Part 2 How Could I Love a Race of People Who Hated MeThere was a pretty strict system of segregation in Atlanta.For a long, long time I could not go swimming, until there was a Negro YMCA.A Negro child in Atlanta could not go to any public park.I could not go to the so-called white schools. In many of the stores downtown, I couldn't go to a lunch counter to buy a hamburger or a cup of coffee.I could not attend any of the theaters.There were one or two Negro theaters, but they didn't get any of the main pictures.If they did get them, they got them two or three years later.I had grown up abhorring not only segregation but also the oppressive and barbarous acts that grew out of it.I had seen police brutality with my own eyes, and watched Negroes receive the most tragic injustice in the courts.I can remember the organization known as the Ku Klux Klan.It stands out white supremacy, and it was an organizationthat in those days even used violent methods to preserve segregation and to keep the Negro in his place, so to speak.I remember seeing the Klan actually beat a Negro.I had passed spots where Negroes had been savagely lynched.All of these things did something to my growing personality.In my late childhood and early adolescence, two incidents happened that had a tremendous effect on my development.The first was the first empty seats at the front of the store.
