Thoughts about growing up in the segregated American South

 I  have struggled intellectually with this subject for some years now. I have a clear memory of a black gentleman in a white shirt and tie coming to the door of Morton Avenue School in an automobile. There were two black boys with him. They stood there while a few of my classmates and I carried old textbooks from our classrooms out to the waiting arms of the black boys who loaded them into the trunk of the car under the supervision of the black man. He was, we were later to learn, the principal of a black school. They were getting our old worn out books while we were getting brand new ones. At the time it certainly did not seem unusual to me for them to be getting the hand me downs. It, in fact, seemed natural. I have as a result of my travels, education and life experiences come to realize the inhumanity of of the "separate but equal" practice of segregation that was practiced in our part of the world. It has taken time for changes to take place in our society - and prejudice still exists even now. 

In the Henderson Family Cemetery there still stands the remains of wooden markers that I looked on as a child and was told that those boards marked the graves of slaves that once were the property of one of my ancestors. Those markers are not more that ten feet from the grave of their once master. If I had to bet, I would say that somewhere in my family tree are distant cousins whose skin is a lot darker than my own. When I was at Georgia Tech, I took a required "soft" sociology course taught by a man who said he was the only registered Republican member on the Georgia Tech Faculty. He was a great influence on me. Atlanta at the time was starting to experience some of the early events associated with the civil rights movement such as lunch counter sit-ins. He made a statement then that has stayed with me ever since. He said, " This is the start of a great movement and I am afraid that racial peace will not ever be achieved in this country until we are all one color - that being sort of like creamed coffee. That was a great shock to some of the students - especially to those coming straight from deep south high schools. I had, of course, spent three years in the Army after high school and was less shocked. As you can tell, I have had a lot to think of for many years... but enough for now.