My parents can vaugely remember this era. My grandparents most certainly. So it’s always a certain struggle for individuals my age to try to understand what segregation mush have been like, what an injustice it was, and how heroic those who fought for its end must have been.
But as this morning’s Free Lance-Star reminds us, there are some who do not forget:
You go to the bus terminal in Fredericksburg; they had a little room for you to sit to wait for the bus. If they served coffee, they had a black cup and a white cup. The black cup was given to the black people and the white cup was for the white people.
You couldn’t go in High’s and sit down and eat ice cream. You couldn’t go to these restaurants and eat. If you go in and sit down, they say, ‘We can’t serve you.’
And one lady, her mother was almost mulatto, you know, she was in the High’s eating ice cream, and she went and sat down by her mother. They come and [say], ‘We can’t serve you, we can’t serve you.’ She said, ‘What you can’t serve me you served my mother?’
I went to a restaurant and opened the door, and they just come to the door, ‘You can’t come in here, you can’t come in here, we can’t serve you.’ So I went on back out.
Going to the soda fountain, if you bought a drink you had to stand up and drink it. You couldn’t sit down and drink it. You couldn’t eat in there. If you bought a hot dog, you had to go outdoors and eat it.
And then the young men would sit at the counter, sometimes they would sit there all day trying to get something to eat, and they never did serve them. So that’s the way it was.
Sometimes you have to wonder how you would fight against injustice. Would you have been socially conditioned to accept what was? Would you have fought? If working in such an establishment, would you have served black customers at the expense of your job? Social scorn and contempt?
The self-righteous might thump their chest and say they would do the right thing, but it’s amazing what certain people will do for the comfort of approval.
Stories such as these remind us that doing what is right — and doing what is popular — are rarely, if ever, the same thing. Not to mention the service these stories provide to struggle and persevere in the face of the injustices we face today.