Somewhere around 1919, in Mississippi, a white girl was kidnapped, raped, and left to die. The man who did it, a Black man, knew even as he was committing the crime that he would be caught and killed. And while no one will ever understand why he did what he did, what followed is equally important to remember.

There was no trial. No justice. What came instead was a lynching. A post was driven into the ground. The man was strapped to it. Wood and kindling were stacked around him, and he was burned alive.

My oldest uncle — my mother’s brother — arrived on the scene, presumably too late to intervene. Not that he would have. He stood and watched the man burn until, in his words, “the last drop of grease sizzled into the flames.” Then he went home and told my mother about it.

Horrified, she asked, “How could you stand to watch something like that?”His response: “What’s the problem? He was nothin’ but an old n****.”*

Sadly, you will still find that attitude in existence today. It’s just been covered up with a veneer of civilization. I’d like to think that the kind of hatred evidenced by this episode will eventually disappear, but considering human nature, I’m not holding out a lot of hope.

A Different Story

Another story about my mother tells you she was ahead of her time in ways most wouldn’t have expected.

When she moved to Memphis at 17 years old, rigid segregation was the law of the land. One day, she boarded a bus and found the only available seat was in the back — among the Black passengers. Not knowing any better, she walked on back and sat down.

The bus driver stopped the bus, walked back, and pulled her up to the front. Confused, she asked why. He told her because whites sat in the front. Again, she asked why. And as far as I know, she never got an answer.

If there’s one great truth to be pulled from all these stories, it’s that we are shaped by our surroundings — for good or for ill. It takes a strong person to rise above them. And my mother was one of those people.

Did she have her flaws? Absolutely. But nowhere near what they would’ve been if she’d followed in her own mother’s path.

A Footnote On The Old South

Officially sanctioned segregation lasted in Texas all the way into the 1960s. When I first came back to Fort Worth in 1961, segregated restrooms, drinking fountains, and lunch counters were still in place. I never could figure out what made the water from the Black fountain different from the white one.

And when I started voting at the age of 21, I had to pay a 50-cent poll tax. Nobody said it outright, but its purpose was clear — to keep poor Black citizens from voting.

If there was anything good about the end of segregation in Fort Worth — which had its own ugly history of division — it’s that it died quietly, with a whimper, not a bang.