Separate Pasts: Growing Up White in the Segregated South (Brown Thrasher Books)

Separate Pasts: Growing Up White in the Segregated South (Brown Thrasher Books) | Melton Alonza McLaurin | An important book

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Separate Pasts: Gr...

	Separate Pasts: Growing Up White in the Segregated South (Brown Thrasher Books) Melton Alonza McLaurin University of Georgia Press, 1998 - 176 pages average customer review:based on 3 reviews view larger image
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In Separate Pasts Melton A. McLaurin honestly and plainly recalls his boyhood during the 1950s, an era when segregation existed unchallenged in the rural South. In his small hometown of Wade, North Carolina, whites and blacks lived and worked within each other's shadows, yet were separated by the history they shared. Separate Pasts is the moving story of the bonds McLaurin formed with friends of both races -- a testament to the power of human relationships to overcome even the most ingrained systems of oppression. A new afterword provides historical context for the development of segregation in North Carolina. In his poignant portrayal of contemporary Wade, McLaurin shows that, despite integration and the election of a black mayor, the legacy of racism remains.

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A poignant recollection of growing up in a changing South.

McLaurin's book is a touching recollection of growing up in the South during the 1950s. His rich narative describes not only the difficulties all teenagers face, but explores how these difficulties are made even more difficult in a changing environment. While so many imagine the white teenagers of the Little Rock school integration as pictures of young whites during the 1950s, McLaurin paints a picture of a young man sensitive to the plight of blacks in the Jim Crow South. A very good book, highly recommended to those who wish to get a detailed portrait of the 1950s South

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An important book

McLaurin has written a valuable and beautiful book. It deserves a place on the shelf with "Coming of Age in Mississippi" as a document of life in the segregated South and of the moral challenges that segregation presented to those who lived in the system.

The other side of the story

Since few people in respectable circles today would admit to having supported segregation, it is rare to read honest accounts from White southerners who admittely accepted the system and went along with it, as most did at the time.

This book is an interesting read for that reason. He speaks matter of factly about his own acceptance of the prejudices of his era and area, as he punches a black boy who uses his mouth on the same needle that he does to blow up a basketball without realizing why at the moment, although he is usually pleasant in hiis relations with the black customers who frequent his grandfather's general store in Wade, NC in the 1950s.

However, he comes across people who challenge everything he is led to believe about Blacks. There is the African-American schoolteacher who forces him to refer to her as "Miss" and most of all, his unlikely friend Street. Street is a self-educated free spirited intellectual who is amazingly accurate on biblical, astronomical, and constitutional facts who lives in a cave by himself. The local Whites dismiss him as crazy and eccentric, but Melton comes to see that Street is not only accurate in his facts, but represents the tragedy of racism through the inability of Street to make a living from his knowledge. One of the most interesting characters in all of Southern biography, one could easily picture Louis Gosset Jr. or James Earl Jones portraying Street in a film version of this book.

I would strongly recommend this for exposing young people in particular to a seldom-heard side in writings about the segregation era.

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