One Pocket

In the summer of 1956, as a ten-year-old black kid living in Michigan, my family placed me on a train bound for Mississippi to visit relatives. My time there allowed me to visit my birthplace, reconnect with grandparents and it introduced me to a phenomenon that I never knew existed. On a hot July afternoon in downtown Natchez, Mississippi, I stopped to take a drink from a water fountain and looked up to read the words "For Whites Only."

Many authors have explored the detrimental psychologic...