Before MLK

I grew up before there was a Martin Luther King, when blacks and whites lived separate lives in separate neighborhoods.  Back then I earned a good income for a kid without a steady job while in school by doing what others couldn't-or wouldn't. 

The south didn't have many unions and where I live there were absolutely none.  When a union truck came down on a Saturday night with a vital delivery, there was no way to get in unbloaded.  Of course
freight companies had normal sources of labor for these kind of jobs.  White workers were ususally employed and while it was much harder for non-whites to get a job, there was almost always a steady pool of the unemployed standing on the street corner to be grabbed by any company in need of a quick fix to a labor problem. 

But Saturday night was special affair.  No one wanted to work on Saturday night and everyone loved to party.  If a temp could be found he was usually drunk and unfit to work so when I came available I was often called out to unload a bale of cotton or a couple of boxes.  I usually made $20.00 for ten or fifteen minutes work.  I didn't even have to drive to work.  I was picked up and took home by a company executive.  $20.00 doesn't seem like muchbut the minimum wage back then was 90 cents an hour. 

What does this story have to do with MLK?  Nothings maybe or maybe a lot.  Actually the man that hired me to do the jobs was a neighbor and he knew me as a honest, hard working teenager who did a good job mowing grass and other odd jobs for people.  I was always dependable and available.  But what if equality was a way of life in the USA during this period of time rather than separate-but-equal?  This mans neighbor might have been a black kid or maybe the pool of day laborers would have been available on a Saturday night as these men would have had jobs and families to support and wouldn't have needed or wanted to slip off with a bottle of cheap booze to drown their sorrows.

If life had been what it should have been in American,   maybe someone who really needed this work to take care of himself or his family would have been available to do it.  Maybe the executive would not have had to assume that all blacks were drunk on Saturday night. 

I wonder, how does your attitude about the opposite race negatively influence the lives of others?