Page 295 - WhyAsInY

Chapter Nineteen
Some Case Studies
AUGUST 1966 – JUNE 1969
Wherein our author learns that law school is not college and that arguing is more productive than studying.
West Side Stories
Selma, Alabama, is the place—and the summer of 1966 is the time—in which we resume the story of my formal and informal education. I wish that I could say that that city, the starting point of the celebrated and bloody voting rights marches to Montgomery that were led by Martin Luther King Jr., is where I performed some noble act or experienced an epiphany related to civil rights. I can’t say that, however. Selma is my focus because it was from a convenient telephone booth there that I initiated an important call home.
Now, I don’t know who the audience for this book is or will be, but, if you are a grandchild of mine or a member of that or some subsequent generation, I think it only fair to explain that cell phones were not in being in 1966 and that, if you wished to make a private telephone call to your parents from a public place, the way to do it was to enter a small enclosure, usually on or near a street corner, which had glass walls so that the user could be watched by anyone who cared to, and which was equipped with a device that had a dial that functioned as a circular
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