Hey ya'll, let me tell you a story about black and white in the south. On the cold pitch black night of Monday March 13, 1950 the wind was blowing hard on my father as he hurried to get Dr. Coe from his home office in Midland City. By the time he and Dr. Coe got back to the tenant house on my grandfather's farm, my mother was well into a hard and dangerous labor.

We were a poor white sharecropping family living on my grandfather's farm, until my parents could get on their feet. So going to the hospital to have a child was out of the question. When the Dr. arrived he began to help my mother and soon I was born. Ah, the umbilical cord was wrapped around my neck and I was born black. After working most of the night to keep me alive, the doc finially got me to my right color which was white. That was good news because it meant that I was alive. Times were hard in those days. I had 2 older brothers and 2 that miscarried.