segregation.
i know i was born a good thirty years after the civil rights act of 1964, but i want to tell you all about the very first time i learned there was once segregation in this country [ unisted states ].
i was a wee kid, maybe eight or nine years old in 2003, and we were studying a unit in our history course about dr. martin luther king jr. and my teacher, she was a lovely black woman who i still remmeber dearly to this day, began to tell us stories about her childhood in texas. around 1963 she had been around four years old, so she had experienced segregation first hand.
she told us about how she had gone to the [ colored people ] theatre with her sister and she saw the [ white ] guy at the snack stand spitting in the popcorn of anyone who was buying. and without anyone knowing what the fuck he was doing. she told us all the hatred she experienced from the white children. how she wasn't allowed to drink from just any water fountain BECAUSE SHE WAS BLACK. she couldn't go to the same schools as white people because she was black. she could not eat at the same restaurants because she was black. and if she was allowed in the same restaurants and buses as whites, they had to eat in the section labeled 'colored'.
and, i remember thinking, "what kind of horrible place would do this to a little girl?"
i asked her why things were that way, and her face just changed in that instant. she looked sad, almost on the brink of tears as she told me, "because it was the law." she replied, "according to them, we were separate but equal."
that didn't make sense to me. how could something like this be equal?
i shuddered to think a country like this could exist. as a little kid, i hadn't realized that it was my own country, the one who boasts of being the best in the world, doing the disgusting things my teacher talked about.
from that day on, i never saw my country the same way.
now i thank people like martin luther king, bobby kennedy, malcolm x, and all the other people who fought for racial equality in this country. without them, i think today i would be experiencing the same things the black community suffered. because in the america of back then only priviledged the whites got all the perks. hispanics were discriminated too.
and i just want to express my gratitude because thanks to them...
i have freedom.
that is all i have to say in regards to that.
-clary xx