Don't make me have to come down there!

A friend has had a stroke. Today, All Saint's Day, has started off miserably.

Rosa Parks died the other day. Much will be made of her passing, especially by those self-elected "black leaders."

I am a child of The South. I grew up in segregated territory. I knew something was wrong, the day my grandmother spun me around, slapped my face, and told me not to drink from the "colored" water fountain. It was a hot day in Washington, Georgia. I wanted a drink of water at the courthouse, not a lecture on segregation. I later stole a bathroom sign that said "Whites only." It needed stealing.

Under the sharecropper law, there was a black man named "Dojah" who shared my grandparent's farm. I think his real name was "Dozier", and he won a medal during War I. I never asked about the old man who lived quietly, plowed his crops, and said "yes ma'am" to my grandma. He was unfailingly polite, grateful for the water dispensed from the backyard pump, and if he'd done anything outstanding in the War to End All Wars, he never made a big deal of it. He was the epitome of "the good Negro." He lived and died quietly. I regret the passing of history; much is lost when our backs are turned.

My grandmother never laid a hand on me, except that one day. I stole the sign from a Georgia gas station, because it was no longer relevant. I heard that Earl Warren was an evil SOB, because he wanted to make me live with Negroes, or something like that.

Rosa Parks made a stand against someone a long time ago. She was tired. She had worked a long day. She said "Hell, no!" I am so glad you made that stand! I would've grown up so ignorant. I would've believed everything I was spoon-fed. I would've continued to avoid drinking from the "colored" water fountain. People would be less human to me. Like Dozier, you are gone, but you will never be forgotten.