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Most of the younger people today, don't know that two of the three civil rights workers killed in Mississippi were white

I recall the occasion. Philadelphia, MS occupies a special place in the Civil Rights story. Oh...and don't forget Violetta Liuzzo, who was killed on the highway north of Selma, AL.

Then, there is Lowndesboro, AL -- the march from Selma to Montgomery passed through there and Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist church bombing case was tried in the Lowndes County courthouse.

I lived in Lowndesboro from 1985 to 1993...and I've never met a finer group of people -- black and white. I knew a gentleman who served on the church bombing jury. He was adamant -- "they didn't prove their case." I believe him.

It's been often said that the North "loves the black race, but hates the individual" while the opposite was true in the South.

In my experience, both sides of that aphorism are largely true. Individual blacks are judged on their merits in the rural South, accepted or dismissed based on their character. Meanwhile, discrimination can run rampant in the North.

During those days in the south, these was little or no money to be had.
People had to work together to get their crops in.
Everybody pitched in to get the job done, and neighbor helped neighbor, both black and white.
When someone's cows got out, everyone helped to get them back into the fenced pasture,
and everyone worked during garden season and hay season.

Birmingham, AL, do you recall the three-day war in downtown?
I had relatives in Bessemer, and was there, and saw the windows broken and the burned out cars and shops.
I was very young , about 7 or 8, but my relatives were very worried and shocked, and I remember.
In Meridian, MS, I was in a Woolsworth at the store diner, and I remember waiting with my mother to get breakfast, when all of a sudden a large crowd of well dress blacks came in and sat down.
The diner manager came over and apologized to my mother and said the diner was now closed and asked us to leave.
So my mother took me out of the store and we went home.
I remember another time in a shopping store when my mother was stopped from going out the door by a large black man, and just outside the door a policeman was bringing down a club upon another man's head.
Had that black man not stopped my mother, my mother's head would have been the one that received that konking blow from the cop's billy-club.
I remember!