What is "ku klux klan"?

The changing times have been acknowledged. The point is, things are still changing, though not in the melodramatic ways of the 60s and pre 60s, mostly. There were then pockets of the old ways alongside the new ways in lots of places. Besides, my friend's parents acknowledge the truth of the story, so it can't be a misguided child speaking.

your friend and I were not misguided youth...we both acknowledge that things were rough...he could be speaking directly of the incidents of 1964...that was a long hot summer here and I recall it very clearly...until the events around Philadelphia that year, I don't recall much in the way of harassment of the black people as a common practice...although it could have occurred...

I don't live too far from Philadelphia and remember on several occasions seeing Neshoba County Deputy Cecil Price...he was one of the main players in the disapperance of the three civil rights workers...he does stick out in my mind as being the type of character that could have done such a deed...

that summer of activity by the civil rights workers was the catalyst that changed the social system here...it would have eventually changed anyway without that influence...the social and economic system that promoted the injustice was about to implode...

The KKK are a bunch of psychos!

I'm no rabble rouser. I don't want to inject unnecessary elements into the story. It's bad enough already. And, Mississippi was only part of the story. Here in Texas amd throughout the deep south things went on. But it wasn't always that much better in the north. There were such things as benign neglect there. When I lived in Brooklyn in 1968, the white people I got to know were every bit as predjudiced as people from the south. I was sitting at my table, with a guest the night MLK was assassinated. The guest leaped up with a wide grin as it came across the radio. "Yes!" he shouted, kissing his hand and tossing it off. He ran off to tell his brother, somewhere down the street.

Very sad to know there is so much evil still in the world today

you have hit the central irritation for people in the South...mmmercy things needed to change down here...but Southerners couldn't understand why people from up north were coming south and interjecting their influence for change...there was Harlem in NYC...East St. Louis, Il...south side of Chcago...Roxbury in Boston...Watts in Los Angeles...

In the north, the laws were not actively racist. In the south, racism was institutionalized. When the people sat in at the counters and dared to sit in the front of the bus, they were trying to do what they did matter of factly in the north. When MLK and his friends walked in Birmingham, doing absolutely nothing illegal, the cops with their dogs were there.

It is true that racism festered in LA, Detroit and other northern cities, not being discovered in time by civil rights whites. And, that too came to the fore. I don't minimize northern culpability. Racism is a national problem that may never go away.

You've hit the nail on the head, edgar. As a Yankee, I don't deny that there was -- and still is -- plenty of racism and bigotry in the North. The flap over forced school busing in Boston to effectively insure that all Boston schools would be integrated is evidence enough of that. But there is a vast chasm between individual acts of discrimination and overt bias and the institutionalized, legislated segregation that existed in the South prior to the various civil rights acts. The counter waitress at Woolworth's might have instictively hated the black man sitting at her counter but she was still obliged to serve him his meal, and always had been. She might not deign to live in the same neighborhood as that black man but she would have to ride the same bus with him and sit next to him if there were no other seats available. Posting a sign that said "No Coloreds" would have been against the law in any Northern state I knew of.

I am a white man. I still remember the shick I felt when, at around age 13 or 14, I vivited Maryland for the first time with my parents. Walking through a door marked Men's Room, I was confronted by two other doors, one of which had WHITE painted on it, the other COLORED. I had never conceived of such a thing. During this trip, we ere taken to a beach by my parents' friends who lived just outside Baltimore. A sign at the entrance read: "Gentile Beach. No Jews or Coloreds." It was an eye-opening shock for me.

Afain, this is not to deny that there was plenty of racial discord in Boston, New York and other places I had seen as a youngster. But it wasn't sanctioned by law.

When I was a kid in Fresno, California, the schools were integrated. I knew only a little about institutioalized racism. Then, when I was 14, we moved to Texas. There I saw signs marking black restrooms and white. I recall sitting in a restaurant and watching black patrons go around back and eat at an outside table. This was visible racism, enforced by laws. In the northern ghettos, blacks were free to ride anywhere on the bus, eat at any restaurant. But, the mass of these people were kept bottled in by economics and silent racism. In the final analysis, one is no better than the other, for both systems keep a people down.

There are more well off black people in the USA than ever before, and it's become like two classes, one having the standard of living enjoyed by the white folks, and the other trapped in the old ways, held there by white fear, poverty, and dislike/distrust of the white world.