Oral+History+with+Al+White

__** Oral History **__ ** with Al White ** ** musician and family friend ** ** What was life like growing up in Jim Crow America as an African American? ** When and where did you grow up? "It was a little, small town in southern Georgia called Adel with only about 1200 people with cotton farming and all that stuff, and I was born in 1943." How was you neighborhood compared to the other neighborhoods? "Well, when I was a kid there was a white neighborhood and a black neighborhood, When I was a real small kid, we had no running water or electricity, but the white neighborhoods did. I can still remember when we finally got running water. The railroad tracks were usually where the white and black neighborhoods separated, and that's where the saying 'across the tracks' comes from." What school did you go to, and did you think you got a quality education? Were the white and black schools separate? What did they teach you? "It was called Crook Calling Training School. There really wasn't a real name for it. The schools were segregated, and they still are socially..." media type="file" key="Al White Question 3.m4a" width="300" height="50" How bad was the segregation around you when you were growing up? media type="file" key="Al White Question 5.m4a" width="300" height="50" Did the Civil Rights Legislation help the segregation at all? What were the different opinions of it? media type="file" key="Al White Question 6.m4a" width="300" height="50" Have you been back to your hometown since? How different is it? "Yeah I took my wife down there and there's still no really nice, equal neighborhoods. Recently, one of my old classmates told me about a funeral director who got ran outta town for burying a black man in a white cemetery. Legislation can't change morality, and no matter what the law says, it's still gonna be socially segregated." What could've been done better to help the segregation? What could we do now? media type="file" key="Al White Question 8.m4a" width="300" height="50" Do people still give you a hard time because you are African American? "Yeah all the time, anywhere I go. People have flipped me off, and they've told my wife how they think black people are so terrible, good thing my wife is a tough little lady to defend me haha you don't mess with her." Why is Milwaukee considered one of the most segregated cities in the nation? media type="file" key="Al White Question 9.m4a" width="300" height="50"

<-- AL White today, a fabulous musician For notes, see "Life in Jim Crow America" and "Civil Rights Movement Tweets"

__ Reflection __ Topic: Life as an African American in Jim Crow America Interview Subject: Al White (family friend)

Having studied the Civil Rights Movement, you would think that kids in 8th grade could understand what life was like as an African American in the 1950's and 60's, but nobody can really understand what life was like for them except for the African Americans themselves. Talking to Al White made me realize how tough and unfair it was. Both me and my father (who begged to listen to the interview) found it amazing to hear that perspective face to face, instead of just reading it in books. I learned many things from this interview, but the answer that really got my attention was that segregation was just a way of life to the African American kids, and their parents had to teach them that their race was inferior to whites, just so they could survive in that world. That got my attention because in the life many kids and I are living, things that happened between races back then seem unbelievable now. Also, I learned that it is important for kids today to know what happened during that time of America, because it wasn't that long ago, and to know why racism is such a big deal. . . . . . Thanks Al !!!