I Was Born in 1954...or Was It 1854?

I was born on January 23, 1954 in Tampa, Florida.

When I was born, "under God" was not part of the Pledge of Allegiance. Those two words were included in the Pledge by an Act of Congress on June 14, 1954. So it was not part of our heritage, it was part of the national hysteria regarding the "Red Scare" that communists were taking over America. I bet you didn't know that.

When I was born, the Confederate flag was not part of the Georgia state flag. It was added to the Georgia flag in 1956. So it was not part of "Southern heritage," it was part of Southern reaction to integration. I bet you didn't know that either.

I grew up in Tampa, Florida. Tampa is not Selma or Dothan...Tampa is not the Deep South. Tampa is a Midwestern city in a Southern state. When I was in elementary school, none of my classmates had southern accents.

Yet, when I was in 1st grade in public school, when Kennedy was President, we memorized the Holy Bible, but didn't have any black classmates. I never had an African-American classmate until 8th grade. Why? Because our schools were segregated by race. The African-American kids in Tampa were bused, sometimes 2-3 hours a day, more than 50 miles one way, to all-black schools...even if they lived in my neighborhood. Finally, in 1968, I had black classmates, a few. It wasn't until I was a senior in high school that the buses went the "other direction" and brought African-American kids out of their neighborhoods to our schools resulting in a black student population of about 10%.

When I was a kid, the public beaches in Tampa were segregated by law. I am talking about the north side of the Courtney Campbell Causeway, not the Ben T. Davis Beach that came later on the south side. I actually made a black friend somehow when I was 7 years old while playing there in the polluted waters of Old Tampa Bay. By the way, it was so polluted, mostly from the good old sewage that was flowing into the upper part of the Bay, that we used to slip on the slime and muck on the bottom where there should have been sand and rarely saw a living thing in the water. (Thanks to those pesky environmentalists, today the water is cleaner, the slime and muck has been replaced by sand and sea grass, and the trout and mullet have returned to the Bay). Well, my black friend and I had to play on the "line" between the "white" and "black" beaches. I never understood it, but my parents unhappily assured us we would "get in trouble" if either of us crossed that line.

The biggest grocery store in Tampa where we shopped when I was a kid was located on Florida Avenue and Limebaugh, in the Forest Hills neighborhood. The store had only one water fountain in the back corner with, you guessed it, a "Whites Only" sign on the wall above it. My poor mother was in great distress when she had to explain that sign to me! I asked her what the "negroes" did if they were thirsty. She said she didn't know.

You know, I am only 58 years old, but sometimes I feel like I am 158 years old because it is so hard to believe that these are the rules and laws society abided by in Tampa just a few decades ago.