I was about 16 before I realized that racism was fundamentally wrong.(But that's another story.)
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> Howard

Having made that statement, I know it is only a matter of time until I get rule sixed, so here is the story. (It's possible that I told this on here a long time ago, so you can skip it if you read it here before.)

At 16, I was working in the luncheonette of the Greyhound bus station in Ft. Pierce, Florida. In those days, the black people had to go around back and come into the "colored" waiting room. It was small and had backless wooden benches instead of chairs like the one's out front. Food was sold through a small window between the kitchen and the waiting room. Sandwiches were wrapped in waxed paper instead of being served on a plate, as they were out front. There were no tables and no counter, therefore no service.

I was a waiter when there were busses in the station, and a dishwasher when they left. One day, a group of Seminole Indians came in the front door, dressed in their native clothes. They sat down at a table and were waited on and served.

Then I began to wonder. They were as dark-skinned as the "colored" people, yet they didn't have to go around back to that dismal little waiting room. I wondered why. Then it occurred to me, in a flash, that nobody should have to go around back past a row of garbage cans into a dismal little uncomfortable room where they were fed like animals through a hole in the wall.

That moment changed my life. A few years later, when we lived in Nashville, there was a sit-in at the lunch counter in the five and ten next to my father's store. Blacks filled the seats, and because they weren't served, they just sat there, effectively bringing the lunch business to a halt. I remember thinking how great that was; that they were going to be treated as the citizens that they were. It never occurred to me that the struggle had just begun and would take many years, but it's been a long time since I've seen anyone refused service based on color.

And what about the miserable little waiting room back in Ft. Pierce? It's been torn down.
Howard