Word: come
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...small "Wallace in 68" buttons. In gas stations and greasy cafes all over the state, the same ritual goes one. "You from out of state? What y'll doin' round here? How you lahk it here?" The ritual has an important purpose: about half the people who come to Alabama are Southern Hospitality-seekers; the other half are rotten no-good trouble-making kids. Each half will get what it's looking for; the Alabamian is ready to glad-hand the decent folks who like the South and to womp on the no-good kids. But first there...
When I arrived in Alabama, however, I was surprised. It looked just like the real world. Montgomery and Birmingham could have been in any other state; and even the legendary Selma looked like any Midwest commercial town. There were no border guards to weed out Northerners who had come to meddle; thick-necked police didn't roam the strets with electric cattle prods; Negroes walked on the sidewalks and not in the gutters. There were more Wallace posters, of course, and the bookstands seemed notably short of books like Black Power. But if Alabama wasn't Cambridge or Haight-Ashbury...
...first lesson in Southern life came two weeks into the summer, in Selma. I had come to Selma to see Ted Dibble, a friend of mine from California who was spending the summer working for a welfare rights project in the Black Belt. On my way through Selma, I stopped at the Silver Moon Cafe to get some coffee...
...Silver Moon is not one of the South's classier joints. Its clientele consists of truck drivers and farmers, and the conversation runs to items like "Ah dam near runned over a nigger on the way into Mobile last week." I had come there to soak up the seamy atmosphere and tuck it away into my group of Southern Observations. So the men sat and talked, I sat and tucked, and eventually I left with no overt threats hanging over my head...
...come to Meridian to sleep. Not to make trouble, to stir up the blacks, or to yell at whites. Just to go to sleep. But I made a big mistake, I chose to sleep at the BF Young Hotel, run by the city's richest Negro. After I had paid for the room, I went out to see the city's sights. On my way, I stopped at King Phillip's service station for some...