Chapter 55: Integration- Part 1: Or When Sunny Gets Blue | My Southern Gothic Life

New post up on my other blog….

Here’s an excerpt and a link to the full post:

I’ve said it before, growing up in Danville, Virginia in the late 1960′s to early 1970′s was like growing up in South Africa under Apartheid.

Brown vs the Board of Education took many years to be fully implemented in the South and, as usual, I think Danville, Virginia  was one of the last cities to be desegregated.

But desegregation did finally happened in Danville- when I was in the 5th grade.

I still remember that day….Our white school was pretty much transferred en mass to a Black Middle School.  That’s how they did things then…

It was a very big day.  All our Mothers- who usually couldn’t be bothered by their children-  either took the day off from work or cut their Valium doses enough so they could take us to school.

Until this point, we had simply walked to school and they had done whatever it was they did…This level of interaction was unheard of- and frankly, unwelcome.  We were used to being left alone to work things out on our own and they were used to being, well, left alone.  But the times, they were a changing and this was the least we could all do…

via Chapter 55: Integration- Part 1: Or When Sunny Gets Blue | My Southern Gothic Life.