Some might say, you know how some people are prejudiced. Everybody they
say has a little bit in them, but I've been around different colors all
my life so I think it starts at home with the parents raising you the
right way and teaching you the right way. Some might say, well, you know
in order for us to have gotten more into being educated they had to
integrate because we did go without a lot of things that the white
school had and we didn't. Take, for instance, I was telling you about
the school books. I think I can count the times I got a new book, but
other than that they were books that so many people had had. And they
would be stamped Garinger High School and ( ), or whatever that was on
there. But that didn't stop us. We wanted to be educated. The parents
were stronger then. I don't know what it is now. It seems like to me not
with just the black race but all races, it seems the parents are afraid
of their children. Our parents coming up then, we didn't have to do
nothing. They gave us the eye, and we knew. Get yourself together. I
can't say really what it is, but I do know in order for us to get the
education everybody was getting. Some people would look at us and say
when we were just the blacks by
Page 7ourselves, at least
we knew who the enemy was, saying white people. But now, everybody is
together and don't nobody know who's the enemy or what, so everybody is
just fighting everybody. You just can't say anything to these kids
today, and I don't. I don't know, I just don't understand it. It is
strange, because, like I say, my mamma, honey, could look at us, give us
that eye, and we got ourselves together. It's sad. That's the way now.
And the only one that I know that can fix it is the Lord, because people
got all these different kinds of attitudes about it and instead of
trying to work it together, we don't have that togetherness. Everybody
is just pulling apart, and it'll never work that way. The Lord to me is
the only one that's going to have to fix it.