Alice Lynch
Jonesboro, AK

This is what my father said when I ran up to the water fountain with no line in the big downtown Houston department store. I was small enough not to see the sign above it that read “Colored”, but old enough to read it when he grabbed my arm harshly and pointed up to it. “But, Daddy, it’s clear like this water!” I guess that point was lost on him. It was never lost on me. I didn’t understand separate but equal things, and this turned out to be one of many I’d witness as a child.