Roomin' House Blues

I was growing up right in the time from the height of the civil rights movement to the beginnings of the anti-Vietnam war movement.  As an adolescent I watched civil rights demonstrators, including Dr. King and John L. Lewis beaten and attacked by dogs, and wept over the murders of civil rights organizers.  I learned the connection between race and poverty in America from the media, from books and from first hand exposure.  My sisters Mexican friends who lived a block away were poor.  But I also discovered that my white friends up the block and her white friends around the corner were also poor.  I also discovered that prejudice was not limited to race.  My class mates said horrible things about the mentally ill, which stung me, because my mother was mentally ill. So the civil rights movement and Dr. King began to represent a lot of things to me. He was about a fight against prejudice and intolerance.  But he w...