I'm not too young to get the reference, although it is only the "no blacks" signs I ever actually [b]saw[/b] (in 'real time') sometimes, in my lifetime.
@markansas Even as late as the 1980s, the town of Signal Hill (part of the LA metro area between downtown and Long Beach) was a "sundown town." Black people from the surrounding area were well aware of this, even if white people who didn't live there weren't. The whole thing blew up when a promising Black college football player was arrested and found dead in his cell in an apparent suicide. The resulting investigation led to the Signal Hill police department being disbanded and policing taken over by the LA County Sheriffs (who had problems of their own).
@markansas De facto slavery persisted until Pearl Harbor in the form of convict leasing. Even many Black people aren't aware of this. FDR finally put a stop to the practice because he didn't want to encourage Nazi propaganda saying that slavery still existed in the US. People our age may have met actual, honest-to-God former slaves who were of our parents' generation.
So whenever anyone says "why should we care about something that happened 400 years ago; I try to educate them.
@LeopoldBloom As I’m certain you know, if you’re over 50 the penal system in a lot states were run that way during [b]your[/b] lifetime, too. And even in terms of actual slavery, it’s been calculated that the last person born into legal U.S. slavery died in 1948. There are a few people on this site who were alive, them. My parents were both alive then, and still are. My father actually met some of his relatives who’d been slaves as children, when he was a child. You’ve seen people post stuff like, "Nobody alive has ever met any of those slaves !” They don’t know that.
@LeopoldBloom I remember Signal Hill very well. We would drive up that winding road and park at night to see all the lights as far as the eye could see. We were harassed very badly up there one night. They took us to jail on a bogus charge, we were told to appear in court and they had no paper work when we got there?! We never went back.
@LeopoldBloom After they hassled us over a can of beer, they said they also found illegal drugs?! We didn't have any and were afraid to go to court, but they had no paper work from the police department when we got there?! 😯
