August.1935

Birgiham Alabama:

I am finding more and more what a different world the south is from the North.  I am more and more grateful that I was sent away to school in California where the Color of my skin is not such an issue.  Where I didn't have to use a seperate bathroom or sit in the back of a bus, just because my skin is black.

The racism is everywhere I know that.  But in Birgiham it is full and hateful, the KKK and their white sheets, and clan and their cross burnings and their screaming for us to go back to Africa or they will kill us, when it was their ancestors who drug our great grandparents here all those years ago stripped us from our homeland to treat us worse than pigs in a trough.

The clansmen they blame us for everything, for the depression that has ravished our country especially the south.  I think you see it worse here, in the way things are going.  In California you see it to, but in some ways it is easier to escape.

And they look at us like we are the criminals because Mamma had money to send me away to school money she worked hard to earn.  Mamma and Daddy they have always been hard workers, and Mamma came from the north where there were more opportunities, even for us.

It's 1935 and still people treat us like they did two hundred years ago, maybe even worse in some ways.  They blame us for so much, just because our skin happens to be dark.  Just because we happen to have a level of education.

Mamma made sure of that, she said I'm not having a child who can't string sentences together, because she doesn't know any better.  My child is going to have an education and I did, but for all the education I feel trapped.

I do not want to stay here, but at the same time I feel the need to, to try and use my education to help others.

I am teaching both children and adults to read, but the books in the colord library are pathetic, pages ripped out, tables broken, we don't deserve better they think, but I am going to make sure we get better.

We need to get better.  We need to be allowed to live in this world as equals, and be given the same opportunities as everyone else.

God made us all, the color of our skin should not be an issue.

But it is.

And words like niger ring out of peoples mouth here, they spit it out like they are chewing on something dirty.

I hate that word, and I hate the hatred.

Something has to be done, something has to change.

To Be Continued