I was born in 1954, before women were allowed to apply for mortgage loans or credit cards, and when gay men were banned from serving their country in the military and racial desegregation of public schools was a new law.
“Jim Crow” laws fought civil rights for Black Americans, it was illegal for “queer” folk to engage in physical intimacy in the privacy of their own homes, and women and minorities were paid less for the same job performed by a white man.
Industrial pollution was fouling our air and water, and unregulated resource extraction was destroying animal and plant habitat. As a female there was no Title 9 to give me equal access to high school sports, and I was denied admission to a forestry school because they only admitted males.
Women were expected to marry and produce babies, Black people were expected to accept the crumbs of America’s success, and queer folk were expected to stay deeply closeted.
Only a straight, white male would view the ’50s and ’60s as some idyllic America.
Joanne D’Unger, Leeds
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