Separate Pasts: Growing Up White In The Segregated South

The final chapter in McLaurin’s memoir describes three interactions: with Dora Lou Smith, Jerome Walters, and a couple, Jerry and Miss Carrie. Dora Lou Smith is a poor but cheerful African American woman with a large family who cleans the bathrooms in the store. Dora Lou’s son Cooter finds money on the ground of the store. Dora Lou angrily tells her son not to give the money to Lonnie. McLaurin overhears this conversation and is initially angry. Dora Lou seems dishonorable and ungrateful. McLaurin realizes that some “blacks perceived Granddaddy, perhaps my entire family, as the Enemy” (142).

Jerome Walters, a good-natured older African American man, is one of the few other Yankees fans in Wade. McLaurin enjoys talking to Jerome about baseball. Before signing the outfielder-catcher Elston Howard in 1955, the Yankees were an all-white team. McLaurin asks Jerome what he thinks about the Yankees breaking their color line. Jerome replies that it was a good choice and he wishes they had done it sooner. McLaurin is struck by an African American man “telling me that changes were coming, and that he believed them long overdue” (145).

Finally, McLaurin introduces an elderly couple, Jerry and Carrie. Carrie McLean is a retired schoolteacher. White adults regularly address her as Miss, the only African American woman in Wade who received this sign of respect. Jerry frequently does odd jobs for McLaurin’s family. McLaurin calls them Wade’s most interesting couple and respects them both. McLaurin recounts a specific memory of being invited into their home for pie. McLaurin is 17. Entering an African American household was a rare occurrence under segregation, and McLaurin understands the importance of the gesture. From the outside, it is one of the nicer African American homes in the community. When he sees the interior, McLaurin writes that:

[…] the emotional impact of Miss Carrie’s kitchen produced the physical responses one feels as a roller coaster begins its earthward plunge: the tightening of the stomach; the quick gasp for breath; the queazy, sinking feeling inside. Stunned by the appearance of the room, I searched for words while bursts of understanding exploded through my brain (152).

That they have so little, McLaurin realizes, is not a result of their unworthiness, but rather of the restrictions of segregation. In 1959, a year later, McLaurin comes back from college. Jerry calls him Mr. Milton. McLaurin recognizes that “Jerry was saying to me not ‘Now you are a man' but ‘Now you are a white man'”  (155).

McLaurin then describes the changes brought about by The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and The Voting Rights Act of 1965. Schools were desegregated less than a decade after McLaurin left for college. However, changes in social interactions developed unevenly and slowly.