Voices of Civil Rights is a project sponsored by AARP, the Leadership Council on Civil Rights and the Library of Congress “to collect and preserve personal accounts of America’s struggle to fulfill the promise of equality for all.” I heard about this project on NPR today, and the news report aired the memories of an older black woman who had attended a segregated high school here in Houston. I found her recollections interesting, and somehow hearing about this lady’s experiences reminded me of my great grandmother. For better or for worse, I come from “the other side of the racial divide.” My great grandmother grew up in Comanche, Texas. My father told me (and others confirmed the story) that when my great grandmother was growing up in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, black people were not allowed in Comanche. Even the black porters on the trains had to stay on the train when it stopped in Comanche. So my great grandmother grew up believing that Negroes, as she called them, were foreign at best, dangerous at worst. I remember my great grandmother sippping Coca-colas in the small returnable bottles and watching soap operas. She was probably about 70 years old then, back in the 1960’s, and though she had worked hard all her life, it was now her time to rest. She still cooked the meals and worked in the yard and went every Saturday to the beauty shop to get her hair fixed. And she complained, gently, about all the Negroes on TV. “Every time I turn on the TV, there’s one of those people. I just don’t understand why they have to put all those Negroes on the television.” I heard her complain and didn’t understand, and I noticed that she kept watching and quit complaining after a while. It was the first time I remember thinking about black skin and white skin and whether or not skin color made any difference. I never believed that it did, but my great grandmother sure saw a difference between black folk and white folk. I wonder if my great grandmother’s story is one of the “voices of civil rights?” All she ever did was somehow come to terms with black people invading her space via the television, and she made me think.