Any DU'ers who "Clawed their Way" out of South...Pre/Integration?

[KoKo]

Any here who went to "Segregated Schools" and saw the whole deal and had to get out?

Anyone who can see similarities to that time and now?

Just had to post this...because that "civil rights thing" was knawing at my soul......

I'll leave this open ended and not post. It might be too obscure and not fleshed out enough for anyone to reply...but if you DID live then...how are you dealing with NOW?

If you didn't then what do you think you would have done if you had lived then with "segregation" and is that concept so FOREIGN that you wonder what I'm talking about...

I can't answer now....just want to read replies if there ARE ANY...but curious. Just to get the perspective of my fellow DU'ers.

:shrug:

[Warpy]

1. I went to my first "all white" school when I was eleven

and I was a little nervous because I knew I wasn't. When I got there, I saw Cherokee kids, and Japanese kids, and Mexican kids, and Chinese kids---every color but BLACK.

Needless to say I got the point. Oh, did I ever!

I became a rotten kid who would save places at lunch counters downtown and give them to sit in protestors.

[KoKo]

3. There was alot of bad stuff...and it didn't end

with "integration" even in places that were aleady integrated...that weren't in the South...where it was really bad.

And wherever anyone feels "out of it," because of who you are..color and stuff...

But, those who lived through "segregation" sort of have a commonality...as to how and when and why they got out...if they couldn't take it, i think....

Was it better after? :shrug:

[TalkingDog]

2. I was in 4th grade when they integrated here in NC

When I was in Jr. High the "race riots" started. The teachers would get very nervous when there was anything hinting at racial tension.

For some reason (probably due to my geekiness) there was a group of black girls who thought it was fun to pick on me. But my mother, even though we were considered po' white trash, had taught me never to judge anyone or hate anyone because of their station in life or their skin color. She often explained to me in those years, how she had played with the black kids down the road, whose parents were tenement farmers like hers. She left home at 17 and worked in a diner. She told of one time when a black man had come in for a cup of coffee and a donut. Her boss (coward) told this 17 yr. old girl to make the man go to the back door for his coffee. She refused and served him at the counter.

From her I learned to hate the injustice of prejudice, in all it's forms. So when people prejudicially bash Southerners as being stupid hicks who live in some sort of eternal hell, I have to pity them for their ignorance. I've lived "up North" and the openly racist remarks and attitudes are just as foul as those I still occasionally find in my home town.

[RoyGBiv]

4. Clawed their way out?

Pray tell, where would one in the "segregated South" go to escape segregation?