Just some thoughts

My mother-in-law shared a beautiful story on her blog yesterday, and for me, it provoked it a lot of thought. Hers is a tale of two little girls - one black, one white - who find each other as playmates around the wall that separates their two sides of a waiting room in a doctor's office in the segregated south. As I read it, I was reminded of a conversation I had with my father recently.

This summer, I enjoyed an extended vacation in Georgia with my family after a cross-country road trip. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, my daddy and I like to hop in a vehicle and head out to "see what we can see". One afternoon we were coming back into town after a drive deep into some rural farm areas where my daddy's family came from. He had shown me where his daddy proposed to his mama - on a wooden bridge over a creek - and the land where his grandaddy's farmhouse stood. Now, we were headed to a farmer's market in an area of town I wasn't completely familiar with to pick up some peanuts for boiling and some acre peas. Yes, most of my trips to the south revolve around food. As we passed over some railroad tracks, he pointed out an old school building to me. He said it was the "colored" high school before integration.

My father was 16 when schools were integrated in his hometown. I'm not sure that it happened as soon as the laws were passed, since much of the south fought the integration laws for a while. When his school district finally got around to it, they decided to split the district up, between the "white" highschool and the "colored" highschool. Depending on where you lived, you would be bussed to one or the other. As expected, many of the white students and their families did not want them to be bussed into a colored neighborhood to attend the colored school. My father was one of the students who would attend that school . . . and he chose to drop out instead. With the full support of his parents.

What???? My daddy told me all of this in just a few sentences as we passed by the school, but I had a really difficult time processing it! You see, my parents did not raise me to be a prejudiced person. I learned early that racism and intolerance are ugly things. Considering the times, this revelation shouldn't have come as such a shock to me, but it did. It reminded me how much we are influenced by people and our environment.

My mother-in-law's parents taught her tolerance. She passed that along to her children. My parents did the same for me. Most importantly, they taught us to use our brains and our common sense rather than be swayed by every breeze. As we reflect on a great man who was assassinated for encouraging us to challenge racism and embrace each other, I am grateful that I can share these lessons with my own child.