Today brings back on memory of a trip we made to the South. I don’t remember who we went to visit, but their home was in a rather small town. There are two things I remember about that visit. One was that every morning people hung out their sheets to dry. It was so hot every night the sheets got wet from sweat. I don’t remember the heat. I just remember asking why they hung out the sheets every morning. The another thing I remember was being downtown. Like many small towns, it had a single Main Street or at least that’s what sticks in my memory. The adults went into a store for something and I was left outside to explore. As I was walking down the sidewalk looking into the other stores, I remember black people either stepping out into the street as I passed or crossing the street entirely – seemingly to get away from me. I thought there was something wrong with me that they were avoiding me. When we got home and I told everyone what had happened and asked what had I done wrong, it was explained to me that’s what Blacks were expected to do when they encountered a white person, even a child. As a seven or eight-year-old, I thought it was silly. It wasn’t until I was older that understood the seriousness of it from a Black perspective.
That visit took place over 70 years ago. From what I see and hear today, while we’ve come a ways, we have further to go.
