Race 1960

I grew up in Springfield, IL a typical mid west town with a population of about 75,000. Our town, like all of the towns in those days was segregated by race. The Blacks, which represented about 10% of the population, lived in one part of town. For that reason they all went to one high school. I lived in a all white working class neighborhood where most people worked in factories or coal mines. Each neighborhood had its own grocery stores, theaters, drug stores and hardware stores. There was a down town area in the city but people rarely went down town so we never had the opportunity to mix with people from other parts of town. I went to an all boys high school which drew students from across town but in our school of 400 students there was only one Black student or more precisely brown student and we never considered him as different. This was because it cost $90 per year tuition. There was very little understanding of how people in different parts of town related to one another which meant we knew next to nothing about the Blacks. I was the exception to the rule because my Dad was a milkman and his route was in the Black area. On Saturdays and during summer I would go on his route with him and so I did get a little knowledge about the Black people. I am ten years older than the oldest baby boomers so I was able to watch as they came on the scene. They were appalled at their parents view of race. In my day we got our news from the radio and the local news paper but all that changed when the baby boomers got into high school because of TV. This brought news from around the world and soon pictures of Blacks being mistreated were a daily affair. The young people assumed their parents knew of this mistreatment and did nothing about it when in fact they didn't know. Instead of seeing their parents as they became known, the Greatest Generation, they saw them as racist. This led to the anti establishment liberalism of the 1960's which led to the civil rights movement and to the Great Society.