Racism in America, a personal story

In 1961 I was nine years-old. I attended an all white elementary school in Southern California. For a Spring school pageant my class was taught to dance and sing the song "Jump Jim Crow." It was not until years later I learned the obscene meaning of that phrase.

If it's left with me, there'll never be a nigger on the police force in San Diego. ~ San Diego Police Chief Arthur Hill, 1930

Throughout the first half of the 20th century, even into my youth, San Diego businesses had signs in their windows reading "Whites Only" or "No Coloreds." There is a cross on top of Mount Soledad in La Jolla. It is now called a "war memorial" but for the first three decades after it was erected in 1913 the cross was the gathering place for San Diego's many Ku Klux Klan rallies.