Separate Pasts: Growing Up White In The Segregated South

Chapter 2 introduces James Robert Fuller, Jr. (aka Bobo), an African American boy a year younger than McLaurin. McLaurin recounts a specific memory of playing pickup basketball with Bobo when he was 13. McLaurin plays with Bobo but looks down on him because of his poverty and race. Bobo’s father, James Robert, drives a truck for the Tart Lumber Company, and his mother, Jeanette, works as a domestic. Unlike poor whites, who were overtly or violently racist, McLaurin is polite to African Americans. His good breeding does not negate his racism. He doesn’t question the widespread belief among whites in the segregated South that African American people were born to be the servants of white people.

McLaurin then turns to the pickup basketball game. The boys have to inflate a basketball that is leaking air. Bobo puts the air compressor into his month and coats it with spit. When another playmate, Howard Lee, is unable to push the valve into the ball, McLaurin intervenes. In his rush to get back to the game, he grabs the air compressor and reinflates the ball himself, sticking the needle of the air compressor into his month. Quickly, McLaurin realizes that he has Bobo’s saliva in his mouth.