To: Rainy_Day_Woman who wrote (34844 ) 4/14/1999 3:49:00 PM From: Ilaine Read Replies (1) | Respond to
Thanks for the stories, and the explanation about "crawdads." When my dad was in dental school, we lived in the St. Thomas Project, which in those days of segregation was pretty much an apartment complex. We did not go into the French Quarter much, my parents really had no reason to go there - my father studied all the time, and worked at Charity Hospital, my mother was a legal secretary, with four little kids. I remember going down to the docks and watching the ships being unloaded - the longshoremen unions were segregated, too, I remember watching black men carry bags of coffee beans on their backs out of the holds of the ships and putting them on the docks. The most gorgeous muscles I have ever seen. The smell of coffee from broken bags I can still remember. This was in the late 1950's. I saw a dead man lying on the street once, coming home from kindergarten, he was a black man who had been killed in a card game, he was partially covered by a sheet.
