Race relations in the South

I don’t like divisive politics. I like what Martin Luther King said about judging people by their character, not the color of their skin. I’ve lived in a lot of different places—North and South—and it seems to me that rural Southerners get along better than given credit for. Sure, there’s a few bigots and thugs but for the most part people are good to one another. Neighbors help neighbors. Martin Luther King’s message took root here as did a shared experience of poverty. wherein whites and blacks were equally poor and equally hungry working side by side in hard, low-paying jobs: the cotton fields and textile mills, for instance. But this may be changing for the worse. Fewer people of different races trade smiles and hellos lately. How can that be good?