I am A WOMAN BLACK AFRICAN AND ALSO AMERICAN WITH MY FAMILY ROOTS DEEPLY

[slightlv]

10. I live in Kansas

In our little town, we had a street named "Division St." so there could be no mistakes. There was an a K-3 elementary school right on that street. There was a 4-6 Elementary school 3 blocks west. I lived one block to the south of Division street. My whole childhood I went to these schools, and then to the Junior/Senior high school (one single school) with everyone I went to elementary school with. These were my playmates while I was growing up. We met after school on the playgrounds; we rode bikes together as we grew up. Yes, people looked askance at us as we got older and I had to be "schooled" in what the soft racism of the day meant. This was the late 50's and early 60's. But this was my childhood and I wouldn't have traded it for anything anyone else had. I mean, sure... there were a lot of richer folk the further south of town; the further west of town you went. But damn... we had FUN. We had to make it ourselves, none of us had any money. But what we did didn't take money. We had our imaginations!

Met a few of these old school mates of mine at one of the past reunions a few years past. Some of them, like me, had gone into the military. A few, unlike me, had made a career of it. All of them were good democrats and all of them hoped for the same things I did... a nice, quiet place to settle into with family and retire in a live and let live environment. We started that as kids way back when; we carried that through our entire lives; we voted that with every vote we cast; and we're still fighting for it today.