Less than one Grandma ago as someone put it …



    by Bourbon-Thinker

    23 Comments

    1. Time moves fast until someone frames it like that, then suddenly history feels way too close for comfort.

    2. FlowerFaerie13 on

      Sorry but what does “less than one grandma away” mean? Does that mean your grandma? Somewhere in between your grand and you mother? Your mother? Sorry if I sound dumb but I’m kinda confused.

    3. 1984isAMidlifeCrisis on

      The Dade County Public Schools – one of the largest in the south – slowly started desegregation in 1961 and still had court fights and bussing orders into the 1970s. There’s still de facto segregation in many school districts, including that district.

      Segregation never really stopped, it just adopted new euphemisms and tactics.

    4. Wild how history stops feeling distant when someone’s grandma remembers it really puts not that long ago into perspective.

    5. WorkingIndyMom on

      Not even a grandma ago. My Dad passed two years ago at 74 (I’m 37) and remembers seeing this. 

    6. That’s something that comes up often with my wife’s side of the family, being black and Texan. Her parents are old enough to remember the civil rights movement; her parents’ parents were old enough to remember Jim Crow.

    7. My mother lived in a small town in Kentucky coal country. It was a company town, and they recruited workers directly from Ellis Island and all over the south as well. Everything was integrated – housing, jobs, country club, etc – all skin tones, all nationalities, together. She often told me about having friends and neighbors from all over the world and both black and white.

      Except the schools. Since the schools were run by the state, they had to be segregated. No matter the wishes of the populace, the state demanded segregation.

    8. Great video but the Willie Lynch Letter is a hoax. The letter/speech is supposedly from 1712 English used in it is highly modern. Anyone who has read books from the 1700s or letters can spot the discrepancies.

    9. Bourbon-Thinker on

      The last 80 years haven’t been a straight line of “getting better.” It’s been a cycle of Progress vs. Retrenchment. Every major legislative win has historically been followed by new, more subtle methods of maintaining the racial hierarchy.

      Some folks like to argue about The “Post-Racial” Myth: The election of Obama in 2008 led some to claim the U.S. had moved “past” race, but data on the wealth gap and police interactions showed the opposite

    10. CuriousRiver2558 on

      I grew up in the South in the ‘70s and ‘80s, and some signs like this were faded but many were not taken down. (One gas station bathroom in town barely painted over the “White” on the door and it stayed that way till the ‘90s when the building was bulldozed)

    11. HempinAintEasy on

      Grandma? Try our parents lived through it depending on your age now. I’m a millennial with older than average parents. Father lived in Jim Crow Mississippi. My parents lived through and participated in the civil rights movement. Grandparents were part of the great migration. Many of us are the direct results of this history and hold its stories very close in our spirits.

    12. My grandmother was born in 1950 and she told me things were still very racially charged during this time. She wasn’t black, but she also wasnt white.

    13. It will never seem that long ago. My father was born THE YEAR AFTER Jim Crow was outlawed. There’s people my age with parents who lived in it.

    14. Classic-Exchange-511 on

      I totally forgot about that common song. Went to go watch the video and it’s got Avon Barksdale and famous actors in it

    15. I produced a podcast a couple years ago and the host had his grandma on and she spoke about remembering interactions with cousins and uncles who were freed slaves. That fucked me up. It smashed the narrative that slavery was so long ago. Regarding Jim Crow, my parents and all my friend’s parents grew up during that time. My generation was the first generation to have bussing to integrate schools. The federal anti-lynching law wasn’t passed until 2022! But, yeah, racism is over because we elected a Black POTUS. /s

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