Here's a picture of my mom in 1973:



After graduating from college, her first job was in Tuskeegee, AL, as a 6th-grage Reading teacher at an all-black school. Actually it was an integrated school, but there were no white students, because they were all in "church schools", which was how segregation was maintained after it became illegal. She was the only white teacher, as well.

The funny thing is, none of the kids knew she was white. They all thought she was "bright", a light-skinned African-American. Tuskeegee was predominantly black, had a black mayor even, and white folk were rare enough that the kids just assumed she was black like everyone else. She'd taught there a year before a student saw her walking somewhere in town with my dad and came to school with the big news- "Miz Payphone is white! Miz Payphone is white!" All of the sudden they wanted to touch her hair, feel her skin, etc. "Why did you come to our school?" they asked. "To teach you to read," she said. "Why do you want to teach us?" they asked. "Because I'm a teacher," she said.

Considering that the Tuskeegee Experiments had ended only a year previously, and that its victims were these childrens' fathers and grandfathers, their innocence regarding race is particularly touching. Just another example of how racism is taught, not inborn.