Little Lightbulbs

It's an image that has haunted me from my childhood. Growing up in Bossier City, Louisiana, there were quite distinct "good" and "bad" parts of town - the places you just didn't wander into late at night. Just across the river, separated by only 20 miles and a bridge, was Shreveport. White people lived there, but the bulk of the population was - and still is - black and, for the most part, impoverished. My mother worked in Downtown Shreveport and one evening, after picking me up from school, we headed toward the bridge that divided these two vastly different areas of this corner of North Louisiana. That's when I saw the men in white hoods standing on each side of the street, in the "black" part of town, waving their crosses, holding their signs that spewed hatred and intolerance. Even as a little white girl, my bones shivered. Something wasn't right about this. Forty five minutes the other direction lived my grandparents, products of ...