in Montgomery Alabama in 1950 and by the time I was five or six years old

for by two black women almost all the time along with that sister

about the civil rights movement and I also was aware of the effects of racism

was aware of the colored and white signs on public

that the only way that Maddie could take my friends and me on a picnic all of her own

a white nurse's uniform there was a man who worked for my family

the front yard talking to him while he worked at a car full of white

racial epithets of him I would sit in the kitchen with Maddie and now and

dr. Martin Luther King and others speak to

in Montgomery about the bus boycott my mother

Maddie Marie Thomas is she would pay for taxi fare she did not want

any physical danger being on the bus and she understood that Maddie wanted to be part of that

any racist remarks from my parents never hearing the n-word in our household

disadvantaged in the society at the same time around the age of

learned about the Holocaust from a book at my best friend's house

the pictures of these people dying or dead and ask her what they

Jews and they were treated that way because they were Jews so I identified with

to be black so that I could go with Maddie and now to their Church

the marches when I was 15 my boyfriend who later became my husband

speed reading course at the YMCA and the man who can't who did the

no notice of three young black man who would come in to take the

the class started in about 5 minutes into the class the man who is head of this particular Branch

these men boys and tell them to come with him and they didn't come back course

at went home and told my parents my father called the director of the YMCA

my father if I would be happy if a similar course were taught at what then

that the one branch that served young black boys in Montgomery and I

the course so my boyfriend and I didn't we dropped out of that course I have lots more

Storybooth Montgomery

Laurie Jean Weil