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But most troubling were the signs. When we stopped at one of the many Stuckeys gas stations and souvenir shops I was shocked by the whites only drinking fountains. Around back was a rusty spigot labeled colored only next to restrooms labeled whites only and colored only. Even as a second-grader something deep inside me wretched at the idea of us and them. Me with my Keds sneakers heading to a Florida beach them barefoot slaving in a cotton field. Me drink- ing from a sparkling fountain them their mouths under a dirty faucet. I feared what lurked behind the colored only restroom sign. During my childhood blacks began to organize and protest the separate but equal doctrine that had bred segregation in schools businesses and society in general. In 1954 the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that state laws establishing separate black and white schools were unconstitutional. During my grade school civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. Rosa Parks and others used non-violent protests to awaken America to the plight of blacks. Fifty years since my eye-opening trip to another world seismic changes have rocked the landscape. More and more people of color have appeared in films and television. They have taken up roles in education medicine and government. And the colored only signs are gone. The first black secretaries of state were appointed by George W. Bush Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. Previously Powell was a four-star general serving as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff while Rice served as special assistant to President George H.W. Bush and then national security advisor under George W. Bush. We now have a bi-racial president his father born in Kenya is black his mother born in Kansas is white.. In the Obama administration two black attorneys general have served as well as the Environmental Protection Agency adminis- trator trade representative and United Nations ambassador. In January 2009 Obamas inaugura- tion promised the fulfillment of Americas hope for racial equality. But in the past seven years America has added Ferguson white privilege and Black Lives Matter to our cultural dictionary. While the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Act of 1968 have changed the legal status of people of color their social status has not fared as well. RACIAL RELATIONS BY THE NUMBERS R ecent polls suggest differing views from the backseats of Americas Buicks. In August 2014 The Washington Post polled a random national sample of 1010 adults which included a proportional number of 639 whites and 124 blacks. It found 60 percent saying the nation needs to continue making changes to give blacks and whites equal rights while 37 percent say those changes have already been made. Eighty percent of blacks described discrimina- tion as very serious while only 28 percent of 8 WWW.AGRM.ORG MAYJUNE 2016 Eighty percent of blacks described discrimination as very serious while only 28 percent of whites thought it so.