Jim McFarland

Jim McFarland

Interview transcript

My grandmother used to take my brother and myself to the south every summer, from the age of four til the time i was 11. and i know that growing up, when we rode the train coming down from New York, when we got to DC, we would get out of an integrated car, and we would go into an all colored car, and i thought this was the greatest thing that could ever happen, cuz now i’m in a car with all my people, and they got the brown paper bag with the greasy chicken and the sandwiches and we havin’ a good time.

When we got off the train, my grandmother would always have my brother and I use the bathroom. the bathrooms were marked Colored or White. When I was young, i could read a C, but i didn’t know the word colored. so she would say, ‘Use the one with the C on it, you can’t use the one with the W.’
when we went to movies, we had to sit in the balcony. in new york as a child growing up, I always wanted to sit the balcony because the balcony was reserved for adults, and people that smoke.

When I used to get back to New York, the majority of the little brothers on my block had never been south. and they would ask me, they would say boy, what was the south about? and i used to say, maaaaan, them brothers got it going on in the south. and they would say what you mean by that? And I would say man, we got our own bathroom. we have our own water fountain. at that particular time my grandmother would never tell us the children why she left the south or anything. whenever i asked her about this thing racism or segregation she would always tell me sssh, don’t talk about that, that’s somehting we don’t say.

it wasn’t until i was 11 that i realized what segregation was about, and i told my grandmother
i don’t like south anymore.