The 1960s seem like a completely different planet compared to what most of us are used to now. Many younger readers have no clue just how vastly different it was.

A person could openly be racist, and it was socially acceptable and sometimes encouraged. Calling someone a nigger today is blasphemous, unless you’re a best-selling rap artist; but I digress.

Back then, people unapologetically used that word everywhere, even on the radio and television. Some younger folks might not know that everything was separated by race, just a few short decades ago.

After the Civil War, whites used the power of government to discriminate against African Americans with the creation of Jim Crow laws. Whites and blacks had their own doctors, waiting rooms, restaurants, bars, bathrooms, and even water fountains going into the 1960s.