In the summer of '70 a young but old school pre-civil rights era black doctor wanted to buy a home in our middle class neighborhood in Dallas. He went door to door asking and the neighbors said it was ok with them if he moved his family in. Strange, but it happened. All was good that school year and his kid became one of my good friends. The following school year, Dallas ISD decided that black students shouldn't go to their neighborhood schools because there were too many under-educated blacks and white students shouldn't be allowed to attend their neighborhood schools because there were too many better educated whites. That was my first introduction to crazy liberal thinking. I lived three houses from my high school and wasn't going to be allowed to go there until my senior year. Fall of '71 brought city-wide bussing of students across town from their neighborhood schools all in the name of desegregation and diversity. Funny, it can't be segregation when people choose to attend their own neighborhood schools but you can't argue with liberals.
Anyway, less than two years after the black doctor moved in, he joined the rest of us in what was called the "white flight" out because the ghetto trash moved in. We tried to get along with the blacks who were bussed in, really, we did. Maybe we were sheltered and didn't know any better than to get along but they were angry and who could blame them. It was so bad that year that they would literally lock us in our classrooms and pull down those big metal hallway gates. When the bell rang, they'd raise the gates and we'd have 5 minutes to get to class and down they'd come again and the new black asst. principal would make his rounds pulling on classroom doors to see that they were locked.
A couple years ago we were in Dallas so I thought I'd show my kids where I grew up. They were shocked and kept asking if I really lived there. Yes, my old house was there and all my friends' houses were still there and the back gate at the elementary I used to go home through was the same exact one but the area had turned to trash. How sad that where I once never thought a thing about walking over to friends' houses that now I was worried the car door was locked. Hey, libs, where are those "better" schools now, huh?
Sad, isn’t it? The street where I grew up as a young kid is now filled with abandoned or rundown row houses and infested with drug dealers and hookers. People look shocked when I tell them where I lived when I was born and as a young kid.