Question: How Many Here Went Through Integration ???

[WillyT]

I Mean... I'm a White Guy, and I was tutored by my friends of color on just who was who...



http://negroartist.com/civil%20rights%20imagery/images/Black%20civil%20rights%20demonstrators%20attacked%20by%20police%20water%20hose_%20Birmingham,%20Alabama%20May%201963_jpg.jpg



To quote JC Watts' father, "A black man voting for a Republican, is like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders.

:shrug:

[madokie]

1. JC Watts was a representative from this state, OK, and he was a puke to boot

and when I say a puke I mean a PUKE the whole way.

[El Supremo]

2. "Went through" it?

Poor choice of words.

Experienced the horrors of segregation would be better.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

3. I was alive at the time, but I lived in Wisconsin then, and my

school was already integrated. I couldn't see what the fuss was about.

However, when I was 11, we moved to a suburb of Minneapolis where the schools had no African-American students until I was 16, and then it was just the members of one family.

[arcane1]

4. Other, since I was born white in 1967

I grew up in the environment resulting from the civil rights movement (the "white flight" to the sub-suburbs of the capital of the confederacy), but I didn't add 2+2, and do the math and understand it, until I was in my early 30's.

[csziggy]

5. White woman here - our schools were fully integrated when I was in 7th grade

There were almost no problems and I was glad to see it happen. I never understood the hatred and bigotry.

My mother's family was from Alabama. She had aunts and uncles who lived in Selma a few blocks from the Edmund Pettus Bridge.



Before 1965 we had visited them nearly every summer, so I recognized that bridge on the news. After 1965 we did not go back for years. Several of my mother's aunts and uncles died in those years and she was afraid to drive up for the funerals by herself.

[WillyT]

6. Well... While Finishing The 4th Grade, We And Our Parents Were Informed Of The New Reality

So when the 5th Grade started, there were all these black kids from Argonaut School, literally across the tracks from our predominantly white school (Alice Birney)...

That dotted line to the right of AB are the old SP Railroad Tracks (you have to zoom in): http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&authuser=0&cp=7&gs_id=26&xhr=t&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&biw=1024&bih=679&um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=alice+birney&fb=1&gl=us&hq=alice+birney&hnear=0x809ab8cbe0a2f839:0xca0ceb60d31c08e8,Elk+Grove,+CA&ei=dkQFTrPkM4eisAOEq8HFDQ&sa=X&oi=local_group&ct=image&sqi=2&ved=0CAQQtgM

Anywho... most of us kids became immediate friends... lifelong in many instances... but many of the "adult" "parents"... not so much...

The first thousand times I heard the term U**** T**, in fact the only time I heard that term, was from my new black friends. And back then, they didn't mind if I used it, they welcomed the information.

:shrug:

[csziggy]

7. I lived in a small town in central Florida

There were two high schools - the white one and the black one. They closed the black one and put everybody into the same school. They had been working on building a new junior high, so they had the room. The black school was remodeled and later became a middle school.

And yes, the black community was almost completely on the east side of the train tracks.

We were pretty proud of our town. While there was prejudice and an active KKK, the transition was almost completely non-violent. We had the first black mayor in the state - he had been a city commissioner and as one of the white commissioners put it, "It was his turn."

[JanMichael]

8. "U**** T**"

I don't want to guess what that means but please tell. I was born in 68' and the integration movement was either in place or being put in place everywhere I lived (being in a split up family I went to numerous elementary schools (5) in that period) so being a child then with zero info being given by the parents I don't recall being in the midst of integration. Although I imagine I was. Being 5-8 years old though (in the mid-west and California) all I remember was more non-white classmates in later grades than I had when I was 6, which in hindsight I typically had several non-white school mates among my friends.

My wife had a different experience because she is 4 years older and lived in NC in the midst of the desegregation of schools. She says that she was 6 and all of the kids were terrified of kindergarten and made friends causerie they missed their mothers regardless of their ethnicity. It was scary regardless.

Sadly in most cities schools are more segregated now than they were back then due to income differentials and sprawl that leads to massive current segregation that no-body seems to give a shit about anymore...it can be easily geocoded with census data too. Sure some people want to live among those they grew up with but those who do not (and that aren't fabulously wealthy) have ethnic derived mortgage denials and loan home purchase price limitations (proved by several TV exposes - same credit, lower loan total amounts - that limits choice) and RE steering to keep them "in their place"...

[peace frog]

9. Schools in Miami FL integrated when I was in 7th grade

Not sure about other communities but in South Miami students from the black school were bussed to my previously all-white school. There was mild culture shock initially but I witnessed no violence, verbal abuse or angry racial tension.

