Glad for your sake they got out of there -- it couldn't have been a very fun place to grow up...

Sure it was fun. Not everybody is a begot. My family left Atlanta when I was a kid and moved to a rural community. I lived across the street from a long meander lake cut-off from a river. I used to go down there in the summer mornings to go fishing with a bunch of other boys, about half of them various shades of black. My parents never cared and I guess the other parents didn't either because they all came back day after day through the hot summer. We'd come home and my Mother would give us all a tall glass of sweet ice tea while we cleaned fish. When school cranked-up the black kids went to thier school and the whites went to theirs. It didn't occur to me to really question that until high school when I ran into some of my fishing buddies who invited me to their hich school game (two black high schools in an old rivalry). I was absolutely astonished by how bad the team and band uniforms were. They were obviously cast-offs. The instruments were 3rd rate. Being a brilliant young man, I asked my friends why the school didn't buy better equipment. They told me and I just knew it to be true. It made so many things fit together in to a neat, terrible picture.

It was very easy for a white kid to grow to adulthood and never know that there was no equality in "separate but equal". I hate to use the Nazi analogy, but WTF. It reminds me of the Germans who's towns were near to death camps. The Germans claimed they didn't know. Well, in my little segregated town, you could live a long time and not know. And if you had a desire for self-delusion or worse, a desire for superiority, you could convince yourself it was good for the black people.

I spent a great deal of time in the deep south as a child and loved every minute of it. There is a difference between the type of relatively innocuous form of racism borne primarily of ignorance that was rampant in America during those times (still is to some degree), and the evil goings-on of people who actually make a career of promoting bigotry and racism. The impression I have is that Philadelphia, MS in particular was a hate-infested community dominated on every level by the KKK. I'm glad I wasn't raised there.

Put it this way -- there were a few times when I wanted to bring black friends home from school to play. My parents would not allow me to do this, because they were afraid of retribution. In that environment, particularly being a Yankee, you had to be sensitive to those things.

I didn't know the difference at the time -- I only did what my parents said to do. My parents weren't/aren't racist or bigoted. They were cautious about appearances. Doing the wrong thing could have resulted in my parents, or our house, being hurt or worse.

My parents did have a black maid (a standard custom), who effectively raised me before I went to school. They still keep in touch with her via Christmas card and the occasional phone call.

I believe times have largely changed. I visited Philadelphia about 5 years ago. I wasn't old enough to remember much when we moved, but I was able to find our old house and neighborhood. Nearly 30 years on, it looked exactly as I remembered it. The town didn't change much.

Cheers,
Gerry

There is a bug that interupts my typing. If I don't proof read very carefully, there are errors.
I n my earlier post, one such error occured. It should have read, " However, this is reminder that NOT everything was great..."
Sorry for the confusion......I would have been scratching my head as well.

Over the years I've met several families from Philadelphia. One family's oldest daught was my middle kid's best friend through elementary and middle school. They're still close but have different interests. All three families look and act just like real people, honest to goodness.

That part of Mississippi and Alabama, and Georgia, the central portions, were well known among all races as being very intolerant of anything new or innovative. Especially race. But times change.

A colleague of mine is mixed race. His dad was from Louisville, MS. His dad served in the USMC during WWII in a combat platoon, a rare thing back then. Curiously, his Gunnery Sgt was Jewish. I know this because my colleague was named for the gunny, who lost his life in the arms of my colleague's dad. Well he hadn't been home to Lousiville in 40 years, saying he sure as heck didn't fight for his country in WWII to kiss some guy's ass in Louisville Mississippi. Well, eventually there was a death in the family and so his Dad drove down from Pittsburgh with his wife and two sons.

Colleague said his Dad knew that change had really come to Louisville, MS when they went to a fast food restaurant and a white girl asked him, "Can I hep yuh suh?"

It's a different world. One indication of the sea change is the present day indictments of those old codgers. It wont bring back the dead and it wont remediate the injustice of those days long gone. But it is an important signal of the change that has come and been accepted by the vast majority of people living there today.

It's interesting to me to listen to the discussion here of how "wrong" these murdering bigots were back then in a time when there was tacit acceptance if not agreement by a majority of the population (certainly in the South).
I wonder if 40 years from now we'll look back at the same type of bigot that feels it's perfectly acceptable to have a seperate (and unequal) country and laws for gay people and who use hatred and ignorance to manipulate the public to win elections.
Which side of today's "race" debate are YOU on?

