In the South- discrimination, bigotry and injustice were obvious and were faced in many forms.  The Colonial Laws and the system had diriment standards for my People.  I was living in Americus, Ga. 9 miles from former President Jimmy Carter's house (Town Of Plains, Ga.)
 
(1.) The Emancipation Proclamation had no effect profoundly on our suffering (of 1863), but supposedly liberated us from bondage.  That was 100 years before I was locked in the Georgia Stockade, and yet the Constitution read one thing-but society showed another.
 
(2.)  We were struggling in a two fold circle, a twice burdened people.
    (A.)  Was the color of our skin.
    (B.)  We were at the lowest stratum in society.
 
Socially, politically and economically speaking, making us feel like a second class citizen.  The Jim Crow Laws separated us rendering us useless and defenseless in terms of better jobs, Education and the right to Vote; lack of Education confined us unskilled.
 
The Colored People, as we were called back in the South during the 40's, 50's and 60's were condemned to move from a small, only to a large one. We were governed by the White System to be in a culture of poverty.
 
At an early age I had heard so much about my struggling Ancestors as well as my Parents struggle.  They were a passive people. I also heard about Mrs. Rosa Park's arrest, too. All about the Boycotts in the Montgomery, Alabama during that time.  She refused to give her seat to a white male passenger on a Montgomery bus (December 1955).  I was five years old. Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. was appointed the spokesperson for the MIA.
 
There was a custom for getting on the bus then for Blacks/Coloreds.  Was to pay at his front door, get off the bus and reenter through the back door to find a seat.  Blacks weren't allowed to sit in the same row with whites, nor near them. I had heard of violence against the Coloreds/Blacks such as lynchings, rapes, unsolved murders and severe beatings.
 
At a young age, say about or 8 years of age, I could read very well, and I saw the “worded" signs over Public water fountains and bathroom doors that read "colored or white". Black people could not enter the front doors of Stores, department stores, no public places, Parks,  We could not go the only Library in Town, nor eat in any restaurants with white people in public according to the Laws in Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, North and South Carolinas, Texas and  Florida.  But Georgia and Mississippi were worst states of all. Most Black people did not have decent jobs, some of them worked in the white man's home for menial pay. Also I remember the disrespect toward little, men and women especially in public largely from the White Supremacy Group better known as the KKK.

Lulu is the moderator of the Civil Rights forum.

Read more about Lulu at http://dansville.lib.ny.us/express/1999archive/ex021199.html#five