Life In The Segregated South Revisited

I was talking to Megan today about my last MLK post and I realized that I had never told my kids what life was like in the segregated south. I moved to Georgia in 1964 from San Diego, California. Somehow, being from California made us Yankees. I had never heard this term before but I was only 4 years old so I hadn't heard a lot of terms before. I realized the term Yankee meant that we didn't hate black people. Now that I look back on it I don't think the Rebels(as they called themselves even though the Civil War had been over for about 100 years) really hated black people. They just did not consider them to be equal to white people. They did not really wish them harm, they just didn't want to go to school with, go to work with, share public facilities with, eat with, or have any informal or formalized relationships with this sub class of people.

Some of the things I remember seeing were signs posted by private establishments welcoming Whites, while not publicly excluding blacks. A sign might read, "This restaurants welcomes White customers." I think that by 1964 companies were not allowed to specifically exclude blacks, but technically they were not excluding them with these signs, they were just welcoming whites. I remember that if my parents went into a grocery store and there were black people in line my parents would be invited to the front of the line. Being Yankees, they were offended by these gestures and would decline the offer, to the consternation of the clerk who would usually mumble something about the corruption the nigger-loving Yankees were bringing to the state. I hope I haven't offended anyone by this term. It was an offensive time.

Even now there are black parts of town and white parts of town. I think the difference back then was that there were policies in place to ensure that black people did not try to live in the white parts of town. Homeowners would refuse to rent or sell to black people. I only remember seeing one black lady in my neighborhood when I was there. She was a maid for an older couple. All the Yankee kids in the neighborhood were convinced that she must be a slave being held against her will. I am not sure why we came up with that one. I guess we knew we were being ridiculous because we never tried to rescue her.

Once in a while we would get a black child who attended Lockheed Elementary. There would never be more that two black kids at the school at a time but our school was considered to be integrated.

I never saw a mixed race couple in public for the 4 1/2 years that I was there.

During the 1968 presidential campaign George Wallace, governor of Alabama ran on a ticket promoting more segregation as the answer to the nation's problems. Being a Republican at the age of 8, I fought for Richard Nixon despite the overwhelming support for Wallace by the mini Boll Weevil Democrats turned Independents. It is hard to believe that a Segregationist could carry five states in a general election. I wanted to celebrate Nixon's victory but all of my little Rebel friends and my teacher were pretty depressed with the election results and even then I knew to keep my celebration to myself.

The failed campaign of Wallace seemed to be another nail in the coffin for segregation. I left Georgia in April of 1969 so I never witnessed a lot of integration. I just checked the demographics for my former elementary school. The new numbers come in as follows: black students-46%, hispanic students-38%, white-8%, multi-racial-7%. I guess this proves that you can't really force integration. White flight must have been the result. I am now officially disapointed. 2 4 6 8 they refused to integrate.