[goat granny]

Thanks for the info. I was not aware that mulatto was offensive to Negros at that time. One of the guys that ran with my friends and myself was mulatto, very light skinned but not passing for white. He was a sweetheart of a guy but his brother was darker skinned. Back in the 50’s it seemed like there was not the thug community like there is today...Your mentioning creole, that would be more like Joe was. In his talking, accent etc. It seemed to me the races mixed more back then than they do today...My elementary school was in the neighborhood, therefore all white, but by the time I got to high school, (had to take public bus service with student ID for price )the school was integrated. Years back I took out my senior year book and the ratio was about 20% black, some Spanish and the rest white. There were some cliques that were all white, but several that were not all white....for many in high school the mixing of the races was no big deal. The eye opener for me was when I saw on TV southern whites turning dogs loose on marchers. Being northern, I had no idea that things were like that in the south...

It shocked me to see that happen, along with the fire hose's used.....It also made me sick to see how Jesse Jackson became the spokesman for civil rights after MLK was assassinated. He seemed to me to be just an opportunist and was not like King at all. But again, I am seeing it from only a personal point of view.. GG

[Windflier]

Back in the 50’s it seemed like there was not the thug community like there is today.

That's my perception too. The thug element in the black community of my youth was very small - probably not much bigger than the percentage of thugs in the majority population. Every community has a few rotten apples.

When I was a kid, there were two forces kept that percentage to a minimum. Those were; the better moral fiber of the people in those days, and police departments that simply didn't let it get out of control.

As the gov't welfare programs of the 60s began to take hold in black communities, the first of those two forces (moral fiber) began to fray at the edges, and in time, nosedived on a crash course to complete disintegration. Now, more than 7 in 10 black children are born to unwed mothers - many of them teenagers.

Nearly all of those children have been born into such a bankruptcy of personal integrity and common sense morality, that they're easily led into the most degraded and destructive life choices imaginable. The sub-culture they know, is hardly recognizable to their grandparents and great-grandparents.