Obama's Tucson Speech, and Memories of a Revival Tent Part 2

Intellectually unprotected against the encounter, I had no way to parry the blunt-force trauma of the separateness of segregation that hit me in the face when we drove down from Lincoln, Nebraska, to Shreveport.  All the symbols were there: white-only drinking fountains; white-only entrances to rest rooms, restaurants, hardware stores; and "No-Colored" signs outside hotels, rooming houses, and laundromats.  That there were two ways of life--one acceptable, one shunned; one worthy, one reviled; one white, one black--was a concept promoted by white men and women (and their children) of nearly every station in the civilian world of Shreveport, and the "N" word was as commonplace as pecan pie in a diner.

This is all old news today, in 2011, and it would seem to hardly merit attention, save for several summer nights in 1962 when I encountered a singularly powerful force for change: the power of the spoken word.