Integration was a main theme or topic in this memoir. It played an important role

in the time when Gates was growing up and had a big affect on him throughout his book.

Integration changed the way Gates viewed, whites, blacks, restaurants, hairstyles, church,

school, etc. He went from a conformist to a rebel to an Episcopal. His community changed

with him and the older generation of course did not take to integration as well as most of

the younger generation did. Integration was considered a good thing to most people and

others believed that Blacks had lost something through the whole ordeal. They believed

that they had lost the close knit family ties that segregation indirectly created. Gates sums

up the way the community felt about integration in one of his last sentences in his memoir.

He writes, "All I know is that Nemo's corn never tasted saltier, his coffee never smelled

fresher, than when these hundreds of Negroes gathered to say goodbye to themselves,

their heritage, and their sole link to each other, wiped out of existence by the newly

enforced anti-Jim Crow laws."(Gates, 216)

It was hard for blacks to integrate into all white schools after being surrounde

"Black Power" movement moved through Piedmont and Gates grew an Afro. The afro

a loss....and the nurturance of the womblike colored world was slowly and inevitably

represented rebellion from the conformity blacks practiced previously with their greased

segregation of the community of Piedmont, West Virginia where he grew up. A place

Meanwhile for many of the older blacks in Piedmont, celebration was the furthest

if you were black and saying, "Hi, since were supposed to be integrating with each other I

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1464
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)