General Discussion

the pre Civil Rights changes, the Civil Rights movement, and the reactions to it.

Being White, I heard the opinions that Whites expressed. I had immigrant grandparents on one side of my family and the neighborhood where I spent my grade school years had a lot of older immigrants and younger first generation Americans. Coming from an upwardly mobile family that started out working class and moved into solid middle class, I got to see who moved up and who didn't.

My father worked in a plant that employed Blacks as general laborers. Several had moved north after WWII for better incomes and conditions. General labor in a manufacturing environment was a step up from share cropping poverty and lack of education. My father told me that a few Black employees could not sign their names or fill out work applications. He said that they were as intelligent as anyone else but had not had an education due to segregation and the need to work, even as children, to survive.

The union where my father worked had Black members. They could make more there than the minimum wage or less that they would have made as sharecrppers or in other work places. When employees founded their own credit union, one of the officers was Black. My father was a union steward before he moved into management. There was a Black union steward on another shift.

My father knew about prejudices first hand. Both of his parents were mixed, European and Native American. They had 9 children, most of whom looked very Native, although it was less obvious in my father's appearance. They lived on a farm during the Depression, so he understood rural poverty, too.

He helped some employees learn phonics so they could practice reading and writing their names. He encouraged people to register to vote. He vouched for people trying to get loans to buy a house.

I just observed the things going on around me.