The others piss me off too, but the last one is just so damned sad!

That one really got to me. So cruel and unjust to put that on children.

The mother and her little girl are turned out in their Sunday best, probably because she needed something from a white folks' store. She couldn't go in to that store in an ordinary house dress like the white folks did because she knew she'd be abused in front of her daughter. Dressed to the nines, she knew they'd have a chance of being treated decently.

Yeah, I was there. I remember.

So it was okay to have black people wait on you, take care of your babies, make your bed, all for probably a pittance of a salary but they couldn't watch movies with whites and drink out of the same water fountain? If they were so afraid of catching cooties from black people why did they have them cleaning up after them and cooking their food?

Some vindictive racist shit.

Many country-western artists claim 'Murican Pride and their fans are equally as xenophobic and view immigration with great contempt.

However they have no problem with writing songs about drinking and smoking on Mexican beaches while the folks the claim to hate with seething animosity wait on them hand in foot with umbrella cocktails and cheap cigars...

Where did that come from?

cruelty of racist amerikkkan culture. I agree wholeheartedly.

Country-western artists who bitch about immigration, while using a musical style and adopting a culture and costume that are all founded in Mexican music and culture.

My favorite scene from the movie Fight Club is when they grab the rich fucker in the restroom and explain that we ckook their food, watch their kids etc....

Now the line is those in poverty or just about to be in poverty.

There will always be a labor class. It's unlikely we will ever be treated fairly.

Economic status is the new racism, not that the old skin color racism has been overcome by any means.

ETA Welcome to DU.

It was OK to hold your white baby.

Look at your examples there.

Wait on you. Take care of your babies. Make your bed. for a pittance. These are all subordinate posiitons, with the white having hte dominant hand, and the black working at the white person's whim for pay decided by the white person.

For these two people to then use the same water fountain or entrance would imply some sort of equality between the two, no matter how meager. That is unacceptable in this power dynamic, where the powerful must be separated from and above the powerless.

This is why there's no equality in the term "separate but equal." because hte separation is itself a demonstration of inequality in an effort to preserve other, more pressing inequalities.

Power.

It begins with improper land zoning changes.

Do you think that white folks back then (which includes me) were aware of white privilege in the midst of all those segregation symbols?

overtly racist than the deep south but I was aware of the racism as a child and don't know how anyone could miss it.

with lots of "sundown towns" like Seligman and Washburn. And if you were black, you wouldn't have dared set foot in the Little Sugar Inn.

I could add to your list. If you were black you could live in a rascist town in the deep South, not so in many rural "lily white" Missouri towns. They have not changed much other than taking down the signs.

Jefferson City the Capitol was as segregated as anywhere in the deep South. With an African American University Lincoln University in town I remember segregated swimming pools, schools, lunch counters as late as the early 1960's. Even though my parents favored segregation I did not. At the age of 8 I argued with my parents on that matter; it was wrong even though no one told me it was wrong. By the late 1960's segregation was disappearing I graduated from Lincoln University. Today those same old prejudices bubble beneath the surface. The Missouri legislature is teeming with rural Tea Party Republican bigots some of the most regressive hateful politicians in the country

My Grandfather witnessed the race riots in East St. Louis where bodies of gunned down African Americans were stacked up like cord wood. St. Louis in the 1960's was still not friendly and racism thrives below the surface. Racism may be less overt in Missouri but it was as deadly as anywhere in the United States.

it's illegal to DWB or even DWBr. I saw it myself just a few years ago, a little place called Richland, stay away.

I'm 62, my HS had its first black cheerleader in 1968 over much criticism. Our HS was fairly progressive at the time, esp. with 40% African-American population. Now that the place has grown, with rejects from the higher taxed metro area, the entire place is just as bad as anywhere else.

and if you were raised in the Jim Crow era and lived in a "white" area, you did not see anything that you thought needed changing. If it's your normal daily routine, you would not necessarily have seen it as "white privilege"...