[dflprincess]

10. My mother sold our home to a Black family in 1965

(this was in upstate New York). There were only two families on the street that supported her. The situation got tense enough that she sent my brother and I back to Minnesota about a month before the sale closed. It was pretty traumatic all the way around. I was 12 and really couldn't figure out what the big deal was - now I sometimes wonder why the buyers went through with the sale - they had two small children and after the dining room window was shot out (while we were still living there), I would have decided it wasn't a place I wanted to raise my kids. I've always wondered if they stayed there.

I give my mom a lot of credit for sticking it out (she had the option of taking the house off the market). She was recently widowed and not in the best emotional state. One day a group of neighborhood men showed up on the door step to try and scare her. Fortunately, our next door neighbor was a supporter and could see what was going on. She called the other family on the street who stuck by mom and got them over to the house & then she came over as well. She had had polio and couldn't get up on the porch with her crutches but I heard she smacked a couple people with them.

[WillyT]

11. Bless You For That Story... People That Weren't There Have NO Fucking Idea...

:pals:

:grouphug:

:hi:

[EFerrari]

15. My mom was a realtor. In 1967 she was blackballed in our neighborhood

for a few tense weeks because there was a rumor that she MIGHT sell a house there to a black family. This was in segregated, redlined Sunnyvale, CA.

[dflprincess]

20. I'm sure.

My mother has said that her realtor had problems as well. The realtor was also a woman (and had been widowed in the last few years) - you have to wonder if the local bullies would have gone after men the way the went after women who were alone.

[EFerrari]

22. Seriously.

When I was a little girl, I never understood why the Japanese wife of one neighbor and the Korean wife of another never came out into their front yards to garden or to chat or to join the block parents on holdays like Hallowe'en or the Fourth. Well, I don't wonder any more. They were war brides and they knew better than I did what to expect out there.

ETA: And my mom couldn't have sold one of those houses to a black couple had she wanted to. There were no black families shopping in that neighborhood. Ten years later, there were two black kids in my high school, sisters, when the "colored" school across the tracks was shut down.

[socialist_n_TN]

12. I was a white kid in the deep south...........

We intergrated when I was a Senior in HS. I benefitted from it. The black kids actually picked me for the teams during PE. :) Not that I was any good, but I think they saw that I was trying.

Anyway, we went from all white to about 10% African-American over the space of one Summer. Lily white in May to intergrated in September. There wasn't really a lot of problems as I recall. And I would have probably been in the middle of it if there were. I caught more grief over my anti-war stance than over my pro intergration one. I was a baby radical even then.

[WillyT]

13. From One Baby Radical To Another...

:yourock:

:D

:hi:

[socialist_n_TN]

14. Here's to ya WillyT

:toast: Here's to ya! All these years later and we're still at it. Weren't we supposed to grow out of it? Yeah, like you can grow out of wanting justice.

[Blue_In_AK]

16. I was alive during the time.

I lived in the north and west until I was 15, and our schools were integrated, so it wasn't really an issue. When I moved to Pasadena, Texas in 1963, however, I saw the other side. I got called a n*****-lover a few times when I was at the University of Houston because I had some black friends, but racism has always seemed stupid to me, so I pretty much shrugged it off. Texas was really ugly back then. I left in 1968 never to return, so I can't comment on how it is these days.


1964, the year I started college, was the first year that University of Houston had black athletes, most notably future basketball Hall of Famer Elvin Hayes, who was a friend of mine. The funniest thing was when my little brothers wanted to meet him and I took him to my parents' house for dinner. They weren't in any way prejudiced, but they were somewhat concerned about what the neighbors would think, but after dinner he and my brothers (who were 10 and 8 or something at the time) went out to shoot some hoops and all the neighbors we were concerned about came out to meet him. It was pretty awesome, actually.

[MilesColtrane]

17. I started public grade school in Mississippi in 1968.

It was either the first or second year that the small town school I began attending had integrated.

I knew that adults were up in arms about "busing" as it was called, but couldn't for the life of me figure out why.

Riding the bus was actually fun when I was little.

It never occurred to me to question black kids and white kids going to the same school.

[demigoddess]

18. I grew up in the military which was integrated before I was born

so it wasn't much to me. went to school with black kids, some of my early school years were in army schools so we were integrated. Did not understand why people would not want to be integrated.

[Raine]

19. I was a little girl, saw some coverage on TV

didn't really understand. I lived in a California suburb it didn't seem to be an issue here.

[jorno67]

21. I actually learned a great deal about it in school

when I was in the 4th and 5th grade we were very poor and I lived in what would be called "the hood" these days. the grade school I attended was about 96% black. It was tough being a minority - I had my nose broken for being white - among other beatings and such. There are racist on every side. But I also had some of the best friends I've ever had. Anyway, I learned more black history in those two years than I did in the rest of my entire education (including college) combined.