My Memoirs - Citizen of the World

follow the curriculum fairly well. I loved the subjects of every
class I was taking, and I passed every course with good grades.
I also experienced some of the effects of the civil rights marches
that took place in Alabama, particularly in Selma and Montgomery.
Often times, a curfew was implemented and students could not
leave the campus after certain hours. With my accent, I was
obviously a foreigner and most people were very friendly, perhaps
because they knew, even though I was white, that I was not
responsible for the racism that existed in the country. At times,
though, I would force myself to speak with more of an accent than
usual so that I would be better accepted by anyone of any skin
color.
I borrowed a car and took a drive around town. I ran out of gas
and the car stopped in a black neighborhood. When I got out of
the car, several people surrounded me and asked what I was doing
there. I told them, with a little extra foreign accent, that I was a
student at the University and that I had come from Portugal. They
said, “You mean Puerto Rico?” I explained to them that Portugal
was a small country in Europe and that I needed help because my
car had run out of gas. One of them went home, brought an empty
can to me and said that there was a gas station around the corner. I
walked with the can, filled it with gas, and wondered if the car
would still be intact when I returned. Of course, everyone in that
neighborhood was African-American. They were all very nice to
me, and I couldn’t help but wonder about the reasons for all the
discrimination, and I could not help but become irritated by the
prejudice they were subjected to by the white people of the south.
There were separate places for the whites and blacks to wait for the
buses. The water fountains had signs that read, “Only for White
People” or “Only for Black People.”
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