I am not trying to cause a fight with you buy I can't believe you are speaking from experience.
You just could not live then and not be aware of segregation'
We had fights over civil rights legislation. We had the formation of the Dixiecrats, bussing, killing of civil rights workers in Mississippi, hanging of a black child for looking at a white girl.
The evidence of white privilege was served with your coffee and eggs and the morning paper.
Fights over integration of colleges I could go on and on

Grown ups knew...

I remember the discussions we had in grade school. We went one by one down the isles telling of experiences we had interacting with Black people.

took part in civil rights marches. We went to homes of Black kids our age in the South to learn what their life was like. We went to
Black concerts and Black churches to learn!

up publicity. Before that most people didn't know what duck dynasty was now we all do
There is a scene in the movie "Mississippi Burning" where the wife of the deputy says,
You're tought it as a baby you're taught it in school and that it is in the bible, you live with it and marry it ........

It's what he sells. Shit. Bullshit. Lies. Misinformation. Fake perceptions.

For one thing, he's not THAT fucking old. My grandparents picked cotton and lived that life, but the youngest of my grandparents was born in 1921. My graddad grew up as a sharecropper in the Mississippi Delta, and he worked along beside a lot of black people, but he never would have lied like that and said that he never saw a black person be mistreated and that everybody was fucking happy! That Duck Dynasty guy is a fucking fraud and if I could stomp his ass for lying like that. What a piece of shit.

Some may not have gave a shit just like today, but you couldn't miss it.

drive me over the cliff!

while they were surrounded by it.

i'm sure many loved having white privilege.

but when it was explained to them that segregation giving them advantages meant that their accomplishments were not as big of an achievement as they'd thought --then i'm sure that pissed them off.

too bad if it pissed them off. it was true.

we are more f...ing aware of it than you are. Get it!

Oh - you mean "you."

There may be many others reading this forum who could use some teaching about white privilege.

I think you might be mistaking me for another poster.

Here's a good tip for posting on the Internet:

Just because you may be aware of something (e.g. the concept of white privilege), you should not assume that everyone shares your awareness and proceed to sneer at people for pointing it out.

don't act like an expert when you don't khat your talking about

You may not want to come off as so confrontational.

gloves and pearls. We went downtown with her white lady friends and she put me on a stool in the drugstore. The friends were smug and seemed angry, but the black ladies sitting outside on the concrete when we walked in looked at me kindly and a little sad. Learned later it was to block a sit-in and granny and all the white friends got in big trouble. Yes, I KNEW it was wrong.

The North was segregated to some extent by neighborhoods and sometimes by provisions written into deeds that compelled segregation. Small towns in the North in which I lived did not have many if any non-white citizens. There were a few people of American Indian origin in one small town in which I lived.

The South was utterly segregated and the white people were either silently acquiescent or belligerently defensive of their "way of life." I think that lots of white people in the South were personally and secretly disgusted with segregation and the white privilege but did not dare express their feelings out loud.

Those who defended segregation were big bullies about it, really mean about it. If a white person stepped out of line and so much as held out a hand to a person of color in violation of the silent code of segregation, that white person could expect retaliation in some form. I base that on my father's experience. (A Yankee and son of a long line of abolitionists with a Grandfather and Great-grandfather who fought for the Union in the Civil War.)

I remember that my father once expressed amazement that the southern white men he knew had such contempt and hatred for people of color when, as he said, "They were all raised by 'Mammies'." (Meaning African-American servants in their homes.)


That's the great puzzle. The role of African-American women in raising white children at the time I lived there was incredible. Women of color didn't just clean houses but they did that for almost all of our middle-class to lower middle-class neighbors. How was it possible that the Southerners felt such contempt and separation from the African-American people who treated them so well?

I will never understand it.

I remember visiting the home of one of my father's African-American employees (in a charitable organization) with my father on a cold day. He just silently wanted me to see the reality. The house was tiny and unpainted. Children seemed to be everywhere. And in one corner of the living room, there was a hole large enough for a child to go through. That, on a cold day. My father was visiting to bring something to the house. I don't remember what.

