Anne Wright Andrews:
My Raleigh Years (1955-1965)

I recall my mother's comments of her being friends with "the coloreds" and her belief overwhelmingly in understanding that all people were equal and must have the same acceptance.  Please understand I use the word "colored" here as a way to reflect of how it was then and not how it is today. 

My first memory that things were different was noticing the words "colored" and "white" over the water fountains in Sears & Roebuck at Cameron Village in Raleigh.  I asked my mother why they were labeled different when the water came from the same pipe.  I was about 9 yrs old.  We had a colored maid named Lillie.  Every time she was at our house cleaning Mother would prepare lunch and invite Lillie to sit with us and eat.  It never seemed unusual to include her.  She was even named in my mother's will. 

But the day would come when I knew things were very different for whites and blacks. 

It is 1962 I entered Broughton High School and found new friends.  They were ones who stood outside the average and popular.  I became a part of a group who wanted to see equality become a part of our life.  I recall joining this group of friends at McCroy's lunch counter and at Woolworths on Fayetteville St. where we would sit with our "colored" friends in support.  I joined the group with others who helped start a coffee house in a Peden Steel warehouse called the "Sidetrack."  It was one of the first all integrated places in Raleigh.  I was serving coffee and Cracker Jacks from behind the counter the night some boys threw a smoke bomb through the window- just narrowly missing my head.  There I joined others in becoming part of SNCC supporters.  I even gave the place my "blue enamel" street signs taken from the old Raleigh City Hall when it was torn down.  It was a pivotal place in my life.

After high school we moved to SC, and later I married an AF officer and left to travel with the military. In those travels I entered many other places of discovering differences and equality.

But Raleigh remained a strong part of my life until 2000 when Mother died and the house was sold. Before that I would return home every chance I had and visit the places or sites of those long gone places and remember what our life had once been like.  Then I would smile at the advances- though difficult- that have occurred.  Today I call another part of NC home... but I am still a part of North Carolina.