Agreement to what level? Segregation was a way of life, but I don't think that most southerners condoned Mississippi Burning style murder and violence - at least during my lifetime. Racism may be alive and well in America, but it's tone has certainly become less shrill. Do you think that gay-bashing has ever been at the level of the KKK activity back in the day? Do you realize that U.S. membership in the KKK once exceeded 2 million (gasp!)?

this issue seems to always fall on the sides of religeous vs. not so, if at all, religeous. there are, i'm sure, exceptions, but by and large it seems that way.

for the record, i am not perticularly religeous by nature, though i see value in the precepts of behavior.

as to your query, when in doubt, i try to err on the side of freedom and responsibility.

How old are you? I can remember a time when racism was perfectly acceptable and a feeling in some groups that people that went down South to try to do the right thing got what they deserved. Were there people that didn't agree with the behavior? Absolutely, but they were outnumbered by the people that either tacitly or outright supported racism.
I'm feeling too lazy to look up statistics on gay bashing but I can tell you in most places it's a great deal more common then you think. As to the "shrillness" of the current discussion on gay marriage and equality, did you turn on a TV or read a paper during the election? Rove admitted it was THE wedge issue. For some reason people feel that it perfectly acceptable to make the wildest and unfounded statements when confronted with the issue of gay marriage. Some of these argument's were exactly the same ones used to argue against racial equality.
Inter-racial marriage was illegal as recently as 1967. When I have time I'll look up the speech given by a General against integrating the armed forces in WWII. Said unit cohesion would be destroyed, whites shouldn't be forced to live with blacks, exact same arguments used by Colin Powell!? against gays in the military. Funny, if we hadn't integrated Colin would be shining shoes somewhere.

hey Lk1, do you know if inter-racial marriage was illegal for all races or just "black/white"?

I think it's easy to sit around and pontificate and armchair quarterback the situation. The fact is, attitudes and societal norms (not only, but especially, in the deep South) about race were very different back then.

Southerners traditionally (despite also being hospitable people) have retained some suspicion of northerners. I'm not saying that my parents' not letting me bring African-American playmates home from school was the morally correct thing to do, but it was probably a more practical alternative to having your car or your house fire-bombed, or your dad beaten up or threatened.

And I don't put gay-bashing and associated attitudes in the exact same camp as racial attitudes and segregation in the American South. There are fundamental differences in how said prejudices and attitudes were formed, and manifested.

The last time I checked, I didn't recall seeing "Gay" and "Straight" bathrooms or drinking fountains. And I don't remember seeing gays being required to sit at the back of city buses, either.

Let's keep apples and oranges separate, here.

Most people don't have an issue with gay marriage as a concept. They just want it called something different. My sister-in-law is gay, and I have no problem with her having a legally binding relationship with someone of the same sex if she chooses. If she wants to adopt a child, fine with me. But I do believe that the term "marriage" should be reserved for a man and a woman. And this is the prevailing mainstream opinion of a majority of Americans at the current time.

The reason this was such a wedge issue, was because certain lawmakers in certain locales (Massachusetts, the mayor of San Francisco, the county commissioners of Multnomah County Oregon (Portland)) took it upon themselves to illegally sanction gay marriages by freely handing out marriage licenses. At least here in Portland, this legal maneuvering before the licenses were handed out, was done in a VERY shady, backroom manner with basically the knowledge of 3-4 extremely liberal, activist county commissioners who had an agenda.

And I know that in San Francisco and here in Oregon, these marriage licenses have been null and voided.

The bottom line, is that the activists pushed too hard, and people got pissed/freaked out. Even a lot of so-called Democrats did. In many fundamental ways, Bush and Kerry were aligned on this issue during the election. Bush just took a very strong position and never wavered from it. And I think people identified with that.

If the activists would just take the time to change societal attitudes more slowly, and let people adjust, they would have been more successful on this issue.

Yep, though it started as a vigilante organization after the War Between theStates, that original organization practically disappeared. It was brought to new life as a pyramid scheme gaining national politcial status for a while. Woodrow Wilson failed to assist the black sharecroppers in Mississippi in no small part due to Klan influence.

This is the third old case to be looked at again - interesting this one is getting he media attention. I am 100% for justice but .....the process has also dug up some old wounds. Unfortunately, some renewed racial tension has surfaced with this - and that's bad.

__________________
BENZ THERE DONE THAThttp://www.peachparts.com/shopforum/...c/progress.gif
15 VW Passat TDI
00 E420
98 E300 DT
97 E420 Donor Car - NEED PARTS? PM ME!
97 S500
97 E300D
86 Holden Jackaroo Turbo D
86 300SDL
(o\|/o)