It was criminal in my view. I never understood it. Now you understand why I recognize bullies so easily and why I feel so deeply about social and economic equality. There is no excuse for treating people with such cold disregard. I don't understand how people can be so oblivious to the suffering of others and so cruel. But I saw it. I witnessed it. And I will never forget it.

The pressure in the South to conform in thought and word to this horrible code of dishonor is one of the reasons that I so distrust the NSA spying. There was no physical spying in the South, but the social pressure against expressing certain ideas in white society was very strong. The NSA spying would enable the repression of social change if used just slightly in the wrong way. People must be free to express their morality and their ideas even if we disagree with it.

...an African American person was incredibly dangerous for the African American! Could cost them their life, or their house, burned to the ground.

To have voting rights issues today is beyond criminal. Still.

other people really could.

I forgot to mention that as a child I also lived in a northern city and went to integrated schools. No problem. That is probably why I reacted as I did to the idea and reality of segregation. It seemed pointlessly cruel to me.

..street behavior. Some white holding the door for an African American person, or not expecting the African American to step off the sidewalk as the wite walked by, for instance.

Charity keeps them "in their place". But politeness makes everyone be on an equal human basis. And that was very dangerous for the old guard. So both parties to the politeness had to be punished, but one worse than the other.

bus with African-Americans because I was excused as a child.

My mother used to complain because sometimes there would be an empty seat next to an African-American in the back of the bus and although she was tired, she dared not sit in it. She had no problem with sitting in it, but she knew it would cause a problem for other white people on the bus. That's how stupid the system was. White people would hurt themselves with it. Just stupid. Sorry, but it was.

And, by the way, if an African-American had a single seat or was sitting in the middle of the bus on the edge of the seats occupied by white people and there were no more free seats for white people, the African-Americans would usually stand up and empty the seat. That's how crazy the system was.

by neighborhood, and in more wealthy neighborhoods there were neighborhood covenants, but there was a more relaxed attitude about race than in the East, I think.

E.g.:

When school started again at Garfield that next September, Jimi went to classes for the first month, but it was soon obvious he was never going to graduate...Years later, when Jimi became famous and began mythologizing his own past to gullible reporters, he told a fantastic tale of how he had been "kicked out" of Garfield by racist teachers after he'd been discovered holding hands with a white girlfriend in study hall. The story was completely fabricated: Interracial dating was not unheard of at the school, and even the idea of Jimi sitting in study hall was enough to earn a chuckle from his friends and classmates. The truth was that on Oct. 31, 1960, Halloween, 17-year-old Jimi Hendrix flunked out.

http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20050805&slug=pacificpjimi07

Hendrix's grade school picture shows a rather integrated class: white, black, & Asian students in a pretty even mix.

&w=250&h=172&ei=Ub7YUtDGNYGGogTAsYKgBQ&zoom=1&ved=0CN8BEIQcMCo&iact=rc&dur=810&page=3&start=36&ndsp=20

I'm about 10 years younger than Hendrix; my high school class was about 65% white, 30% Asian, and 5% black or etc.

There is no excuse for treating people with such cold disregard. I don't understand how people can be so oblivious to the suffering of others and so cruel.

I was so aware of the ugliness that I didn't go back until 20+ yrs later, when I went to graduate school as an adult, and then only because Athens LOOKED pretty cosmopolitan to an outsider in the 1990s. Anyone who has lived in Athens/Clarke County Georgia will likely know what I mean. But oh yes, I was aware of it. One couldn't not be, really.

no - was not aware of white priveledge. Had black friends, black co-workers. In 1965 I moved to Georgia - became aware. Different world in the South.

in fact, that's likely what the older ones missed, insofar as was no longer legal.

Because you are so right - it just shows up in different ways today.

Big kick and rec for these amazing photos!

Hard to imagine this period ever existed

His work is eclectic and amazing.

