I'm afraid this sentimental song distorts the reality of life in the old South.

It was common for black and white children to play together freely. It was only as they entered adolescence, or thereabouts, that kids were expected to cut off friendships with the other race. It's no coincidence that this happened at about the age when boys began to be interested in girls.

Jimmy Carter describes this in his memoir, "An Hour before Daylight: Memories of a Rural Boyhood." It agrees with what I've read elsewhere.

As for myself, I grew up in the segregated North, and had no chance to get to know black kids.

Dick Gregory, in his autobiography "Nigger," described the difference between northern and southern prejudice thus: "In the South they don't care how close you get as long as you don't get too big; in the North they don't care how big you get as long as you don't get too close." ("Big" here I took to mean important, successful, prosperous, etc., but he might have been intentionally ambiguous: "big" could also mean "grown up.")