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...No, I was the only child and that loneliness came out of both the home. Besides being extremely poor, my father was an alcoholic, and that made for many domestic problems that reacted on me. And in my childhood I was repelled by his constant drinking, and it embarrassed me.
...Right. But I had nothing against him, but this carried over into all my early social life, certainly in school. It was also the problem, I think, of awareness of the being a Negro and what it meant in terms of even school, the high school which I went to, which was predominantly white. I guess it was about 70% at the time I was going there. And one example is that I was interested in acting, and up until my junior year I had been designing most of the sets for the school plays and drawing all the posters and things. And I began to get curious about acting. And this was just unheard of in that school. None of the Negro students were ever allowed to act or to participate. We could participate in the lower order of the entertainment of the school, you know the band performances and stuff like this, but not in the school dramas.
...It may be. I sure that it certainly is not that strict. But it was then.
...They wouldn't even consider it. And so this became so... also there were no Negroes who were allowed to be members of the Hi-Y clubs. Coupled with a lot of other problems at school

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