The Color of My Heart

Book excerpt: Forty six years hadnt wiped away the memories of 1955 and 1956. I still was fearful someone from the past would harm me. Time stood still and I pictured the people exactly as they were then. As I looked around things were even more dismal now than they were fifty years ago. As we drove past the High School my mind drifted back to the morning I was summoned to the Principals office and I could hear his voice and feel the viciousness that spewed from his mouth We dont want your kind here, and if your Momma and your Daddy will agree well be glad to send you to reform school at Chilacothe.And I can guarantee you well lynch that nigger if he shows up at the Homecoming next week! I was scared to death. I had to warn Andy. That night I found out his parents had whisked him out of town. What was I going to do? The bus ride to Denver seemed endless. This would be the farthest I had ever been from home and I had NEVER been this far by myself. My life as I had known it was over. Why had my parents kept the real ugly truth hidden from me? Could I, a fifteen year old girl, survive the hatred in America that I was just learning about. Thank God I would be safe with Andy. We could conquer racism with love, couldnt we? Although the U.S. Supreme Court decision to legalize Interracial Marriages in Amercia with the Loving v. Virginia case was establisted in 1967, Andy and I were the first Black/White Interracial Couple to legally be married in Colorado ten years earlier in 1957.