To: Rambi who wrote (46453 ) 2/4/2000 8:23:00 PM From: nihil Respond to
Penni, you know well what I think of you. But I fear that you cannot know how deeply these things are imbedded in people's hearts. You are a generation behind me. Raised, like me, in the South (admittedly the snooty not the groundsill part). But you cannot possibly know how painful it has been for me and my family to tear itself away from our roots and our involuntary heritage. My parents were driven from their home towns (where streets and schools and buildings were named for them) by poverty and lack of opportunity. They attended schools with only whites, and yet rejected segregation and everything it meant. They fought for civil rights for blacks until they died, although it cost them the respect of relatives and friends and their jobs. Their own families were torn apart because they rejected Southern ways. They knew that they were poor because their parents had lost their land after the Civil War. They grew up in families supporting invalids and widows and orphans from the Civil War.
