Everybody has a story: Spring break trip through ’60s Deep South was eye-opener

The year was 1965, and I was to graduate from College of Idaho in a few months. With the inevitable coming change from college life (delayed maturation) into real life, those of us seniors who weren’t going into graduate school had, we hoped, careers to plan.

But first, we all knew we had Vietnam and military service looming. Mine was the U.S. Army, which I’d already joined.

Pre-Internet college life, perhaps especially in Idaho, wasn’t exactly isolated, but C. of I. was not immune to the self-absorbed behavior common to many academic communities. No one we knew went to exciting destinations; “So Cal” was about as close as it got. So, what else was there to do, but plan a great spring break? The ’60s were long before Mexico, Padre Island and other destinations became spring break musts.

Four of us, Bruce, Ed, Tom and I, decided to go to New Orleans. Mardi Gras was over for the year, but it still sounded pretty interesting and fun. None of us had been south of Nevada, and the Deep South was something we’d only read about in Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” or John Howard Griffin’s “Black Like Me.”

Bruce’s dad reluctantly loaned us the family Buick, and we pooled our meager resources (and a couple of our parents’ gas credit cards) and headed south. Through southern Idaho, then Nevada, a speeding ticket in Utah, across Colorado, New Mexico and into Texas mostly on that era’s more common two-lane highways. At the entrance to each state, we stopped and took photos of the “Welcome to” signs.

By early evening of the second day, we were at the outskirts of Amarillo, Texas, and stopped for gas. “Hey,” someone said, “check out the restrooms.” We gawked: “Men” and “Women” were neatly stenciled above their respective doors. “Colored” was crudely painted on an outhouse behind the station.

At the local drive-in, where a sweet young roller-skating belle drawled through the menu, then brought us our burgers on a window tray, we noticed black faces lined up at the “Colored” window in back. One of us said, “Toto, we’re not in Idaho, anymore” — a mantra we were to repeat often in the next few days.

In Dallas, we found a cheap motel and made our first overnight stop. We took pictures of buildings, traffic and parks. But no one could, or more to the point, would, tell us where the Texas School Book Depository was. Odd, we thought. Wasn’t it just a year and half ago that Lee Harvey Oswald had fired from a depository window, wounding Texas’ governor and killing our president?

On to Louisiana, each stop or sight underlining the blatant segregation. Restrooms, restaurants, stores all had, as the courts had decreed, “separate but equal” facilities. Our collective consciousness was increasing dramatically.

In New Orleans, we slept in a former C. of I. student’s home (“I just didn’t feel like I belonged in Idaho” she said, and stayed only one semester), and she and her parents gave us a primer on where to go — and where not to go. But New Orleans was different, at least to our eyes. Blacks and whites freely intermingled, especially in the French Quarter, where we spent most of our time. Of course, The Big Easy lived up to its name. We took full advantage of cheap booze, raw oysters, great jazz and maybe a strip joint or two — and then, to complete the experience, Mass at St. Louis Cathedral in Jackson Square.

But we now we were curious to see more of the South. We climbed into the Buick, headed across the long bridge over Lake Pontchartrain, where the plan was to cross the short panhandle of Mississippi to Alabama. We stopped for the usual picture of “Welcome to,” and almost immediately ran into one of Mississippi’s finest. This encounter reinforced everything we’d heard or seen of Southern law enforcement: pot belly, almost incomprehensible drawl, yellow sunglasses — all of which later would be immortalized in Jackie Gleason’s movie “Smokey and the Bandit.” Except we weren’t laughing.

“What you boys doing heah’ in Mississip? You from, where? I-dee-hoo? Where’s that at?” We gave him our IDs and explained we were college students on spring break, and he finally let us go.

Mississippi is only 90 miles wide on the coast. But our Buick, with Idaho plates, was a law enforcement magnet. We were stopped three more times on that stretch, and sighed in relief as we entered Alabama — only to be stopped about a mile past the state line. “You know,” this one said, tapping a tail light with his baton, “you boys might could spend some time in jail if you had a, say, equipment infraction.”

We got back into the car. Somehow it didn’t seem a lot of fun to visit the South anymore. We turned around and headed back to New Orleans. We were stopped again in Mississippi, told the officer our destination, and weren’t stopped again. It was obvious that “Northern” college kids weren’t welcome. Spending time in Mississippi jails didn’t sound like a great spring break.

We made it home, fell into the arms of our girlfriends and told our stories. Later we learned that only a few months earlier, three voting rights activists had been arrested in Mississippi, released to the KKK, murdered and buried. No doubt, local law enforcement presumed we were just more outside troublemakers.

I’ve been back to Mississippi and the South since. It’s a great part of America, and I love the people and the food. But that week made an impact on this political science major that could never be replicated in a college curriculum. And brought real meaning to the newly enacted 1965 Civil Rights Act.