Separate Pasts: Growing Up White In The Segregated South

The final chapter in McLaurin’s memoir describes three interactions: with Dora Lou Smith, Jerome Walters, and a couple, Jerry and Miss Carrie. Dora Lou Smith is a poor but cheerful African American woman with a large family who cleans the bathrooms in the store. Dora Lou’s son Cooter finds money on the ground of the store. Dora Lou angrily tells her son not to give the money to Lonnie. McLaurin overhears this conversation and is initially angry. Dora Lou seems dishonorable and ungrateful. McLaurin realizes that some “blacks perceived Granddaddy, perhaps my entire family, as the Enemy” (142).

Jerome Walters, a good-natured older African American man, is one of the few other Yankees fans in Wade. McLaurin enjoys talking to Jerome about baseball. Before signing the outfielder-catcher Elston Howard in 1955, the Yankees were an all-white team. McLaurin asks Jerome what he thinks about the Yankees breaking their color line. Jerome replies that it was a good choice and he wishes they had done it sooner. McLaurin is struck by an African American man “telling me that changes were coming, and that he believed them long overdue” (145).

Finally, McLaurin introduces an elderly couple, Jerry and Carrie. Carrie McLean is a retired schoolteacher.