I was not brought up to be racist; however, we did not have different races living in my small (10,000 population) Missouri home town except for one old black man, a sweet old guy. Why he stayed I have no idea. He was alone among a sea of white. I now wish I had been old enough to talk to him, to find out about his life but he died before I became a teenager and I never thought about the fact that he was black or thought it odd that he was the only one. He was simply there, part of my home town.

My father told the story that many years before, maybe the 1920's, there had been a section of town where blacks lived. One night a black man killed a white person. The next day, when the local law (Sheriff, I think), went to the black area of town to arrest the black man, they found him hung from a tree (dead, of course) and every black resident gone. They had abandoned their homes and their lives and gone.

I have no idea if that story was true or not. My father said it was but I can't verify it. I find it a very sad story with a lot between the lines. A writer could make quite a novel out of that if they chose to do so.

Having been raised to give each person respect, I was surprised one day when I heard my Mother say something about "those slant-eyed Japs!" with such hate and loathing, it shocked me to the core. Discussing it with my sister, I realized that her prejudice had been formed on December 7, 1941 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. My mother ever forgave them.