What Civil Rights Means to Me

 
One snippet of my own personal story follows:

There is a park in the square downtown. It's still called the slave market to this day and, yes that is what it had been. When I was little there was a covered deck with steps on all sides going up to it that sat in the middle of the park with benches and tables where old men used to play checkers. At one end just up from the steps to the deck floor was a porcelain basined fountain fitted onto the side of a big concrete block. There was a rust colored iron ring imbedded in the other side. I never knew for a long time that this was the original slave block where they chained people to the ring as they stood on the block for bidding. All I knew was it was where the water fountain was. One day, shortly after church, I was there and saw a little kid trying to get a drink but he was too short. I'm thinking he was probably 2 or 3. Anyway at the church I attended the bigger kids would always help the shorter ones get a drink so I walked up there and put the little guy on one knee boosting him up there and turned the fountain crank for him. He got his drink and got down. I told him go find your momma and he ran off. I saw a lady in the distance . She waited till he got to her and would not come up to the podium to get him. And then I heard the old men talking gruffly. One said, "she doesn't know; she's just a kid..." something like that.
Later I learned the child was not allowed to drink out of that fountain.
Now this is Florida in the summer or spring as I recall. And there would have been no business downtown where they could go in to get a glass of water.
But it was later as I said I learned about what that iron ring was and I always found it ironic that he couldn't get a drink there.