This article is an example of reporting that I can’t stand. For one thing, discrimination, Southern style, is extrapolated to the whole country. My Dad was born in Pa. in 1931. He played sand lot baseball and ran around with kids of all colors back then. His high school was fully integrated before he graduated and yet all I hear are stories about segregation, separate lunch counters, etc. I’m sick of the Left getting away with extrapolating southern states practices upon the whole country.
My high school was newly constructed in 1955 and was fully integrated. I suspect the city didn’t want the cost of two high schools in their budget. More likely though, this was at the time of the Arkansas integrations and they saw the future. This was in a border state.
By the same token, Southerners like me have gotten tired of being slandered as the sole historical racists in this country. Race relations were just peachy keen, all was harmony and good will, and full civil rights existed everywhere in this country except the evil South. Not true.
It’s not that simple.
I was born in 1959 and I remember whites burning school buses in Po tiac, Michigan and S. Boston in ‘71,’72 in response to forced busing.
The junior/senior high I went to in LA, Eagle Rock, was nearly all white, with a sprinkling of Asians and Mexicans in ‘73.
Meanwhile, Mainland Jr. High in Daytona Beach was fully no integrated in ‘72 when I went there.
Blacks and whites got along better in the South the 50 years to the present in my experience than in the North.
So no, race issues were not confined to the South.
I live in California. As far back as I can remember there was absolutely no segregation. Then when I was 18 I moved to Atlanta. Lived not too far off of Peachtree and there was a park with a swimming pool we frequented. The lifeguard was black. A really nice guy and we got friendly with him. Then one day we stayed too late and realized we’d be walking home in the dark so we asked him to see us home. He said he couldn’t, that it really wasn’t allowed, and it was better for us if he didn’t. We didn’t understand at all until he explained to us that in the South it just....still wasn’t done.