An amazing photographer.

... but I can't help but wonder how much ironing went into all the clothes people wore in those days. Even little children's dresses and shirts show that someone spent countless hours at an ironing board.

Some were, that's obvious, but Parks was also following specific chosen people through their daily lives. They knew their photos might end up in Life magazine.

The same woman is in at least two, but they were well framed and convey the message well

1) People used to dress nicer. And 2)

Of course the is more important, but the clothes really jumped out at me too. To my eye, the people look incredibly well dressed.

eom

Even my mom's side of the family, a rural "poor" family (although they were rich in many ways) did not appear in public unless they were well dressed. I think it's a generational thing that crosses racial and economic lines. I know that my mom's side of the family wore homemade clothes as well, but the women knew how to sew.

dressed up to go out in public.

and it remains a disgrace to our country.

So I have seen much more than I care to remember.

And had no idea about the south until I was stationed in Pensacola Florida in 65 while in the Navy...and no sooner than I arrived there I was sent to Meridian Mississippi to hunt for the three lost civil rights workers...as in Mississippi Burning.
Now that was an eye opener for me...A sudden immersion in the worst of the worst.

I wrote about it in a DU2 journal here,
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/zeemike/1

To say that Blacks were treated as second-class citizens there would really be glossing over the depth and the ugliness of American apartheid.

Driving into town, if you looked over the cliff down toward the river, you could see the roofs of a row of shacks along the railroad tracks. That was the entirety of the Black community except for the rare small farm in the surrounding hills. Sometimes I would see kids playing along the tracks. I have no idea where -- or even if -- they went to school.

Our elementary school had a Black janitor. I never once heard him say a word. About the only other place you'd see a "colored man" in town was digging a ditch. I have no idea how little they were paid, but it must have been cheaper than renting equipment because I don't recall ever seeing that. (By the way, "colored" seems to be considered more "polite" now than the more offensive term, but in that area at least, the two terms were used interchangeably, with equal disdain, and I really don't think anyone worried one bit about either being offensive.)

Between Sunday School and church service, the men would congregate on the lawn to smoke and BS -- almost every one smoked back then -- and I'll never forget one particular Sunday morning: They were talking about how outrageous it was that Blacks were coming into "town" -- the three-block stretch of First Street where most of the stores were -- on Saturday afternoon. Saturday afternoon, when most White folks went to town to shop! What was the world coming to? Apparently, they were expected to do their shopping during the week, when the White folks were working or doing the laundry. In that town, there weren't separate water fountains and rest rooms for "colored"; the bigger stores would have one fountain, one Mens room, and one Ladies room, and they didn't need to put up a sign to tell you that they were for Whites only; that went without saying.

The reason I'll never forget that morning is because our Sunday School lesson that morning had been about "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

I have to admit that the full impact of the hypocrisy didn't really hit me right then, since I had never really been exposed to the idea that Blacks were people, too. But it got me thinking.

That was 55 years ago, and even as I'm typing this, I'm crying.

But I remember reading about things in the south in Life magazine and honestly I thought that had been setteled...and had no idea what the truth was.
But my family moved to Portland Oregon for a while and my mother insisted I go to Catholic school, and the school was almost totally black...there were two white kids including me in my class...so again I had a false impression of race being settled.
It was only when I was sent to the south in the Navy in 65 that I woke up to the reality of it all.

Blacks were indeed rare there ... and still are, for the most part. The first blacks I saw were porters on the Great Northern Railway's Empire Builder, which we would ride to Spokane to visit our grandparents.

Later, when I moved from my tiny rural town to the nearest "city," I can remember only three blacks in my Catholic high school (total enrollment of around 550-600 students). All had parents who worked for Great Northern and one, a girl (both others were boys), was a friend - in large part because she was very active in speech, drama and music, as I was. As I recall, she was much more talented than I could ever dream of being and she was beautiful.

The university towns (Missoula and Bozeman in particular) had a larger but still minimal, proportion of blacks.

