Franklin McCallie still vividly remembers traveling through Memphis on a Thursday in 1951.
“Colored only. Thursdays.” a sign at the zoo read.
“We could go Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday. The day the colored people can go is Thursday,” McCallie recalls his father explaining to him. “Now what I should have said is ‘What do you mean? We can go six days a week and they can only go one?’ But instead I said, ‘Those colored people are taking everything. This is the only day I’m here.'”
Fast-forward to now. More than 60 years later, McCallie is preaching the conversation he said should have begun a long time ago.
During a recent visit to the Ooltewah-Collegedale Kiwanis Club, McCallie spoke of his coming-of-age in a time when his privilege blinded him, and what he has done and hopes to continue to do to change the bias that remains.