What It Was Like by Lois Watkins is a book of short stories about her childhood of growing up in a segregated America. It was a very personal story told from her life as a black girl growing up in a turbulent time. She goes into things I would never would have thought about, like hair! The ordeal that she had to endure from the smoking hot straightening comb from the uncaring beautician. It is not like they had great equipment back then or AC in every building either. I knew about the wrongfulness of society and it's attitudes, social racism on TV, and in everyday life, but when she tells it as living it, it is different. She does go into history before she was born, her genealogy, and other history lessons on racism. What I enjoyed most of the book is when she was talking about her experiences, but part of the history near the end was more textbook and slowed the book down but overall, a great book. I received this book for a honest review and it in no way effected my review or rating.

This is an eye-opening look at segregation written by a woman who grew up during that era. I learned many things that history books do not teach you. For example, the water fountains that were segregated were also of a significantly different quality for the two races! Many stories present the author's experiences with the oppression of segregation in the US. I recommend this book for high school or college students. It is a book that would be excellent as a supplement to a study unit on Black History or US History.

What It Was Like...short stories of childhood memories of segregation in America

by Lois Watkins

First Edition Design Publishing

Biographies & Memoirs, Middle Grade

Pub Date 23 Feb 2016

I was given a copy of What It Was Like through the publisher and their partnership with Netgalley in exchange for my honest review which is as follows:

1940's America was different than it was today and one of the biggest differences especially in the south was Segegration.  In the black neighborhoods the center of the community centered around the beauty shops and the churches. 

In the south in the 1940's there was no such thing as "part black"  if you had even a little bit of African American in you you were considered "Black". 

Another very real danger African Americans in the south faced in the south in the 1940's were Lynching by the K.K.K. 

Buses in the south were segregated and there were cabs that served the Black Communities.

Even the Media of the 1940's and fifties were very much segegrated. When going to the movies African Americans would have to sit in segegrated sections of the theaters and blacks were rarely seen on the screen and if they were portrayed it was generally in a negative light.

There were Colored magazines such as Jet, Ebony, Sepia and Bronze Thrills.

Schools to were Segregated and the children's parents were expected to provide the necessary supplies for the school year.

Restraints too were Segegrated and if a Colored person wanted to order food from a white restraint they would have to knock on the back door and give a waiter the order to go eating inside the establishment if you were colored was not allowed.

This book is great for Middle Grade readers.

I give this book five out of five stars

Happy Reading

I received a review copy of this book courtesy of Netgalley and First Edition Design Publishing.

By the time I started going to school, legally enforced segregation was a thing of the past. I never saw the ‘whites only’ and ‘colored only’ signs that were displayed everywhere in the South. I didn’t know that in the not-so-distant past there were places African-Americans were not allowed to go, things they were not allowed to do. And I didn’t think it was upsetting to have an African-American boy in my class. I do clearly remember being curious as to why his skin color was so different from mine when I first saw him, but only for a little while before I shrugged it off and decided it didn’t matter. He was just a boy going to school for the first time, the same as me.

Growing up in the South, racism was (and still is) all around me. It wasn’t until I was nine or ten that I began to understand what it was. It was a terrible shock for me to realize that others were hated or thought inferior simply because of the color of their skin. When I became aware about segregation and the Civil Rights Movement, I wanted to learn more about it, and have done so whenever possible in the years since then.

What It Was Like is a collection of short stories describing Lois Watkins’ personal experiences of growing up in the segregated South. Her memories are shocking, horrifying, and heartbreaking to read, particularly if the reader has no personal knowledge of what things were like in those dreadful times.

Some of the memories she spoke of involved people or places I was somewhat familiar with, but didn’t know the complete story. The one that disturbed me the most was how, at age 11, she saw a photograph of a deceased Emmett Till in an issue of Jet Magazine.

At the age of 14, Emmett Till was beaten, mutilated, and shot. His body was discovered three days later in the Tallahatchie River. His mother insisted on an open casket, wanting the world to see what had been done to her son in retaliation because he supposedly flirted with a white woman.

Commonly known as the Tulsa Race Riot, the story about the destruction of Black Wall Street (a thriving, successful community of African-Americans in Tulsa’s Greenwood District) is similarly hard to read. On May 30, 1921, an African-American boy was falsely accused of raping a white girl. The district was burned to the ground, leaving thousands of people homeless. The numbers on casualties vary widely, from as little as 30 to as many as 300 or more. Upwards of 1,000 people were admitted into hospitals for treatments of injuries. 191 businesses were destroyed, along with over 1200 homes.

Ms. Watkins gives several examples of the things she experienced herself—such as the painful ordeal of having her hair regularly straightened and why she had to do it, the forbidden taste of water from the ‘whites only’ water fountain and the discovery of how even the things they were allowed was sub-standard to what white people received, and always knowing she had to remain in her ‘proper place’. It was heartbreaking to read of how her family moved to California, thinking they were leaving segregation behind them, only to discover that the ways of segregation were not exclusive to the South.

The best way to learn about something is to hear (or read) stories about it from someone who experienced it… particularly when it deals with something that was part of America’s shameful past policies. History is often revised to be more palatable to modern society, and it’s only by hearing personal experiences of others that we can be certain those shameful parts of our history are not left to fade from memory.

I learned a lot about what things were like during segregation from reading this book. Anyone who is interested in this part of America’s history would likely find this book to be an informative, as well as emotional, read. The only way to avoid the mistakes of the past is to know your history. Given the state of things in America at this time—the debate over Syrian refugees, the blatant racism you see all over the internet, the events that inspired the Black Lives Matter movement— in my opinion, makes this book (and others like it) absolutely relevant to the turmoil we’re experiencing as a nation.

Give this book a read. It’s definitely an eye-opener.

A very interesting and emotional book. I wanted to read this as I knew very little about this part of America's history. A very sad and shameful part of history. I learned a lot and I want to learn more now. I would certainly recommend it to anyone interested in this particular part of history.