Book Review "Separate Pasts"

Julia Burns
Susannah Link
BLS 380 – 11
5 Dec. 2010
The Inevitable Change
A comprehensive look at Separate Pasts by Melton A. McLaurin

 When we are but young growing up, we do not consider change as part of a lifelong lesson. At the coming of my 51st birthday, I have really reflected on my life while reading a book written by Melton A. McLaurin called Separate Pasts, Growing up White in the Segregated South. Oh, I already knew that with age, we grow as people and the past time is just that “past”, a period that can never be recaptured.  Melton stated something that I very much agree with and have struggled many years in stressing (something very similar) “…I have struggled to convince those on both sides of the racial divide to view the past objectively, to use it and any commemorative undertakings as means to achieve a common goal of creating a less racially divided society.” (pg 169) That is what this book is all about, understanding the cultural thought of a white segregated South, the oppression of Black Americans, learning, and growing out of, to make and see changes and to advocate for improvements of all people.  The really great thing and why I identify with this book, McLaurin “lived the walk and talked the talk” first hand.  This is an objective series of essays of the author’s personal concept of segregation, deep secretive meanings of how he felt and what he witnessed, and how he was raised during a very difficult time in America.
   Each person that McLaurin comes into contact with is an individual person and not necessarily objects lesser than him.  His Granddaddy played a very large roll in his up-bringing during his self-discovery, which mainly began in his early teen years.  Melton lived in a small village called Wade, North Carolina.  He really didn’t have a concept of what segregation was about.  It seemed not to affect his world until he listened, watched, and grew.  For example, whites and black attended different churches and held specifically different jobs. He also noted that black people lived differently than white people. This really wasn’t an uncommon thing in the segregated south.  I know my parents didn’t raise me racists but I remembered something my maternal grandmother telling me years ago. Like the authors upbringing, my grandmother would tell us children that we couldn’t go to a black person’s home because their part of town was unclean.  Well she was correct.  A black community was not a clean as it should have been because of the lack of proper city services and the “unspoken” consensus that a black person was inferior.    I just have a hard time understanding even how Street existed in his cave type pit. (pg 44-45) There were also their “Congo illnesses.” (pg 37) I remember a good friend of mine (for over 35+ years) and me pricking our fingers to see if there was a difference between our blood colors.  I remember that justified the reasoning for spending the night at each other’s house. Her home was simple like Jerry and Miss Carrie’s home. (pg 152) But we too were raised to treat people as you would want to be treated.   I feel that this was a vital part of Milton’s home life which afforded him a different perspective on racial issues regardless of how his community might have felt.

I really enjoyed reading about the “Black Rapist” theory in the chapter title Betty Joe. It was comical until I realized how sad it must have been to admire a person that you could have nothing to do with because they might have had a drop of black blood in them. (pg 74)  The “southern belle-ism” concept still bothers me. (pg 68) To this day, I get invitations to join the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), which my paternal grandmother was so active in Jackson, Mississippi. I am not so sure I would live up to being a pure patriotic “southern belle” having been off the farm and having an experienced life.  Milton throughout his book did understand some changes were slow and unspoken.

“I…didn’t understand fear until later, when I came also to comprehend fully what tragedy Street represented… Had he been given the education needed to develop his native intelligence, had society allowed him the freedom to exercise his talents to their fullest instead of forcing him to obtain small triumphs over racist beliefs through the teaching of a rigidly sectarian dogma, his contributions to the society could have been immense.” (pg 63)  Fear is a key concept to racism. Fear is what and will always keep any society from changing or growing to its fullest potential. Separate Pasts is an excellent study guide as to non-violent changes by the removal of fear so that every person can live equally. Like everything else, with time, the village of Wade changed – it learned to grow in the hearts of people equally. Street would have enjoyed seeing this change come about but he made a significant impact on just one person, Milton A. McLaurin.  He confronted “the separate pasts” by writing this book. (pg 176)