SEGREGATION

As I watched Barack Obama take the oath to be the 44tth President of the United States, my thoughts regressed to 1948, sixty years ago when I was introduced to segregation. Having been born and raised in the state of Iowa, my interaction with black people was almost nonexistant. After joining the Air Force and being processed at Fort Sheridan in Illinois, I went aboard a troop train bound for San Antonio, Texas where I was to go through basic training.
The train stopped in Tennessee and we were allowed to get off the train. For the first time I saw signs with the words, WHITE ONLY and COLORED ONLY on the rest rooms. WHITE ONLY and COLORED ONLY on water fountains and WHITE ONLY and COLORED ONLY on two different waiting rooms, the COLORED ONLY waiting room being much smaller than the WHITE ONLH one. This was a great shock to me.
Arriving at Lackland, the training base in San Antonio, I found that even in the military there was segregation and discrimination. While the white troops had two story wooden barracks the black troope were housed at the end of the base in tar paper covered barracks. This was resolved with the integration of the armed forces.

Though there are still things that need to be addressed and acted upon. Today, we witnessed the beginning of an era that was long overdue.