The memoir of Melton McLaurin’s adolescent years in Separate Pasts tells us about many people he encountered in Wade, North Carolina. Melton writes about many african americans who challenged segregation by indirect methods to influence whites, or at least Melton, and to help bring down the Southern system. Some of the african americans living in Wade simply resisted segregation by just being part of the community like Betty Jo. Their existence was a living, breathing challenge to the justness of racial stereotypes and segregation. While others like Street, Jerry and Miss Carrie, made more calculated efforts to challenge segregation in quiet and indirect ways. Betty Jo was an african american girl in the community that Melton had a crush on …show more content…
They both took much interest in Melton’s life. Jerry cared for Melton’s social and personal life and always tried to advise him on “alcohol”, “women” and “proper behavior”(150). Miss Carrie was the only black woman that was ever addressed as “Miss” and she had a great interest in Melton’s educational life. She would walk into the store and ask or talk to melton about his grades and how school would be going. “Miss Carrie loved her education lecture, which im sure she had delivered hundreds of times to promising pupils. I heard it dozens of times always delivered with equal fervor and conviction.” (147) Their true interest in Melton’s personal life is what made him grow a strong connection with the couple. One day when Melton was out delivering two bags of hog feed to Jerry, as he did for many others in the community, Miss Carrie invited him in to eat some fresh pie. Melton had delivered many times but never had he been invited into a home, although Melton thought Jerry and Miss Carrie were one of the “people whom many whites respected, people who lived in one of the neater black homes in the village.”(151) Never did Melton imagine that the McLean’s house would way less of what his house, or other white houses were. “Appalled by what I saw, by the realization that these people whom I admired had so little.”(153) Melton quickly understood “the special significance for this invitation, … while I was yet a juvenile, someone who could be taught and, perhaps, influence by what he learned.”(152) The moment Melton walked in, it gave him an emotional impact that made him realize that “I could never comfortably accept the racial etiquette that had been an essential reality in the world of my father and grandfather.”(154) Jerry and Miss Carrie had