We moved from a multi-racial work and social life in LA to a backwoods 160 a. farm in NW Ark. in 1970. Race was still very much an issue there then and we had a difficult time of it in the beginning, until neighbors accepted that we wouldn't go along with the bad-mouthing of blacks. This was in Madison County...in next door CArroll county the "negro curfew" had been abolished a scant 10-15 years ago. Until then there had been big banners across the entrance/exit roads to the towns saying something to the effect that blacks would be run out of town on a rail if they lingered after dark.

NW Arkansas was too poor, for the most part, to ever have had any truck with slaves, but that didn't change the racial bias. We came in 1970, left in 1982 and in all that time there were no registered blacks in either county (no Asian/Latino/whatever either for that matter...). It was very strange, living in such a monoculture, after LA.

Those country people were good folk,good neighbors, good friends. Their bigotry was a product of their time and place and despite it I found it hard to demonize them...but then, there were no overt acts of racial violence either.

I did an art fair by myself in Atlanta, and remember with what fear I travelled alone through Mississippi...sure I was going to run into brutality and violence at every hand. When I arrived safely in Atlanta there was a girl from Miss. staying at the same apartment I was crashing in...we played music together late into the night, and she was as dispairing of the image of her state as I am of my own country right now.

Reading again Rick's starting thread, I think of all I've read of the humiliation and degredation black jazz and big band artists had to put up with, again well into the 50's, even 60's; likewise the treatment of "Okies" in California, and earlier, the Chinese...

As Ghandi said re Western civilization...it would be a good idea.