Reply #2: Sorry Dude: it was, and is, that bad.

[panzerfaust]

I live more or less next door in Texas, where I was born. I remember the Jim Crow laws when I was a kid. I remember the three restrooms: “Men, Women, & Colored”, I remember the two drinking fountains “White” and “Colored”, the back of the bus signs. I could go on. The point is that most Southern states – including Texas – have moved beyond, or at least are trying to move beyond the racism of the Very Recent past. Several, including Alabama, are severely lagging, and I think it fair to remind the current Governor of that.

I surely also remember another Alabama Governor standing tall - George Wallace: “In March, 1965, a violent confrontation between Alabama state troopers and peaceful civil rights marchers horrified the nation. The troops that beat and tear-gassed the demonstrators were under orders from Governor George Wallace ...” I saw this. So did the rest of the nation, just as they saw Alabama voters support segregation in the last election: as though the last 50 years had never happened. It is past time that Alabama, and a few other states (Mississippi comes to mind) moved into at least the twentieth century, much less the twenty first.

Just think how appalling it seems to the rest of the world that 40% of Alabama voters think that inter-racial marriage should be a crime. Forty percent (Well, really 41%, if one is rounding off). And that is in this century, when Alabama's “miscegenation” laws were finally overturned - Alabama being the LAST STATE to do so. In the twenty first century a very substantial minority of Alabama's voters still see inter-racial marriage as something that is so abhorrent that it should be against the law.

Perhaps, if enough people actually complain, Gov Riley will push though legislation allowing this unbelievable affront to be removed the laws of the “Heart of Dixie”. Sadly, the “Heart of Dixie” seems to be the “Heart of Darkness”, and it seems there are many – a majority in fact in this last election – who wish to return to segregation, to return to the brutality of the recent past.

Dr. King had a dream. That dream has not been realized in Alabama.

Not that bad? Is there ANY other state that still has laws on its books mandating racially segregated schools? Not laws there because they just never got removed: but there because by vote of the majority of Alabamans they were not removed.

There is a reason that Dr. King named Alabama in his speech. Sadly, that reason still exists today.