Allen:
I remembered you this morning when I listened to the Public Radio news. A man talked of Atlanta as the heart of the deep South, hotbed for segregation and discrimination in the past. Did you see some of it while growing up?
Obi,
Let me see what I can say about the question....
A little background here--Atlanta, along with Memphis, Birmingham, Montgomery, and Selma Alabama, and Greensboro, NC--were where major demonstrations took place during the Civil RIghts movement. ML King was involved in most of these, and Atlanta was his home town, and therefore, the center of the movement. Because of that, the power structure of the time--in an effort to try to keep control of their power, was against anything that King and the other Civil Rights leaders did.
As for me, I was in Kindergarten at the time of the King assassination, and therefore, was quite young during the after effects of the movement.
Things changed slowly--for example, I did not see any black students in my school until I was in the 4th grade, which was around 1972. [Just to give an idea of how things have changed, I am not sure that there are any white students in that school now]. From what I can remember, I was largely "sheltered" from see the effects of discrimination (and if things did happen, I didn't notice). Just to give you an idea of my early experiences with different ethnic groups--both at school and in the neighborhood--an uncle married a lady from Vietnam back in 1971.
Not sure how some in the family accepted her, but most of them that met here got along with here. Though now the uncle is long gone, some of us still keep up with my "auntie"--I see her about every other month. At school, had the first Asian student in my class in 5th grade, and also the first Latino student about the same time. Did not have a black student in a classroom with me until 8th grade. Had central Asian, Middle Eastern, and Caribbean ones around 11 grade. As for my neighborhood (as I still live in the same place I did during my school days)--first black residents around 1973. Did not see much "white flight" in our area then (it was growing "out of fashion" by then, but had seen it in areas closer to downtown years before)--but when the SE Asians moved into our area in the mid 1980s--then a lot of people moved.
Now, my neighborhood is nearly half Asian, almost half as many black (a few of them Caribbean or African), and a few scattered Latino and Anglo (I'm the last one on my block...). As many in the Atlanta area keep moving farther and farther away (not unusual for people who work in Downtown to live some 50 miles away...)--I myself--if I leave where I am--I wouldn't want to go far--I will stay wherever the neighbors will have me!
Allen
