticks that some high school buddies and I went in search of one night. We found it on some dirt road and it had a big sign on a big metal corrugated building that read something like "United Ku Klux Klan of America" on the outside. We climbed a storm fence that was about 6-7' high and jimmied a side door into the building.

Even in the mid-70's, I remember thinking the klan had pretty much gone away but was surprised to have found this place so easily, out in the open. They had all sorts of pamphlets and literature stacked on a table along with a podium with a USA flag and what I remember to be a KKK flag on either side of the podium. We rifled through some of the literature and I grabbed a handful of tracts and stuck them in my pocket. They had banners hanging around the place and weird posters that were mainly propaganda showing pictures of black peoples skulls alongside those of monkeys, showing how they were similar and non-human.

The place was creepy and we were scared of getting caught so we left in a rush. Later we looked at some of the tracts and it was the same kind of garbage showing blacks similarities to apes and monkeys.

A few years later I went to a regional junior college and there was a really cute girl on campus whose father was widely known to be the "head" of that klavern and a deacon in his church. She wasn't allowed to date in high school but put out big time in college.

My granddad was on the Birmingham Police force during the 60's. My dad and my uncle and aunt all went through integration of the Birmingham high schools (West End and Ensley). We all participated in the "white flight" out of East and West Birmingham to the Over the Mountain section of town. We moved our family and business.

We have lots of good stories, bad stories, highlights, and lowlights.

My brother moved to Baker county, FL (home of CeCe Jefferson the DL prospect), in the early 1990's. Often the locals referred to and literally introduced their house help as "my n-maid, Frances." My brother and his wife were pleasantly surprised the maids were so,nice when they were introduced that way.

My Dad and grandmother had all kinds of horrible stories about our county. The town Doctor and his accomplice would buy life insurance on blacks and then the doc would slowly poison them and collect the insurance. There was also a group that hung a lot of them here. I think the hanging went on into the 50's and maybe 60's. The tree is still standing.