But it is true that most of us had no idea of the daily reality in the South especially, except for headlined tragic events. We were basically under the impression that the outcome of the War Between the States had resolved the issue and the tragic events were aberrations. Yes, we really were that innocent - and ignorant. Of course, we had our own version of racism wrt Native Americans, but never, ever to the extent of segregated facilities, etc.

In the early 60s, I joined the Peace Corps. A featured speaker at our training program - where we were all given a smattering of contemporary American realities - was Bayard Rustin, one of the organizers of the 1963 Civil Rights March. http://rustin.org/

His speech literally blew me away and raised my long-overdue consciousness. But my enlightenment was certainly a gentle one in comparison to yours. Being tasked to look for the "disappeared" civil rights workers - OMG!

asians, hispanics ? what would they use ?

Moving from there to Northern Virginia was quite a culture shock; I don't believe I had even met a Catholic until then. There may have been a few non-WASPs -- maybe wives of White males who had returned from the military -- but it wasn't the kind of area that attracted immigrants.

The experience is burned in my brain. Learned about white privilege as a 9 year old.

I met an old black man, old enough to be my grandfather, and he stepped off the curb into the street to let me pass.

Although I had lived every day with the ignorance born of white privilege, This occasion changed my frame of reference. It would be years before I had the courage to speak and act effectively against racism, but that day was my awakening to the reality of segregation.

It's criminal that this country has never done reparations.

I grew up in Miami and remember the separate bathrooms and water fountains, and blacks having to sit in the back of the bus. Also at that time, all the schools were segregated. Blacks were not allowed into white restaurants or movie theaters.

Rec'd

How can they be so horrible and cruel to others?

“The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities; whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated.”

Love the dresses and skirts from that time

wonderful stuff

I think there's a link to it on the embedded site, and it's likely searchable otherwise, too.

for the Life Magazine article mentioned in the link posted in the OP, during the summer of 1956.

MANY tea party people, rethuglican people, duck dynasty people, zimmerman loyalists, rushpig listeners, faux new watchers who would LOVE to see a return to this, their 'good ole days'.

much of this growing up. My dad was in the military, military schools were integrated and then I went to Kansas schools and they were integrated. In 65 we went to Mississippi and saw segregation and was astonished at how creepy it was. like people were afraid black skin would rub off. So Stupid.

and my parents, who both grew up in MO, had always taught us to believe in tolerance and equality even though they grew up in a segregated state in segregated times. I did have black friends even though the schools I went to were pretty lily white.

In 1961 I was a freshman in college and a boy I'd dated casually (also from WI), who was attending the University of Mississippi on scholarship, invited me to homecoming down there. The train ride down was a little strange, starting in Tennessee, when any black people were moved into a separate car. Then the Memphis train station, with its separate waiting rooms, was even weirder, but I didn't have long to observe that before I was collected by may date and his friends. The Ole Miss campus was quite strange to me and more than a little creepy, like a plantation transplanted from earlier times. I stayed in a dorm with some girls my date knew, "little sisters" of his fraternity brothers. They were pleasant and hospitable, but we had absolutely nothing in common. I mostly listened while they talked, and I was appalled by their casual racism, by their frequent use of the n-word and their referring to the black dorm maids and campus hired hands as "those coons". I was just too intimidated to say anything. It was the same with my date's fraternity brothers. I had thought that the trip down there would be interesting and perhaps a little….exotic, maybe? Instead, I could hardly wait to get away from the place. I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I finally got back on the train north. My date could see that I was uncomfortable, and I don't think he quite knew what to say when he put me on that train. Interestingly, he went back for a second year, but he left school (giving up his scholarship) after the James Meredith riots. I guess it finally took that to open his eyes. We never talked about it. I wish we had.

eight years old in 1948. I remember those fountains, the segregated street cars, and the signs indicating which facilities could be used by whom. As a child I was confused and thought that I was being forbidden from using those facilities to be used only by black children.