SIT-INS, DRIVE-INS AND UNCLE SAM

A memoir recalls a tumultuous era—the American South in the 1960s and ’70s.

The book’s title is well chosen: sit-ins (like the famous one in the Greensboro, North Carolina, Woolworth’s) to challenge the White power structure; drive-ins to evoke the American Graffitiinnocence of the times (for White kids), and Uncle Sam to stand for the looming Vietnam War. Slawter was born and spent most of his early years in Glenwood, a neighborhood in Greensboro. His was a typical lower-middle-class White upbringing—including having a paper route, then working at McDonald’s. He was girl crazy but even more car crazy. And he was oblivious to the fact of segregation all around him. Fish, he writes, never take notice of the water they swim in, even if it is polluted. But he clearly recounts key awakenings, almost epiphanies, as when he looked up in a movie theater and made eye contact with some of the Black kids in the balcony (“Why did they have to sit up there and I didn’t?”). He rarely interacted with Black people. His paper route helped a little in that regard. A Black pit man named Boston in a barbecue place let the author come in on cold mornings to prepare his newspapers. Boston truly impressed Slawter with his friendship and patient wisdom. Greensboro is almost a character in this engrossing story. When the walls of Jim Crow began to crack in the ’60s, Greensboro sometimes reacted a bit differently than other Southern cities. Readers will get the sense that a few of the powers that be in Greensboro may have recognized that change was coming. Yet the author refuses to cut himself or the city any slack. Looking back on the era, he asserts that he feels guilty—that he should have done much more and been more righteous. The last pages are a passionate and potent confession, showing a self-incriminating man. Some readers will ponder what they would have done in those circumstances.

A powerful testimony about a time and place by a man who vividly remembers both.