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people. What was I doing before I went to Mexico? I had been in the Army, gotten sick in the Army, spent two years in a Veterans Hospital. Came out, Veterans Hospital...went back to art school for a short while...then said, "To Hell with everything!" and went to Mexico for two years. This was '46 to '48. And it was most enjoyable. And you want to know the reasons why? The first reason why, was that for the first time I felt like a man. For the first time. I'd never been outside the country before. And, man, you don't know what it was like to walk them streets and know I could go in anyplace. Nobody could care less what I looked like. You know, just for a certain feeling...you know, I was twenty-eight years old, or twenty-nine...and I'd taken a long time to feel like a man, and I don't know how to describe it, I just don't know. I just fell in love with that place. The people were the most gracious people. Everybody was so hospitable, and it always tickled me when...particularly when, somehow whenever we would talk...you know, I'd met a lot of Negroes who had been to Europe, and they always...it was funny you know, people they don't care for Americans, and they always identify us, somehow they identify us as Americans. Somehow I never had that experience, you see, 'casue nobody ever really though of me as American. When I went to these other places, you know. They say, "Well, he's an American Negro," but it didn't have the same thing. You see, I'd speak to other

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