ABSTRACT
I was born in South Carolina during the 1950s; and it was a time when Jim Crow ruled our social, economic, political, and educational lives. I am a living symbol of what Irons (2002) calls a “Jim Crow child.” We attended the segregated Foster Chapel Elementary School during the late 1950s and early 1960s. My oldest sister, Vera, and I attended segregated Sims High School. She graduated from Sims; however, I did not. Brown v Board of Education, Topeka (1954) finally “hit” South Carolina in 1968 (Smith & Tutwiler, 2005); therefore, I had to complete my last two years of high school at the historically white Jonesville High School. My last two years of high school were a “mixed bag” of regular teenage angst and everyday racist and sexist rule. What I mean by this is that the few blacks in attendance at Jonesville were not prepared to be thrown into a fiery mix of white kids; and vice versa. The word “nigger” was commonly heard in the hallways, gym, football field, and classroom.
