Good Morning POU! We continue reading from Remembering Jim Crow.
Packing the Pee Can for the Road Trip
It’s seems funny to me now, some 40 years later. But that’s what we did. Pack the Pee can in the back seat of the car as we prepared for our trip from Terre Haute, IN. to Nashville, TN. Home of Ma Dear (my mothers Mom).
Packing that ole coffee can was as important as any of the other items normally carried on a road trip in those days.
My parents never addressed why we had to carry it. They didn’t need to, because even as a child I already knew the answer to the unasked question. Ole Jim Crow didn’t allow for us to use the restroom whenever we stopped for gas. That stop for fuel would be the only stop made. It just wasn’t thought safe to do otherwise.
Peeing in that can seemed as normal as taking U.S. 41 South to the Penny Rail into Nashville where Big Jim really stood tall.
Jerry Hutchinson
Indianapolis, IN
That was Unreal!
I remember Jim Crow: born in ’47, grew up during the 50s and 60s.I remember getting the used text books from the white schools while attending school in Louisiana. How white men would have black women “on the side” and if you dated them you would be severely beaten or come “missing”. I never knew of a single white person who was kind or considerate. My grandmother, who raised me, worked cleaning houses for the wife of the school board director of our town. When I was preparing to go to college, the director’s wife tried her best to talk my grandmother out of sending me to college. Telling her I did not need to go and such. Can you believe that? Oh, but my grannie knew the importance of an education! She had instilled the need for an education in me long ago. There are many more things to relate to you.
Trane Washington
Garland, TX