Growing up White in Texas

 

I am white, and grew up outside of Houston in the 1950s and 1960s. Jim Crow was still strong, but my parents taught me that racism and segregation were wrong, so I learned at an early age that the accepted way of doing things is not always the right way to do it.

I went to segregated schools until my senior year in high school, in 1966. Every morning, while I waited for the school bus (we lived in the country), I watched our neighbor Mr. Mitchell drive by in one of our school buses. It took me several years to figure out that the reason Mr. Mitchell didn't pick us up (he kept the bus at home) was because he was driving into Alvin to pick up all the black children to take them to the "colored" schools down the road in Dickinson. The Alvin schools only integrated in 1966 because Dickinson closed its separate and unequal high school.

I remember the little things, like the first time I realized that the gas station where we did business had three restrooms: women, men and "colored." I recall being particularly appalled (I was about 11) that the "colored" restrooms weren't separated by gender. It seemed very rude to make women and men use the same restroom.

Because our school had no black students, a lot of racist attitudes were directed at Mexican-Americans. Some of the teenagers would always say, when two Mexican-American girls got on the bus toward the end of the route, when seats were few, "Don't let those Mexicans sit down." I did, though, when I could.

Nancy Jane Moore
Washington, DC

Whites Remember Jim Crow