Racial prejudice in both North and South
Ray remembers some of the misinformation northeasterners had about white southerners in this selection. She tried to correct their impressions, but noticed that racial prejudice existed in Providence, Rhode Island, as well as in the South. When she returned to the South, she joined the movement.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Maggie W. Ray, November 9, 2000. Interview K-0825. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- PAMELA GRUNDY:
-
Did you find yourself often trying to explain to people how things were
in the South?
- MAGGIE W. RAY:
-
Well, I did. One woman asked me, Did we really sit on the porch and whip
people? And another one asked me, Did we really keep black people from
learning to read? A lot of incredible misinformation that came from
maybe Gone with the Wind and other old, old things that made me laugh. I
was sort of surprised.
- PAMELA GRUNDY:
-
Did you feel you were able to be successful in telling people things
were different? Or what would you say that would. . . ?
- MAGGIE W. RAY:
-
Well, I think that what I came away with was a feeling that we were
honest about the fact that we had a problem to deal with, and that it
was easier for the society there to be very self-righteous and yet also
turn a blind eye to insidious kinds of prejudice that we have now in the
South. For example, renting an apartment: a friend of mine, this same
T.A. friend from Jamaica, called about an apartment and amazingly
between the time he called and the time he got there to look at it it
had been rented. Yes, amazing. So he was quite hurt by that, and I was
made aware of how insidious this sort of prejudice was. It was not,
what's the word, legalized. It was defacto instead of de
jure, yeah.
- PAMELA GRUNDY:
-
So you returned to the South in 1968. Did you return with some kind of a
resolve to do something related to race or just related to society in
general?
- MAGGIE W. RAY:
-
Yeah, I'm the quintessential altruist.
[Laughter] A social activist kind of person and I married a
person like that in '68, and so we were quite determined to
do what we could. It was a time of great optimism: Johnson was President
and we had the great society vision, and there were poverty workers and
civil rights workers, and Julius Chambers was here and quite a few
really fine legal aid people. So we really did feel we could make a
difference and we all put our shoulder to the wheel,
and I think in retrospect we probably did cause some good changes to
happen and with a minimum of distress.
