The incident you related was fairly common back in 1969.Things were WAY more racially tense than they are today and those of us who were there can attest to many similiar incidents.If you were white you always watched your back in the ghetto.The Man was a target.
It went both ways back then,however.I will never forget coming back to my classroom in New Orleans after a school remodeling job by a white construction crew and seeing slogans like KKK,White Power and F N-—— scrawled all over the blackboard.And every black adult I know now has THEIR share of horror stories about being abused by white racists back in those times.
These days are mellow compared to 1969.
It was in that very same year I drove through Birmingham, Alabama, and say a billboard in town that said Kan the Kennedy Klan, with an accompanying Klan image. When crossing the state border into one of the Carolinas, we saw a billboard showing a mounted Klan rider on a rearing horse. It said, “You’re in Klan country!” Times have changed, indeed.